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I emailed him to offer my services.

wordpress.com is saas - a hosting platform that uses a special version of the software that you can download from wordpress.org. It’s run in multisite mode aka a network of wordress websites.

wordpress.org is just the software repository for the wordpress software/php script, wordpress themes and wordpress plugins. It also has the support forums.

Being that he made the poor decision to use wordpress.com for hosting, it’s not super easy. They don’t allow you to use a migration plugin nor can you get access to the database via phpmyadmin. You have to use the wordpress export/import feature to export and then import an xml file. Then after importing, hope the import script can pull all the images over AND connect them to the posts.

The import script is going to be looking for images on https://theconservativetreehouse.com/(eg https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/a-prayer-for-times-like-these.jpg) so he won’t be able to use https://theconservativetreehouse.com/ for the new site right off the bat because you can’t use the same domain name in two places. To use https://theconservativetreehouse.com/ for the final site, a different domain name can be used temporarily and go through the export/import process twice. Once from CTH to temp domain and again from temp domain to CTH once the domain is moved. Makes it a pita and adds down time.

If he had simply used wordpress.org software as a self hosted site, a migration plugin could be used or done it manually by downloading files and database from the old server and re-uploading to a new server which would make an exact duplicate of the site. He’ll have to reinstall any plugins used and there may be some plugins and features only available on a wordpress.com hosted site. Might be a few styling issues to contend with.

It looks like CTH runs the Twenty-Ten theme which is good because that’s not strictly a wordpress.com theme. It can be downloaded from wordpress.org/themes and used on a self hosted site. He may have customized the style but the css is easy to get as you can pull that up in a browser. view-source:https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/twentyten/style.css

On a good note, all his commenters will still be able to log in with their wordpress.com account as that still works with wordpress.org wp software when self hosted.

I’ve been moving away from using wordpress because reading some of the support people’s posts, I can tell their political persuasion, left leaning. One I’ve been using is b2evolution created by a Frenchman no less but a seemingly conservative one. He called the EU cookie consent law, stupid shit. Both wordpress and b2evo were forked from a common predecessor. (b2/cafelog, more commonly known as b2 or cafelog)

For minimal sites, I’m using Couch CMS which is smaller in size.