Using WordPress for this project could work well, but WordPress straight out of the box will probably not suit your needs exactly. And so in this post, we’ll go over how you might structure your book in a WordPress environment.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

There are number of ways to go about turning WordPress into a suitable platform for an online book. At the most basic level, you will need to decide whether to make Posts, Pages, or Custom Posts your principle building block. There could be arguments made for each, but in this tutorial we’re going to make regular WordPress Posts the primary building block – i.e. we’re going to use Posts to publish the content of our book.

It should also be noted that different people will have different preferences and different needs according to their situation. Some may have long chapters while others have many short chapters. Some may have a number of different sections in each chapter while others forgo chapter sections altogether. … And the list goes on.

Therefore, the recommendations listed in this tutorial are just that – recommendations. You may have to change them to suit your particular case, but at the very least, they should give you some ideas.

Why Posts?

The reason I chose to go with Posts for this tutorial is that you typically have more flexibility with Posts.  Of course you could get Pages and Custom Posts to pretty much be as flexible as Posts, but that would take some extra work.

Building Your Site

OK, enough with all the disclaimers. Let’s get to actually building the site.

Changing Posts to Suit Your Needs

While Posts have a lot of flexibility, they come with two characteristics that you probably aren’t going to want:

• They usually have a date affixed to them.
• They publish in reverse chronological order (i.e. the latest post appears first).

Removing the Date from Your Posts

There may be a few exceptions (such as those writing a travelogue, for example), but most people will want to remove the date stamp from their posts. Probably the easiest way to do that is to use a plugin that performs that task for you. The WP Post Date Remover plugin will do that.

If you’d like a more manual option, then you can take a look at this post.

Publish Posts in Chronological Order

As well as removing the date stamp from your posts, most will also want their posts to publish in chronological order (i.e. the first post stays at the top). You can do that with the Default Sort Ascend plugin.

Use Categories for Your Chapters and Major Sections

Perhaps the easiest way to organize all you content is, of course, with your categories function.

If you are breaking your book into major sections (e.g. Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV), then you will want to make categories for each of those.

Under each of those categories, you will create a child category (aka sub-category) for each of your chapters in that part of the book. For example, I have created a hypothetical book with four major sections and twelve individual chapters.

The outline for my hypothetical book looks like this:

Part I – Birth (parent category)

• Chapter 1 – January (child category)
• Chapter 2 – February (child category)
• Chapter 3 – March (child category)

Part II – Beginnings

• Chapter 4 – April
• Chapter 5 – May
• Chapter 6 – June

Part III – The Thick of It

• Chapter 7 – July
• Chapter 8 – August
• Chapter 9 – September

Part IV – The End

• Chapter 10 – October
• Chapter 11 – November
• Chapter 12 – December

And here’s how my category set-up looks in the backend.

Editing Chapter Structure (i.e. Categories)

Of course you’ll want to plan things out in advance as much as possible, but one of the nice things about categories is that they are easy to edit. You can easily change a child category into a parent category or vice versa. You can also easily add new categories to your parent categories, make sub-sub categories, and more.

Some will want to (or need to) pay more attention to categories and sub-categories than others. It all depends on what you want to achieve. However, at least some basic attention to this overall structure will give you a sound foundation behind the scenes. This sound foundation will allow you more flexibility down the road and make it easier for you to lead your visitors through your book in a logical way (or give them clear navigation so they can jump around as they like without getting lost).

A Plugin for Extra Help

Writing is a messy business, and often you’ll find that you need to add a section here or rearrange a few sections there. As you will be using your categories for the different chapters and sections on your site, that means you may want to rearrange them at some point. WordPress doesn’t do this by default, but the My Category Order plugin will allow you to do that.

Custom Menu Creation

Once you have your book’s main sections and chapters laid out (i.e. your parent categories and child categories), you’ll want to display them, so your visitors can clearly follow the flow of your text in the way you intended it to be followed.

