@deairby Hi Dea,

How do you do that?
You go to a hosting company like Bluehost.com, and sign up to register a domain and buy hosting for the next year. You then install WP onto your new domain, either through the control panel or by calling them up and asking them to do it. You  figure out starting over or transferring your blog. You can do all of this yourself using Google searches and the help panels or you can hire a web developer or call in some favors from someone (OK – disclosure – I am a web developer)

What is the advantage of that?
Credibility and SEO and control. Your own domain name makes you look more credible. Google seems to index self-hosted domains better.

Will it change the link name to change that?
Yes. You would move from

http://www.thebaronyork.wordpress.com to

http://www.thebaronyork.com

It may seem a bit overwhelming and it is more than copy/paste but tens of thousands of bloggers have made the move.

Your decision on whether to move depends on how far you want to take your blog. If you want its stature and credibility to grow, if you want to make it in any way commercial then you will probably want to move. If you view it as forever personal, then maybe it can stay.

@deairby

Social Media Examiner is a self hosted WordPress blog.  Now we are huge and have multiple dedicated servers and a content delivery network, but this does allow you the most control.

Search engine advantages are another thing to consider.  Just think of Seth Godin.  He is stuck on http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ (a hosted blog) and has not benefited from the SEO benefits as he got big.

I completely concur with @mike-selzner and @abigailgorton. We moved family-bookshelf from Blogger to a self-hosted WP blog … and I will say we’ve never looked back. I love the flexibility WP offers, as well as the analytical and SEO tools.

We didn’t double-post as @GlenGorham suggested, but did a “we’re moving” post so that folks could update their RSS feeds and then a week later we did a “we’ve moved.”

The transition was pretty seemless. Our hosting service was very helpful, and WP makes it pretty easy, too.

@deairby it would really depend on the hosting company and their rates.

I personally use Lunar Pages

but a lot of people seem to like Host Gator

if I remember correctly I signed up for a 2 year hosting service and it was around 200 dollars.

looking at the rates you can get hosting for as little as 3.95 a month up to 20 something a month. With any service, the more you pay the more you get.

Good Luck!

@deairby make that $80 to $200 a year. And sometimes people are paying $200 when there is an $80 plan available, because they want other features at the higher level.

I set up my new site over the weekend through Godaddy.com.  I didn’t have a very difficult time setting it up at all since the tools were already in place online for godaddy to install wp automatically. 

I’m very slow to get this going as I have been preparing and reading a lot, but working with a company that does website design and seo, I can tell you that the seo benefits are tremendously increased when you have control.

it says it is “Powered by Microsoft Office Live” what does that mean? Here’s the link: http://www.thebaronyork.com if you want to look at it. @abigailgorton

@deairby

We moved to Godaddy.com. I know folks have been unhappy with them, but we’ve had nothing but great support. I had about 1,200 followers @ the time we moved. I TOTALLY agree with @abigailgorton about going local. I proudly work with a local site designer. We met her through a local hosting company, and now neither of us use that service, but I still have her!

@deairby self hosting your blog is when you get a hosting package, install WordPress yourself or have someone do it for you and then use it to post articles.

I can also help if you have any other questions.

To add to what everybody else said @deairby Getting started on Wordpress.com is great, but you want your blog hosted on your own server for the following reasons:

• More options with plugins for additional bells and whistles
• SEO optimization plugins
• Control of your layout and look and feel
• Your URL would be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com which some think is important
• Most of all, all of your data will belong to you and be on your server, not somebody else’s.

• Lunarpages.com
• MediaTemple.net

that’s exactly what I’m trying to do, Judith @judithgotwald as I ‘ve researched online, I’ve found ipage to be highly recommended, do you haver thoughts about that hosting service? And, yes, I have already found that I am missing out on some great pluggins by not self-hosting @jfouts