Creating a wordpress site with an already established domain

  • kbabco

    (@kbabco)


    10 years, 4 months ago

    I recently created a beautiful site for my husband using wordpress & a themeforest theme template. A friend who has a small business in her home has been struggling with her current website designer (he won’t get back to her & won’t update her site, won’t set up an online store for her). She asked me if I could possibly create a site for her. I am not a pro at this, but I learned a lot with my first site. My questions are:
    1. Is there a way to take an established website domain and transition it into wordpress? My thoughts were to create a website in the free wordpress and then when ready to go live, transition to the paid version. Is this possible/a good idea?
    2. If this is possible, what information would I need to get from her current webmaster? I assume I would need hosting information as well as domain registration, is there anything else I would need?
    3. I see that there are plug-ins for online stores, are these reliable and safe to use?

    thank you so much for your help!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • WPyogi

    (@wpyogi)

    10 years, 4 months ago

    My thoughts were to create a website in the free wordpress and then when ready to go live, transition to the paid version. Is this possible/a good idea?

    Not really – as you can only export content from WordPress.COM so that means a lot of your work would be lost. You also can’t use plugins on WP.COM, so again, a major limitation.

    I’d suggest installing WP in a sub-directory of her existing domain if her hosting plan allows that – see:

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

    Or use a local installation and then move the site (a bit complicated)

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Installing_WordPress_on_your_own_Computer

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

    3. yes, plugins are widely used for ecommerce – you can look at the reviews, support forums to get some idea of how various options work. Which one somewhat depends on your friend’s specific needs.

    Thread Starter kbabco

    (@kbabco)

    10 years, 4 months ago

    Thank you so much for your quick & helpful response. When I contacted the administer for the old site to get the domain & server information, he offered to do the transition from dotnetnuke to WP for me, after I created the new website. Is it possible to create a WP site without an established domain? This would be ideal for me as I know the creative aspects of WP, but am not so great with the technical details. thank you!!

    maoski

    (@maoski)

    10 years, 4 months ago

    ‘he offered to do the transition from dotnetnuke to WP for me’

    dotnetnuke requires a windows server, wordpress although it can run on a windows server, it works best with linux servers so im hoping the administrator will purchase a new linux hosting account to host your new wordpress website.

    In terms of creating a WP website without an established domain. I would recommend either developing on your computer as WPyogi suggests above or you can get your administrator to dedicate a sub-domain for you to develop on, or, check out the platform below that you could utilize for development until you are ready to launch.

    https://koding.com/

    Please make sure to backup your site files and database regularly, which ever option you choose, but especially when using the platform above, cheers

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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