A sound category structure will give you the flexibility to take advantage of many things (too many to list here, or to even imagine), but perhaps the easiest way to put a clear, simple navigation menu on your site is to use the WordPress Custom Menus system. (Appearance > Menus)

When your categories are laid out logically in your backend, they will also appear logically in your Custom Menu system, making it easy to both create an original menu, as well as add new sections when needed.

Take a look at how clearly everything is organized on my Custom Menu page.

From there it’s easy to create an equally organized Custom Menu.

I can then pull that Custom Menu into a widget on my sidebar. (Appearance > Widgets)

And here’s what it looks like in action.

Displaying All Sections

Of course different people will have different needs, but one thing that may work for some is to also display ALL of your sections (i.e. all your posts) in one long column down the sidebar.

There are a few things to note about this method. The first is that it will NOT separate your sections out into different chapters. It will simply list them all in an undifferentiated column. However, it will list your sections (your posts) in the correct order from beginning to end – as long as you have them ordered correctly in the backend. (More on that later.)

You can do this by using the default “Recent Posts” widget and increasing the number of posts to a number that will be high enough to include the number of posts/sections you have. (Appearance > Widgets)

And here’s what it looks like.

Ordering Your Posts in the Backend

As stated at the beginning, one of the reasons to use Posts over Pages (or Custom Posts) is that they may afford the average user a little more flexibility out of the box. And one advantage that Posts have over Pages is that they are perhaps easier to order and reorder on a large scale … if you know the trick.

So what’s the trick?

Well, Posts, as you probably know, are ordered by date. Whether you are going in chronological order or reverse chronological order, WordPress still looks at the date and the time on the post in order to determine how to arrange it in relation to all the other posts.

Because of this, you can take advantage of time stamps to get your posts in the order you want them.

Setting Up Your Time Stamps

If you write a post in WordPress and then publish it immediately, the post gets stamped as being published at that time. However, you can change the time stamp on your post to any date. You can control the time stamp on the Write/Edit page or in the Edit Posts page.

When starting out, my suggestion would be to publish each post with a time stamp at least a day apart. In that way, you can easily add new sections anywhere into your existing list of sections. All you need to do is to pick a time stamp that rest between the time stamps of the posts on either side.

An Example

So, let’s say I’m going to start posting a book to my site today (May 9 at 1 p.m.). I already have fifty different sections written that I want to post; therefore, I will want to set the time stamp on the first section to be fifty days in the past (March 10 at 1 p.m.). Then for the second section, I will set the time stamp to be for forty-nine days in the past (March 11 at 1 p.m.). And the third will be for forty-eight days in the past (March 12 at 1 p.m.), etc.

In this way, if I decide that I want to add a section that comes after the first section but before the second section, I can then easily just pick a time stamp that rests between the two existing time stamps (i.e. AFTER March 10 at 1 p.m. yet BEFORE March 11 at 1 p.m.). So, for example, I might pick March 10 at 9 p.m. I still want to leave myself clear room on either side in case I decide to add another section.

When I do this, my new section (my new post) automatically becomes the second section in my book, and it pushes the original second section to third … and on down the line for each other section.

(Note: If you are using Custom Menus, then you may still need to manually add your new sections into your navigation, depending on how you’ve set things up.)

Adding Previous & Next Navigation

Something else you will no doubt want to do is to add “Previous and Next” navigation links to the bottom of your posts. Some themes will come with these links included, but many don’t, so we’ll quickly go over how you can get them on your site.

There are plugins you can search for that will do this for you, but you can also manually add a little bit of code to the bottom of your theme’s single.php file. (Some themes these days call in a loop file to the single.php file, and so depending on your theme, you may want to place this code there instead.)

There are different ways to determine exactly how your Previous and Next links display, and so you can check out more info on it at WordPress if you like.

