I currently have a M.b.-hosted blog with a custom domain. I want to move to a self-hosted site with the same custom domain, where the new posts on the new site still appear on my M.b. profile. What’s the best way to do this?
The way I see right now is:
Export the current blog’s contents
Delete the blog
Create my other self-hosted site and set the custom domain to point to that instead
Verify that with M.b (by the way the link to the verification steps in the First steps doc is broken, not sure where that page moved).
Add the new self-hosted site’s feed to Microblog
But that would (I think) mean that all my old posts are gone (if someone goes to micro.blog/]). Right?
Is there a way to do this so nothing changes in what appears on my profile page?
Would this move also lead to me losing the list of accounts I follow, or for those who might follow me now to not follow me anymore?
If this is explained in a pre-existing help doc, I’d appreciate a link Thanks.
I think you have a good plan! I would just postpone the deletion of your Micro.blog hosted blog and do it as the last step. Here’s the web site verification page.
No, your timeline should be unaffected by this. If you want permalinks to continue to work, your new self-hosted blog should follow the same URL structure or have redirects in place. For example, here’s your latest timeline entry:
That entry will still remain once you delete your Micro.blog hosted blog. The entry links to the original post via the date. The original URL is https://bulletin.sherif.io/2022/10/10/finished-reading-listen.html. Your new self-hosted blog should have that same post on that URL or redirect to the new location. If not, people who see that post on the timeline and follow that link will end up on a 404 page.
You shouldn’t have to do anything except make sure your self-hosted blog continues to serve your blog posts on the same URL as before.
No, your blog and timeline/Micro.blog profile are separate things. You will follow the same people as before, and those following you will continue doing so. Again, the timeline is unaffected by where you decide to host your blog. It is just showing entries from one or more RSS feeds.
Strongly agree with @sod’s point not to delete the blog until everything else is working and tested, especially that photos were migrated correctly. If you’ve ever had a paying subscription, even when you cancel we’ll keep hosting the blog, so no rush to delete it.
Thank you Sven and Manton for the explanations. This seems pleasantly straightforward. @sod I appreciate all the detail you put in there, it’s cleared up a few things I didn’t even realize I was confused on.
@manton can you elaborate on what you mean by “photos were migrated correctly”? What migration is happening to the photos? Do you mean when I build the self-hosted site, that I migrate the old posts with posted photos?
Yes, I just mean when you move to the new site make sure you’ve tested that all the posts and photos are being served from the new location before deleting anything.
Thank you both for the advice. I’m almost there. I created the site and changed my DNS settings to point to it. I ran into an issue with images in the feed from that external site not showing up in the imported posts to M.b., so I created a separate topic.
Thanks.