Switching my website to WordPress

  • pacificaikido · Member ·

    Hi, my website was done in Drupal and the developer has left the country leaving me kind of stuck. I want to try and make my own WordPress site but I cannot find the answer to my question. What happens to my current, active site if I begin to work on a WordPress site using my current domain? I’m not entirely sure if I can do this on my own but I want to try, I can’t figure out how to get started.

  • catkiinson · Staff ·

    Hi,

    What’s the url of your site?

    Firstly make a backup of your current site, and export the content if possible.

    Then, your options are:

    1) Map your domain:
    If you prefer to keep your domain and site at different providers, you will need an upgraded WordPress.com plan on your site in order to map a domain. Each paid plan comes with a free domain credit you can use to either register a new domain, or either transfer or map one you already own.
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

    2) Transfer your domain to WordPress:
    If you would like to use the domain you own on WordPress.com you can transfer it and manage your site and domain all in one place, with no need to manually configure DNS records at another domain provider – which works out to be the easier option.
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/incoming-domain-transfer/

    You may then be able to import the content from your previous site to your new WordPress site: https://en.support.wordpress.com/import/

    Have a read of the support documents provided and let us know if you need any further assistance :)

  • cookgardensew · Member ·

    Hi @pacificaikido.


    @catkiinson     has given you some great info. I wanted to expand on it a bit, and mention that you may actually want to use both options.

    You can leave your current Drupal site up and running while you create your new site here at WordPress.com. Once you have the new site ready to go live, you can add the domain mapping feature mentioned above to start directing new users to your WordPress site. Once the mapping is in place, then start the domain transfer.

    Staff member @kokkieh mentioned this process in another post:

    We recommend adding the domain mapping first, before you transfer, as a transfer can take about a week to complete, and you can’t make changes to the domain during that time. If you map the domain here first, it will already start showing your site even while you’re waiting for the transfer to finish.

  • catkiinson · Staff ·

    Thanks for the great additional info, @cookgardensew! :)

  • pacificaikido · Member ·

    Thank you, everyone, for the feedback. I’m going to read through everything and post any questions I may have. I cannot have my current site down and I am worried that this may be over my head. I was initially hoping to just try and make a page on my own to see how that might look but I was directed to transfer and/or map my current domain, again, worried in doing so might shut down my current site. My URL, by the way, is:

    Home

  • pacificaikido · Member ·

    One more note, I use MDD Hosting and am very happy with their service. I do not plan to transfer my hosting from MDD.

  • cookgardensew · Member ·

    Thanks for the expanded info @pacificaikido. I apologize if we jumped into details a bit quickly.

    Creating a new site here at WordPress.com won’t affect your current site in any way until you make one of the domain changes mentioned above. You can start with the free plan just to try out some themes and get a feel for what a WordPress site can do if you like. Without making any of the domain changes (mapping or transferring), the site you create here sits as a standalone site, not related to your existing site – you can even set the visibility to private to ensure that visitors won’t be able to find the WordPress site here while you test and work on it.

    If you want to stay with MDD Hosting you may want to check out the support forums over at WordPress.org, as they focus on sites that are running on other (non-WordPress.com) hosting providers, like MDD.

    If you aren’t sure about the difference or just want to compare them you can check out this page comparing the WordPress.com offerings with a WordPress.org self-hosted site.

    Certainly, if you have more questions don’t hesitate to drop back in here and ask. We are glad to help!

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