In the meantime, we’ll go over some code that should work for you. Place the following at the bottom of your single.php file. (Appearance > Editor > Single – single.php)

<?php previous_post('&laquo; &laquo; %', '', 'yes'); ?> | <?php next_post('% &raquo; &raquo; ', '', 'yes'); ?>

It will output links for you like this:

Some Plugins to Consider

I’m sure there are tons of plugins out there that could help you present your online book in a better way, but I’ll just mention two here because they seem fairly fundamental. Both of these are more for non-fiction books than fiction.

Index Press

The first is called Index Press. It helps you create an index of your site much like a regular book would have.

Here’s a look at it in action.

WP Section Index

The second is not quite as fundamental, but still useful for some. If you choose to write VERY long sections, and you keep them all on a single page as opposed to breaking them up, then the WP Section Index plugin will generate a mini-index for a single page based on your headings.

For example, you can set the plugin to make an index of all H2 headings in a page. You then set up the plugin’s widget in the sidebar, and it will appear if you have H2 heading in your page. If you don’t have H2 heading in your page, it won’t appear.

Here’s what it looks like in action.

Pagination

And finally, not a plugin, but a little built-in WordPress trick. You can also choose to break a very long post into multiple pages. It’s a simple trick that you can learn here.

The result looks like this (the style will vary according to your theme):

Final Words

Of course everything above is just a basic blueprint. And you will need to decide on things like your homepage, but this basic guide should help you get started. In fact, it may be plenty enough for many. You will want to be careful about adding too much navigation and too many bells and whistles. You don’t want your visitors to get confused.

Keep it simple, make it logical, and provide navigation that will be obvious to your visitor.

Photo: Poet and Heart Shaped Book from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

Simply insert the ID number from the category that you want to exclude in the spot where you see the “1″ in the example below. (Note: include the minus sign — e.g. -2, -5, etc.)

If you aren’t sure how to find the ID for your categories, you can take a look at this post.

function excludecatfeed($query) {
               if(is_feed()) {
                              $query->set('cat','-1');
                              return $query;
               }
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'excludecatfeed');

If you would like to exclude more than one category, then just include the other ID numbers beside the first like so:

$query->set('cat','-1, -5, -7');

The Code in Action

And here’s the function in action. You can see that the three posts from the my “Video” category have all disappeared after I excluded that category.

Photo: Rss icon from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

If you’d like to style up your posts with a drop cap, it’s easy enough to do. There are several ways to go about it.

Place CSS Code in Your Stylesheet

The first way is to place some CSS code in your Stylesheet.

You will need to know the name of the div class for your main content. You can find that by looking in  your theme files. For example, in the default TwentyTen theme from WordPress, you can see the div class is called “entry-content” for the single post file (loop-single.php).

There’s a good chance that your theme is named in the same way, but it might not be, so you’ll need to check it.

Once you have your div class, then place the following code in your Stylesheet. (Appearance > Editor > Stylesheet – style.css)

You’ll need to change the “entry-content” section below if your theme has a different class name. You can also change the properties to make it look the way you like, even adding more properties, of course. In this example, I’ve made a blue drop cap with a shadow.

div.entry-content p:first-child:first-letter {
float:left;
font-size:4em;
color: #000099;
margin-right:0.10em;
line-height:90%;
text-shadow: 0.05em 0.05em #C0C0C0;
}

And here’s the result:

Use a Plugin

Another way to achieve a drop cap is with the Drop Caps plugin. This plugin gives the novice a little more flexibility with less work.

This plugin lets you easily choose where drop caps should appear and where they shouldn’t: on content, on excepts, on single posts, on pages, on the homepage, etc. It also lets you exclude specific posts or categories.

Here’s the default look for the Drop Caps plugin, but it does also give you the option of inserting your own CSS in your Stylesheet.

Photo: ornamental letter – D- vector from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

The Code

You will need to edit the code on your homepage for this to work, and so you may want to make a child theme first so that you won’t need to touch your original theme. Barring that, it would be a good idea to make sure you have a copy of your homepage (index.php) safely stored away.

