WordPress: Upgrading

~ beetleypete

**Just to make it clear, this is not sponsored by WP, and I get nothing for providing this information**

I have long thought about upgrading my blog to a ‘Premium’ plan. At £7 a month, it is not that expensive, but I was not sure I would really need all the extras provided by the upgrade, short of the large increase in storage space for photos, from 3 GB to 13 GB. However, I have just discovered that they now offer a ‘Personal’ plan, a limited upgrade with twice the amount of space (6 GB) for only £3 a month. I should also soon become beetleypete.com, losing the ‘wordpress’ from the site address.

So I took the plunge, and tried it for one year. I now have plenty of space for adding more photos this year, and you should no longer see any advertisements on beetleypete. I am posting this for information, in case anyone didn’t know about this lower priced upgrade. You have to pay for 12 months in advance, by credit card or Paypal. But £36 is the price of a decent meal in a restaurant these days, so not much to find for a hobby that takes up as much of my time as blogging does.

I am also in the process of getting the photos copied from the hard drive on my old Dell laptop, which can no longer be charged up. If that works out, then I should have a lot more photos to post on this blog.

Old photos, and a modest upgrade, something new for the new year. 🙂

72 thoughts on “WordPress: Upgrading”

    1. There is a fixed price for the ‘Personal’ plan, Kathy. They have been running a 20% discount on all plans for a while, but it finished last week. No doubt it will return! 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  3. Hi there!!
    I’ve been scrolling through and reading a few of your blogs this morning!! I LOVE how straightforward you are ♥️ Happy Blogging!! You give great tips and I appreciate those. Reading this particular post made me think about lastnight when I cancelled my Premium plan on here all together. I decided to go self hosted. I’m still using WordPress, just with a different hosting service this time if that makes sense. I’m still getting use to it but so far … I LOVE IT !! Feel free to stop by anytime!!
    https://jessierenea.com/

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    1. Thanks for reading posts, and leaving the kind comments, Jessie. I appreciate you taking your time. Self-hosting can be cheaper, and is obviously more flexible, but I have limited computer skills, and like the ‘comfort blanket’ provided by a blogging platform. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. Lol it’s definitely a lot more work to it because your working behind the scenes trying to put together EVERY little thing for your site !! I’ll be honest, I was expecting that and it’s been a challenge!! 😂😂 I finally figured out how to add the “follow” and “subscribe” buttons lastnight … took me three days to figure it out because the YouTube videos just weren’t helping me. I’m really looking forward to not having all of the limitations though but WordPress in itself is GREAT. I loved getting started here. Awesome platform!

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  5. Way to go, Pete. You get what you pay for. I do the premium plan. The storage and also being able to live chat with a Happiness Engineer is worth the money. I think there is far more available to me than I realize.

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  9. Makes sense to me! I’m looking forward to more pictures from you! 🙂 I take lots of pictures so I upgraded to Premium soon after I started blogging. I saw the Personal plan when it came out and considered it, but decided to stay with the larger media allotment. I’m wondering about whether the .com domain name (without wordpress.com) will stay included in the price? I got an email from WP last year that indicated it would no longer be included in my plan, which bugged me, was going to cost an extra $26 per year. Have you heard anything about that? Maybe just a ploy to get me to renew early (it worked.)

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    1. I don’t know about the domain name price increase, but it sounds like the sort of thing they would do. If this plan stays stable, I may consider upgrading to premium in 2020. I started reducing my file sizes by 50% in 2017, and that saved a huge amount of space.
      I hope to take more photos when the weather improves, and also get some from my old laptop hard drive too.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. I waited six years, Kerin. I was never sure that I needed the ‘Premium’ upgrade, but the cheaper ‘Personal’ plan seemed like very good value. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  13. My Universe blog is a premium one but my other 2 are just freebies, I don’t need a lot of space as I can embed my Photo’s from the smugmug site I host them on, but if I do get close to the limit I’ll be considering the plan!

