Welcome to Episode 1 of the Pint Sized Podcast
In this episode, I talk about website portability and the 4 big website platforms out there that you might be familiar with.
Links in this episode:
WordPress.com – the hosted solution for WordPress
WordPress.org – where you can download WordPress, plugins, and themes for self hosted users
Namecheap.com – Where I register my domain names. They are cheap, they don’t do a lot of upsell. Pint Sized Recommended!
GoDaddy.com – Another domain registrar, but there’s a bit too much upsell for my taste.
Siteground.com – Website hosting that I am currently using. Pint Sized Recommended!
Transcript of this episode
(pretty close to what I said but without the ums, ahs, and whatever noise the Executive Producers are making in the background)
Hi there and welcome to the FIRST episode of the pint sized podcast where we answer your questions on wordpress and websites. I’m your host Kelli Wise of Pint Sized Sites.
That’s right, this is the Pint Sized Podcast. It used to be the WordPress Help Twins, but my twin sister Leslie (Stewart) has other commitments that won’t leave her with the time to keep podcasting. Rest assured that the producers, Sunny and Scout, and I all miss her and wish her well (and good fortune!).
I’ll be keeping this podcast centered on WordPress, but there will be loads of general website goodness, too. That’s because wordpress is a means to a website and not the end goal for most of you.
I know that most of you are small business owners who are using your website to attract the right kind of clients, give them the information they need, and basically make money. That’s what I use my website for.
I’d like you to think of your website as an employee. Now, the best things about the website employee is: it will never leave a mess in the break room and it won’t waste time surfing porn at the office. The worst thing about the website employee is: it’s not very proactive. You have to make it work. That means that you are going to have to invest time in your website.
Like any employee, your website needs to be pulling it’s own weight. So, what does this have to do with WordPress? Everything, actually.
When I started designing websites for clients, I was using regular old html and css files. In order to edit these sites, I would need a text editor and a FTP program to upload the new files. Clients had to contact me, send me their new text and photos, wait for me to make the changes, send me any tweaks they wanted done, and then wait for me to make the changes.
It was tedious and expensive for them. It was tedious and not all that interesting for me. Yes, it was income, but, strangely, I would rather forgo that income to empower clients to make those edits and updates themselves.
And that’s where WordPress comes in. When I discovered WordPress so many years ago, it allowed me to create websites for my clients that they could edit. I could take care of the setup and design and they could blog, change their hours, update their menu of services, and fix their own typos.
There are other platforms you can build your website on. The most common ones now are Wix, Weebly and Squarespace. There are pros and cons to each of them but the one thing you should insist on is website portability. Can you move your website to another host easily or are you locked in?
WordPress, both the dot com and dot org versions, are very portable. (dot org is what I call a self hosted version, meaning the WordPress software is installed on a web host you pay for, like Siteground or Blue Host or GoDaddy). I’ve moved dot com sites to self hosted sites several times for various clients. The only hiccups I’ve ever had were with images but they were fairly minor.
Weebly can be self hosted on some webhosts (not GoDaddy) or hosted by Weebly. Wix and Squarespace must be hosted with those companies. That means that a website created on Wix or Squarespace will always have to be on those services. Exporting them to something like WordPress or Joomla or Weebly will be impossible to do completely. So consider what would happen if the company shut down or went out of business.
Moving a Weebly site from Weebly to your own hosting is not simple. You can archive a lot of the site content, but if you’ve blogged, the posts won’t transfer. You’ll have to copy and paste them into a document somewhere and republish them on your new site. You’ll lose a lot of data and a lot of the work will be manual copying, but at least it can be done.
Wix and SquareSpace can’t be moved to your own hosting. They rely entirely on the Wix and Squarepace platforms. So you’re stuck. Moving to a new host will require rebuilding the website from scratch.
Moving from WordPress.com to your own hosting is pretty simple. You can export the content, pages, posts and media, and import it to your new hosting. You might have to do some cleanup; I’ve found that a few photos might not transfer over properly, but the rest of the content transfers over pretty easily.
So, the big conclusion here is: Make sure you know what the limitations are for the website solution you choose. Make sure your website is portable because it is likely that you will change hosts in the lifetime of your website. WordPress is still my top pick with Weebly coming in a distant second. I can’t recommend either Wix or SquareSpace for a business owner.
That’s all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you have questions or comments, be sure to visit the website at
Pint sized sites dot com / Podcast for links to this episode. You’ll also find show notes with all the links mentioned here and you’ll find all of the earlier episodes, too.
If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to have you pop on over to iTunes or Stitcher or your podcast service of choice and leave a review. 5 stars would be awesome, but hey, no pressure, ok? Leaving a review makes it easier for other folks out there to find this program.
If you have a question you would like answered, go to Pint Sized Sites dot com and look in the top menu for “ask a question”. Fill out the form and leave your name, if you are so inclined, and I’ll find an answer to your question in a future episode.
Thanks again for listening! Until next time!
Affiliate disclosure – Yes, I have a couple of affiliate links in here. I only do that for products I personally use and recommend. Click on them or don’t – it’s entirely up to you. But the affiliate income helps pay for the podcast hosting, so it would be appreciated.