Step 1: To edit you homepage, go to Archives > Editor > Main Index Template – index.php.

Step 2: Find the spot in your code where the “content” begins. This will often be identified with a div that looks something along the lines of the following (yours may differ a little):

<div id="content" role="main">

Step 3: After finding the opening div, go toward the bottom of the page and find the closing div for the content. This div will look something along the lines of the following (again, your theme may differ – there may be no notations for the closing div):

 </div><!-- end #content -->

Step 4: Delete everything between the opening content div and the closing content div.

Note: This is a radical step that will completely wipe out your posts on your front page (temporarily). For this reason you should make sure you have a copy of your original index.php file in case something goes wrong.

Step 5: Place the following code in between the opening content div and the closing content div.

<?php
$day_check = '';
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
  $day = get_the_date('j');
  if ($day != $day_check) {
    if ($day_check != '') {
      echo '</ul>'; // close the list here
    }
    echo get_the_date() . '<ul>';
  }
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_time(); ?> <b><?php the_title(); ?></b></a></li>
<?php
$day_check = $day;
endwhile; ?>
                                             <?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

The Style of Your Grouped Posts

The style of your list will be determined by your theme’s styles. However, you should get something that looks somewhat like the following:

This will be a very basic look, of course, and so you may try styling it with CSS if you’re comfortable doing that.

Some Basic Tips

Tip 1: If you don’t want the time of the posts to appear, then can remove the following piece of code from code given above:

<?php the_time(); ?>

Tip 2: You can unbold the title by deleting the <b> and the </b> from the following snippet of code:

<b><?php the_title(); ?></b>

Tip 3: Because this will greatly reduce the amount of space it takes to list a post on your homepage, you may want to increase the number of posts shown there. Do this by going to Settings > Reading:

(Code adapted slightly from stackexchange.)

Photo: Daily Planner from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

There may be all sorts of reasons why you would want to remove the date from your WordPress posts. Whatever the reason, it’s easy enough to do.

The Easiest Way

Probably the easiest way to do this is to install a plugin called WP Post Date Remover. There are no options on the plugin. Just activate it, and it will remove the dates from your posts, homepage, category pages, etc.

A More Manual Way

Of course you could take a more way by going into your theme’s files, finding the code for the date function, and removing it. You will want to look for one of these functions:

<?php the_date(); ?>

Or this:

<?php the_time(); ?>

When looking for these functions, keep in mind that they may not look exactly as they do above. They may look like this, for example:

<?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>

Another thing to keep in mind is that you will need to remove the function from each template file you want the date to be erased from. (Appearance > Editor > *choose your file*)

These are the most common files where you will probably find the date function:

• index.php (maybe home.php)
• archive.php
• category.php
• single.php
• page.php

Make a Child Theme and Edit It

It is advisable to create a child theme and edit that instead of your original theme. If not, then any changes you make will be overwritten if the theme is updated. You will want to copy all the files mentioned above into your child them, and edit them there.

Photo: Calendar from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

Probably one of the biggest things you can do, of course, is to get a unique header. And so that’s a given. But there’s another smaller element you can change on every single page that will also make your theme seem different: the way your date is displayed.

Date Icons

In this tutorial, we’re going to go over how you can add date icons to your site to spice up your theme. We’re going to be setting up a theme to show a date icon that looks like this …

Upload Your Date Icon Background

The way this trick works is that it prints the month and the date on top of an image that’s set as a background, and so the first thing you’ll want to do is to upload your date icon background. You will want to make sure that the image is the size you want it to be on your page. (We’ll go over where to find background images at the end of the post.)

This is what my date icon background looks like without the month and date printed on it …

Get the URL for the Image

Once your background image is uploaded to your site, you’ll need to find the URL for it. You’ll need this for later.

You can find the URL by clicking on the “Edit” link that appears when you hover over the icon in your media library.

