Roll to Review is now self-hosted!

Roll to Review has moved from wordpress.com to BlueHost. We are now self-hosted! This came a little out of the blue, and will be annoying for some (I need to work on my communication). But with the migration done, I’m now dealing with the aftermath. During this period, we might not be seeing too much new content. BUT afterwards, I’ll be back to writing the awesome consumer-focused reviews you know and love.

For those who want more juicy goss on what went down, why, and what’s left to do – read on!

Why the switch?

I’ve been using WordPress.com for two years now, and it’s been fine. However, every once in a while I come across something I want to do but can’t. Then when I Google the solution it’s always the wordpress.org solution, where it’s:

Modify your theme files on your server.

Or

Install this plugin, and then it will all work out fine.

As a blogger, these limitations became a point of frustration. I searched for alternatives and found out about self-hosting. It turns out that it’s both cheaper, and allows me to have more freedom to do what I want. The trade-off is it’s a lot more hands-on, and complicated to get things right.

I’m a software developer by trade and thought it couldn’t be that hard. Can it?

The decision was easy.

What was the process of going from wordpress.com to self-hosted like?

Buckle up, this gets a tad complicated but bear with me.

Most of the articles you find about migrating off wordpress.com are about moving domains as well as servers. In my case, I wanted to keep my domain the same but change the back end. It was billed as an easy, seamless, migration.

IT WAS NOT.

BlueHost was meant to have a free automated migration, which you’re meant to use. But having no idea what any of this was, I went straight to their support for help.

On Saturday, they asked me to change the DNS settings on my wordpress.com page to point to BlueHost, which takes about 3-6 hours, then wait until they all swap over to BlueHost. Done. I then jump into their support again to help with the migration tool, which expects you to put in two Domains i.e. rolltoreview.com and rolltoreview.wordpress.com. It then tells you if it’s compatible. So, I did that. Turns out IT WAS NOT.

The support person at BlueHost said, not to worry. Leave it to me. I’ll get you sorted. Just wait 48-72 hours and it’ll all be good. Any questions just email this email address.

OK great, all is well.

I wait anxiously for 48 hours to pass, 50 hours to pass. My blog hasn’t been offline in over four years, I’m chomping at the bit to get going again.

I email them.

Sorry, there is no migration going on for this email address, or that domain.

What. The. Frick.

I’m annoyed. I hop onto BlueHost support again, and they agree – nothing has been done. That’s fine, we can kick it off again. Only we can’t. The support staff says – hey we can’t do this because your DNS settings aren’t right. They should be on WP.com – not BlueHost as they initially said. I’d have to reset these settings and then wait another 6-8 hours.

This was my darkest hour.

I had given up.

After that conversation with BlueHost, I took time away from the keyboard before I said Frick It and watched a YouTube video from WPBeginner about importing and exporting your WordPress site.

I was done in thirty minutes.

What’s been the aftermath?

Here’s a list of issues I had to fix over the week:

• My theme no longer existed – had to select a new one.
• Comments weren’t displaying.
• Thumbnail images were coming out blurry.
• Figuring out where all my subscribers went – I’m still not 100% sure.
• Fiddling around with PHP limits trying to get different things working.
• None of my media made the migration – I now have to re-upload everything and resize it in the process.

Otherwise, I’m getting a lot more spam comments coming through – so I’m going to have to figure that out at some point. But after a week of madness, I feel like I’m almost in a good place to start producing more articles again.

It’s too early to say whether the migration has been worth it. But one thing I have enjoyed is some of the plugins like SEO tooling. It helps me with the parts of blogging I don’t like doing, as well as reinforcing some best practices on what I’m producing.

While I give BlueHost support a lot of stick in this article – they’re 1/5 in problems sorted for me. They’ve been really good to deal with, and have been more than happy to hold my hand through the process. Especially given how cheap it was! Have you used any online servers before? How was your experience?