Unlike most “solutions”, I bring over all your settings, configurations, customizations. Your blogs will look Exactly like before, and you’ll have much less administrative work.
If you are considering using WordPress Multi-Site, you probably have some blogs already. In fact, you probably have some blogs with a Lot of posts.
(If you’re just starting, WordPress Multi-Site is still good, it makes having more than one blog much easier.)
Each blog most likely has a few widgets, and probably some settings on each post and page. Maybe you specified what image should be featured on the post. If you are marketing at all, you should have a custom search engine description and keywords for each post. Maybe you selected some Amazon books that go well with this page. Your sign-up form. Your latest Facebook or Twitter posts.
When you want to bring blogs from WordPress (single site) into Multi-Site, you find there are tools to help with that. “Great, this will be easy”, you think. Then you find that only the text of your posts and pages and comments are migrated. (Unlike if you have me migrate your blog!)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Migrating_Multiple_Blogs_into_WordPress_3.0_Multisite says under “Export from your existing WordPress installations”:
“In each of your existing WordPress installations, go Tools > Export in WordPress. Download the WXR files that contain all your posts and pages for each site… Note: widget configuration and blog/plugin settings are NOT exported in this method. If you are migrating within a single hosting account, make note of those settings at this stage, because when you delete the old domain, they will disappear.”
In other words, you are expected to go through your entire blog, post by post, and put those “widget configuration and blog/plugin settings” back in. Too much work!!!
Those all took you time to set up. Those all have to be put back into your blog, to have your blog look the way you want! (For many blogs, you have to redo all those settings to have your blog ready for Business.)
Most of the plugins that are out there don’t even attempt to bring in ALL the details of your blog. It is quite complex, after all. You have to figure out how to merge the authors and comment authors from multiple blogs. You have to translate all the places where the image URLs should be changed, to the Multi-Site locations.
There are a few sites that will give instructions how to export your blog, edit the SQL, for posts and pages and comments and users and files and widgets and… It takes over 20 steps, and you can’t make a mistake, anywhere. To do all those steps, you have to know PHPMyAdmin, MySQL, and a lot about WordPress internal data structures. Make a mistake, and do all those steps again.
I have done it by hand, and for even blogs with only a few pages, it takes several hours. Even knowing I’d backed everything up, and knowing how to correct any mistakes I made along the way, it was stressful. Not just the first time, either, but the first several times.
Well, you don’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have to learn all that complex software gibberish, even if you’re enough of a computer geek that it isn’t gibberish to you!
I have done it enough that I know Exactly how to do it, and do it well, and do it quickly. I have the tools to do it reliably, easily. Contact Me and I will migrate your blogs for you.
If you look at how much time it will take you to learn the process, and do all the steps, and how much your time is worth, you’ll clearly see how much this would cost for you to do it yourself. (Having WordPress Multi-Site will make things easier for you from then on, only having to maintain a single installation of WordPress and themes and plugins.) But still, it will cost you to do it yourself, or to hire someone else to learn to do it.
I can bring any blog into WordPress, with All your settings and customizations, so your blog looks exactly the same, ready to work in Multi-Site. Any blog, of any size. Using any plugins. Using any themes.
$200 for up to 200 posts/pages. And only $200 extra for each additional 500 posts (or pages). No matter how many users. No matter how many plugins. Contact Me to get started.
Don’t Have WordPress Multi-Site Installed Yet?
If you don’t have WordPress Multi-Site installed yet, or haven’t set up the domain mapping you will need, I can take care of that for you too.
The single most difficult part of installing Multi-Site, is getting the DNS set up right. If you don’t know how to troubleshoot this DNS part, you can waste days trying numerous things that don’t work! (I know, that’s what I went through…) Even with good instructions for your version, there are many technical steps. The instructions out there on the Internet are unclear, and often for older versions of WordPress; unfortunately you probably know what that is like!
If your hosting account lets you have “wildcard DNS”, I can include converting your existing WordPress to Multi-Site for $100 (normally $250), if you also have me migrate some blogs into Multi-Site . As a technical support consultant, I can talk to your technical support people to find out if your account can have that. (Many hosting companies will say they can’t, or not even know what that is, but I know how to find out the actual answer, and it is often yes). Or, the company I’m using for my Multi-Site is under $10/month (less depending on how much you buy in advance), and has superb customer service; I can get your existing blog and web site moved to them. That’s less money than you’re paying now to maintain multiple blogs.
Contact Me to migrate all your blogs into Multi-Site.
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