Add Date Code to Your Theme

Next you’ll need to add some code to the files in your theme where you want the icon to show up. If you want it to show up on the homepage (index.php), on single pages (single.php), on category pages (category.php or achives.php), etc., you will need to add this code to each of those templates.

There are a number of different ways to write the code to make this work, but we’ll just use this one way. There are also a lot of different places you could put the code depending on where you want the icon to show up on your pages. So you may want to play around with this in a few different spots on your particular theme to get it the way you want it.

For example, you may want to put the icon just to the left of the title of the post. You may want to put it under the title and to the left of your other meta data (author, category, etc.).

(Note: In this tutorial, we will NOT be including the year on the icon. Of course many people will want to have the year on their posts, so you may want to just add this date icon IN ADDITION to the original date that your theme already uses if it includes the year. In this way, a user can quickly glance at the icon and see the date and month clearly, but then if they have questions about what year it is, they can look at the “fine print” to also find the year.)

Here’s the code we’ll be adding to our theme files:

<div class="icon-date">
                 <h3><?php the_time('M'); ?></h3>
                 <h4><?php the_time('j'); ?></h4>
</div>

Again, you may need to play around with this. In this tutorial, because of the way my theme is already set up, I am choosing to put it under the title and beside the meta data. I have also decided to leave the original date stamp from my theme in the file because it contains the year in it.

Add Styling to Your Stylesheet

Next you will need to add CSS code to your stylesheet to bring it all together. (Appearance > Stylesheet – style.css)

Here’s our styling:

.icon-date {
               background: #FFFFFF url(http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/date2.gif);
               float: left;
               width: 45px;
               height: 50px;
               margin: 0px;
               padding: 0px;
               }

.icon-date h3 {
              font-family: Times New Roman, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
              color: #FFFFFF;
              font-size: 10px;
              font-weight: bold;
              padding: 1px 0px 0px 7px;
              margin: 0px;
              text-transform: uppercase;
              }

.icon-date h4 {
               font-family: Arial, Times New Roman, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
               color: #173774;
               font-size: 22px;
               font-weight: bold;
               padding: 7px 4px 0px 0px;
               margin: 0px;
               text-align: center;
               }

Get the URL for Your Background Icon

You’ll notice in the first section of the CSS code above, there is a spot for the URL of your background image. In the example above, it’s this line:

background: #FFFFFF url(http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/date2.gif);

Of course you will need to put the URL for your own background image in that space.

Adjust Your CSS

The CSS above works for me in my particular case, but there’s a good chance this exact code will not work for you; therefore, you will most likely need to adjust things here and there to get it looking right. Unfortunately, there’s no real way around this. How your date prints out on your background image will depend on your image itself – the colors, the style, the size, exactly where you want the date to print, etc.

So just start playing around with things. Move things left or right, up or down by playing with the padding, for example. Get the font size and color the way you like them. Change the fonts altogether if you like, etc.

Think of this code as more of a rough guide. If you look at it and play with it, you should be able to pick up the basic ideas behind it. From there you can make it your own.

The Result

So here’s a before and after picture of the posts on my site. As mentioned before, you’ll notice that I left the original date in meta data section.

Where to Get Calendar Background Icons

Of course you’ll need an icon to upload in the first place, so the question is where to get them. Of course you could make your own if you have some graphic skills. And in this way you could really get something unique and themed to your site’s content.

But barring that, you can search for something along the lines of “calendar background icon” on design sites that have downloadable icons or look for “icon search engines” and search there. You might also take a look at this post from Smashing Magazine to help you get a start.

Photo: New Year’s Day Calendar from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

You’ve probably overlooked the solution countless times. It’s built right into WordPress. No plugin needed.

The simplest way is probably to do it when you upload your photo in your media uploader. In the image editing screen that pops up when the image is uploaded, you will notice a text box for your caption about midway down the page. Just pop your caption in there, and you’re all set.

And here’s the result.

