I’ve been playing around with my own hosted version of WordPress. I’m a technical nerd just as much as a writer, so the lure of custom CSS and designing my own graphics was hard to resist.
While it is exciting to have so much control over the site, I’m finding the transition less smooth than I had anticipated. By leaving WordPress.com, I’m leave behind the community as well. I lose my chances of beingFreshly Pressed. I lose my connections to the community who first starting reading my brain oozlings. Worst of all, I lose all of my subscribers (thank you to everyone who has subscribed to date!).
I can setup subscription on my hosted site as well, but there is no way to migrate the WordPress subscribers to my new domain. Very sad. It keeps me from flipping the switch and making the move final.
Anyway, the draft of my redesign is up at: https://literatureandlibation.com/
I’m still tweaking some layout options and working on the navigation, but I’m pleased with how it looks so far.
Anyone else made the move from WordPress.com to self-hosting? Was it worth it? Any advice to a self-hosting newbie?
Literature and Libation 