Moving to WordPress MU

wp-mu-logoOver the years I’ve accumulated several hosting accounts and a bunch of domain names. Each time I needed a new website, I would register the name, get a GoDaddy hosting account and throw WordPress on it. Before the migration I had 3 hosting accounts and 10 domain names.  Over the weekend (Oct 10, 2009) I collapsed all my hosting accounts and domains to a single account tied to celestri.org.

I was paying around USD 50 a year for each hosting account, so in the migration I was able to get rid of 2 hosting accounts. However, in the move I switched to WordPress Multi User (WPMU) and that required a couple of changes to my hosting account which run about USD 100 a year.  So I’m really only saving USD 50 a year but the headache of maintaining 3 websites is gone.  All of them reside on the same WPMU platform.

The biggest benefit is maintaining only one website and backing up the files for it.  As a side benefit, I can now build out a mock website in an hour or so, whereas before it was a big production.

Before:
celestri.org – GoDaddy account
Altamount.com – GoDaddy account
CADzoo.com – GoDaddy account
arQuant.com – dummy GoDaddy page
BombayBling.com – dummy GoDaddy page
jhavara.com – dummy GoDaddy page
jhune.com – dummy GoDaddy page
loksena.org – dummy GoDaddy page
napeansea.com – dummy GoDaddy page
nepeansea.com – dummy GoDaddy page

After:
Everyone single one of the above domains resides on celestri.org and has a proper website associated with it. It was all possible through the magic of WPMU…it really is one of the best pieces of open source software out there.