Although this can vary with your theme, you’ll typcially notice that WordPress automatically puts you image in a nice frame with space at the bottom for the caption. And if you put a long caption in the box, the system will automatically expand to contain it.

You can also access captions for your images via the Media Library.

If you’d like to play around with the style of your captions, then search your theme’s stylesheet for .wp-caption.  (Appearance > Editor > Stylesheet – style.css) You’re likely to come across a number of different instances.

Photo: Beautiful Sceneries in Photos on Green Field Background from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

Here’s a screen shot of Darren Rowse’s extemely popular Problogger.net site with such a “floating” ad. (And you know if Darren is using it, he’s tested its effectiveness.)

How to Make Your Own Floating Ad Strip

I went looking for a plugin that would do this for me, but I couldn’t find one suitable. All the ones that I found were either broken, or they had other issues (such as putting links into you site).

But not to worry, making your own is not so tough. It only takes three steps.

Step 1 – Put Your Info in Your Header File

In your header.php file (Appearance > Editor > Header – header.php), put whatever text or images you’d like to show up in your ad strip directly AFTER the following snippet of code:

</head>

You will need to put your info in a “div” so that you can style it in your CSS file. For example, I set up a link to go to an offer on my site in the following way. (You could put whatever you like here, even a image.)

<div id="top-strip">
<a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/my-ad/">Check Out My Offer</a>
</div>

Here’s what that code looks like in my actual file:

(Make sure you save the changes.)

Step 2 – Style Your Ad Strip

Next we’re going to style the ad strip. If you don’t style it, it won’t “float” when the user scrolls down the page, and it will just appear as a link on the far left side of your page like the following ….

Go into your stylesheet and place the following styles at the bottom of the page. You can play with these to get your bar looking the way you like. (Appearance > Editor > Stylesheet – style.css)

#top-strip {
  position:fixed;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 20px;
  margin-bottom:15px;
  background-color: #FFFF99;
  color: #FFFF66;
  border-bottom: solid #000000;
  padding: 5px 0 5px 0;
  text-align: center;
  font-size: 12px;
  font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma;
  font-weight: bold;
}

(Make sure you save the changes.)

Step 3 – Remove the Admin Bar

Finally, the last step is to remove the top Admin bar that shows up for logged in users. If you don’t remove this, then it will cover your ad strip if a user is logged into your site.

Remove the bar for everyone:

If you would like to simply remove the Admin bar for everyone, including the Administrator, then you can pop the following line of code into your functions file. (Appearance > Editor > Theme Functions – functions.php)

add_filter( ‘show_admin_bar’, ‘__return_false’ );

Remove the bar for only certain users:

If you would like to keep the admin bar active for certain users (such as for yourself – the administrator), then you can get a plugin that will allow you to do that.

There are a number of plugins that will allow you to do this. The WP Custom Admin Bar is one I found that does the trick nicely.

The Result

And here’s the result. You get a new Ad Strip Bar at the top of your page that will always stay at the top.

Photo: Outdoor advertising construction from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

Here you can change the WordPress Address (URL) and the Site Address (URL). Simply remove the www from both and save your settings.

For more information, check out the WordPress codex article on changing the site URL.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

The problem was, I had a very limited understanding of how the whole domain name / site content relationship works (in fact, I still do). And most of the guides out there seem to assume that you have a base level of knowledge. I certainly didn’t.

So this is for anyone who wants a straightforward, step by step guide for transferring a website from one hosting provider to another – from one layman to another.

Please note that this guide assumes you are a ManageWP user (as it is the tool I used to make it so darned easy). If you are not a ManageWP user, you can sign up for a 14 day free trial now. If you want an alternative, you could check out the Duplicator Plugin. I have not personally tried it, but it comes highly recommended.

Step 1 – Add the Site to ManageWP and Back It Up

The first thing we need to do is take a backup of the site. In order to do this, we must first add the site to ManageWP. That’s a piece of cake – just follow these simple steps. Backing up your site isn’t any more difficult – just follow these steps.

