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Decisions, Decisions
March 23rd, 2008 (10:41 am)
Hey, Peanut Gallery! I need some advice.
As I migrate to WordPress from Livejournal, I have been thinking about how I want to use WP's features to my best advantage. There are two options, as I see it:
- Stay with wordpress.com: The advantages are that I could move all of my cartooning stuff onto one site, through purchasing more space and CSS editing. I get to use "mooreroom" as an all purpose URL (the actual domain name is owned by someone else.) WP would be my webhost, blog, and home for Wanderlost stuff (not counting Modern Tales pages) and In Contempt stuff (not counting Webcomics Nation pages). The disadvantage is that I cannot cross-post from WP.com to LJ, where I have a fine list of friends that I enjoy interacting with.
- Install WP on my own webhost: The advantage is that I can customize the blog any old way I want outside the predetermined CSS styles, adapt the blog to more comics-friendly navigation, and cross-post to LJ. The disadvantage is the loss of "mooreroom" and all the stupid work involved. Also, In Contempt and Wanderlost are at two separate webhosts, so I'd have to choose one. I'd choose In Contempt, because the Wanderlost URL is "sheldonthepig.com" — the old name for Wanderlost.
The other concern is directing the In Contempt and Sheldon domains this-a-way. Is that possible? I'd rather that if someone entered "incontemptcomics.com" or "sheldonthepig.com" (or just clicked on old links somewhere out there), that they'd wind up over here. Whether "here" is at WP.com or the centralized webhost.
Anyone have any thoughts, opinions, preferences, or advice?
This is cross-posted from my WP blog.
We can talk in some detail if you want, but basically you need to decide WHAT you want to do and then look at what tool is best to do it. The companies that host blogs do so as part of a business model, and the basic idea of Wordpress.Com is to make it easy for people to familiarize themselves with the technology. There are other blog hosts (such as Six Apart's TypePad service) that can do similar things, but it sounds to me like you are very fond of the idea of having your own domain.
The short answer to all your questions is yes. It is possible to redirect pretty much any URL to anywhere and I do this for clients all the time. It is also often possible to have "tertiary domains" on your own web site, if your host makes it easy.
TLD = top-level domain, such as ".com" or ".org" or ".edu"
Secondary domains are things such as YAHOO.com , LIVEJOURNAL.com or WORDPRESS.com
Tertiary domains are things such as NEVIKMOORE.livejournal.com or BLOG.macrory.com
You might look at setting up tertiary domains off of a single domain such as KevinMoore.com where one is blog.kevinmoore.com, another incontempt.kevinmoore.com, etc
I don't believe WordPress is as flexible as other content management systems such as MovableType for managing multiple blogs, so blah blah blah
It would probably be simplest for you to figure out what all you want to do and how to brand it, then for you to buy me a cup of coffee and me to explore the options with you in person.