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    1. I got an email from Flickr recently. They are going to charge for photo storage soon, above a certain limit. I hope that Smugmug doesn’t follow suit. 🙂
      (I have nothing on Flickr, I only joined to look at other people’s photos)
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. I used to have a subscription to flickr but gave up ages ago, rarely post on there, and it’s still free if you have 100 pictures, doubt I’ll reach that anytime soon. I do have a pro smugmug account as opposed to the free one, but it’s worth it for me.

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    1. Thanks, Theo. I finally realised that I didn’t know why I was waiting so long to upgrade. It’s not as if I am still 40 years old. And I don’t spend such a small amount of money on anything else. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. There are some great deals with companies that offer self-hosting, with full tech support. I was tempted by one that offered the first year for just £1, (£40 a year after that) but I worried about getting it connected to the WP community that we have built up. As long as no one company dominates the blogging market, I am guessing prices will remain ‘reasonable’.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. You also get the choice of domain name, email help, live support, as well as the removal of the ads.
      I wanted the extra 3 GB of space, but also like to have no ads. Some followers thought I got paid for having them. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

      Liked by 1 person

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  17. I bought premium several years ago. I pay just under 100 dollars a year, every year. I like the freedom to be creative with my template, the color scheme, the unlimited space, no ads, etc. It’s a luxury item, but since I use it all the time, every day, it is worth the price to me.

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    1. Since I started reducing file sizes by 50%, my use of space has slowed down, GP. But I like to have that ‘buffer’, and think this is a very reasonable amount. It works out significantly cheaper than buying a daily newspaper every day, or a coffee in a place like Starbucks.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  19. Thanks for sharing the information. I did this a year ago. I thought £36 was good value and I got a shorter blog name ; bramblegarden.com instead of having WordPress in the name. It’s always difficult to decide what is worth doing. But I decided to take a risk at £36. All the best. Karen

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  20. The OH ‘bought’ space several years ago as he wanted to put music files (MP3) on his blog – it costs him £17 a year. Sadly WP took away that option so it is good to see they have brought it back albeit at a more expensive amount. As you say, what can you buy for £3 a month? That’s more than the magazine I buy! I’m OK for space on my Cornish blog, but the other two are probably getting close to the limit.

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    1. Thanks, WS. I don’t think £3 a month is expensive, for twice as much space. The price of a ‘designer coffee’. 🙂 Here’s a very big link!
      https://wordpress.com/personal/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&keyword=%20wordpress%20%20plans&creative=263020595218&campaignid=647897976&adgroupid=58186199651&matchtype=b&device=c&network=g&sgmt=gb&utm_source=adwords&utm_campaign=Google_WPcom_Search_Brand_Desktop_UK_en&utm_medium=cpc&keyword=%20wordpress%20%20plans&creative=263020595218&campaignid=647897976&adgroupid=58186199651&matchtype=b&device=c&network=g&targetid=kwd-75937339784&locationid=9044864&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-f-Hu9j-3wIVSrftCh0_uA1YEAAYASACEgJ3G_D_BwE
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  25. Self hosting is cheaper, but being hosted with WordPress helps take away a lot of the headaches that can ensue. Like mentioned above, the only real issue that might confront me is space. But that’ll take a couple of years to occur. The Business plan offers unlimited space – I’d definitely go self hosting than pay that amount.

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    1. I don’t really understand computers enough to go self-hosting. But there are some good website deals out there, and I agree they are cheaper too. As you say, using the WP upgrades makes life easier. And I am all for making life easier. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  26. I think once you upgrade it, it will stay as a premium account Pete and you will pay every year. I have two friends who gave up blogging because they have used up their limits in photos even with a premium acct. To maintain the blog, they have to pay the premium every year. But I guess,it is not a problem with you, you could very well afford it and you have a larger space for photos. Hope to see more of Ollie 🙂

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    1. I have only upgraded to ‘Personal’, Arlene. It’s not too much to pay. If I decide not to carry on, I will just drop back to a free account, as long as I have enough space left in my allowance. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

      Liked by 1 person

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