Once you have done that, remove the website from ManageWP by hovering over the site and selecting the relevant option from the menu that appears:

You also need to upload the backup file you have just created somewhere. I say “somewhere” because it can literally be anywhere. I would recommend that you upload it to a location on your new hosting account. Make a note of the file’s URL, as we will need it later.

Step 2 – Redirect Nameservers

This is the point at which things can get a little confusing for the uninitiated, but the concept is actually pretty simple. In layman’s terms, nameservers tell domain names where to find content. If your website is www.awesomewidgets.com and the content for your website is hosted at Joe Bloggs’ Hosting Services, you should point your domain’s nameservers to “joebloggsnameserver”.

When transferring a site, you need to point your domain to the nameservers of the new hosting account. You may be wondering how on earth to do this. Whilst methods do vary, it is typically very simple.

Take Go Daddy for example. With this service, you can access your domains’ nameservers by clicking on “Domain Management”, selecting the appropriate domain name, then selecting the “Set Nameservers” option from the “Nameservers” drop down box:

Just enter the new nameservers into the boxes (you usually need two), and you’re golden. You’re probably wondering what your new nameservers are. They should be very easy to find – have a quick rummage through the documentation on your hosting provider’s website, or even just google “myhostingprovider nameservers”. My hosting provider is Bluehost, and their nameservers are NS1.BLUEHOST.COM and NS2.BLUEHOST.COM, so I entered the following:

Step 3 – Add Domain to New Hosting Account

Your new hosting provider isn’t going to be much good to you unless it realizes that you own the domain in question. So you need to “import” the domain into your hosting account.

Methods will vary across hosting accounts, but once you understand the process, it should be relatively straightforward to figure it out for yourself. Since my hosting provider is Bluehost, we’ll use it as the example here. From the CPanel, select “Addon Domains” from the Domains menu:

In the next screen, enter the domain name that you wish to add. If you have set your nameservers correctly, ownership will be verified:

Hit the “Add Domain” button at the bottom of the page, and you’re good to go. The domain’s nameservers are pointing in the right direction, and your hosting provider now recognizes that domain as an entity on your account.

Step 4 – Activate Your “New” Site

Because your new hosting provider does not yet have the website’s content in place, your domain name is now pointing to a vacant lot. Obviously, we need to remedy this.

In order to do so, the first step is to install WordPress to the site. Any hosting provider worth its salt has an automatic WordPress install option. If you are using a provider such as Bluehost or Hostgator, installing WordPress via the CPanel is extremely straightforward. Just select the WordPress install option from your Cpanel:

On the following page, select the domain from the drop down box, and hit “Complete”. Once the installation has completed, be sure to make a note of your login details.

If you enter your domain name into your browser, you will now see that it points to a brand new WordPress install.

Step 5 – Clone Content Onto Your “New” Site

All that is left to do now is to re-add the site and use ManageWP’s clone tool to upload the website’s content to the new location. You already know how to add sites to ManageWP, so just repeat the process you followed in step 1.

Once you have done that, select the “Install or Clone WordPress” option from the ManageWP sidebar. In the next screen, paste the URL of your backup file into the relevant field, and hit “Accept”:

In the next screen, select “Existing Site” as the destination. On the subsequent screen, enter your new WordPress install login details and select your domain (make sure it is the right one!). The cloning process will take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending upon the size of the backup file. But once it’s done, you can give yourself a pat on the back – the process is complete! The site should now have been completely transferred from one hosting provider to another.

Many Methods…

This is the method I used to transfer 7 sites over the weekend. There are many more methods, and I am sure some of them are more efficient. The above method does mean that the site will experience some downtime (but in reality, only for a few short minutes), and there are no doubt ways to get around that.

However, if the whole concept of transferring a site from one hosting provider to another is alien to you, then following the above steps will get the job done. It worked for me!

Tom Ewer on Google+