When I first started thinking about moving this blog to a new domain, I was really dreading it. I’m not that tech savvy, and in the past, moving my WordPress blogs have caused my sites to be down for several days. Since I sell two ebooks about plugins, Contact Form 7 and Subscribe2, on this site, I certainly didn’t want it to go down at all!
So, I started doing all the research ahead of time to ensure a smooth move. After purchasing Thesis and realizing it had quite a learning curve, I went to the DIY forum. I thought that migrating this blog to My WP Works, a Thesis site, might be harder than I thought.
Within a few minutes, pbarron on this thread, had answered my question. It was unbelievably easy! Just a few simple steps and all my blog posts and images were in place on the new domain.
To move the plugins, I went into my cpanel’s File Manager and copied and pasted them to the new domain. Many of them needed no setup at all, a few did. And some still don’t work. More on that later. I’m not sure how many of them I’ll need because Thesis has so many gadgets built into it.
My new site was up in seconds. I’m still amazed. There were a few glitches, like the permalinks. I couldn’t get them to work, but it was my own dizziness. I had set the permalink to custom: /%post-name%/. It should have been: /%postname%/. Once I did that, everything worked exactly as it should.
Don’t forget to go into Dashboard/Settings and change the General, Writing, Reading, and anything else that would be set up with a first-time installation. Otherwise, the information for the new blog will read for the previous one.
I’ve discovered my Contact Form 7 forms don’t work, but haven’t had time to investigate why. It seems that every Thesis page is a blog page with a place for comments. Maybe that’s why. I’ll get back to you on that.
My list of email subscribers in Subscribe2 didn’t move to the new domain, but there weren’t that many so I’ll transfer them manually. Any of you want to sign up? 
Bye for now, talk with you soon!
An AssistU trained virtual assistant who also writes ebooks to teach others how to use WordPress plugins.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Deborah,
Great post for your target audience. And, you are so correct. Thesis is not a “hit the ground running theme,” IF…you want a high level of customization. On the other had I think if you like the basic thesis layout, you can create a unique design with just a few clicks and selections within the dashboard. Obviously, I use thesis and think it is fantastic, the support forums are great and pbarron always has great hacks when you run into issues. But as you said, if you have a very specific or highly creative design in mind for thesis, you will need help, but that is easy to find.
P.S. Love your thesis theme!
You are so right, Thesis help is everywhere. And they are so kind to beginners!
When I purchased Thesis, I had no idea I would be learning more code than I ever dreamed of, and that’s okay. I’m actually glad for the exposure because I’d wanted to learn more code for quite a while.
Every time I want to make a change, and I have many in the works, I am amazed at the depth of this theme. I have worked with paid themes before, and they do not come anywhere near Thesis for customization ability.
I should correct myself and say, “Thesis is a great out-of-the-box theme, but it is much, much more”. I’ve learned a lot since I wrote that post.
Thanks for the comment about the theme. I just love being creative with websites. And, I like yours too.
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