Noob - Multiple Domains Question

I really see no reason to do that. Domains seem to be declining in value over time unless you have a really special name, in which case you should become a domainer or put a website on it. I believe you should focus on the site and the business. Extra domains can complicate the work flow.

Thats why I came to the pros. My thought process was, if I could get ohiomortgage, ohmortgage, ohioFHAmortgage, ohioVAmortgage, etc, etc. that it would help. Sounds like that may not be the case. Don't think I would have the time to set up individual sites for all those. (and FYI, I know that those domains aren't available, was just giving examples). Thanks for the input dvduval.

Don't ever put a business site on a "free" domain - it's unprofessional and you don't own it.

It is not clear: are you planning to make a WP blog with Catalyst (or any other) theme AND to move/import your existing content from blogger to the new site... ALL using the same domain where your blogspot blog is pointed now?

It doesn't (make sense).

You do NOT transfer domain to a theme - it works the other way around: you INSTALL a theme on a domain that is hosted somewhere.

It was a wrong step to start a business blog on blogger... and it was even worse to use your (I assume) preferred domain to redirect that blog to it.

Now you can NOT use that domain to experiment with anything.

You can start a WP blog on another domain - but again, why on a crappy free domain, instead of a real, good domain? You were planning to buy a lot of them, anyway... Buy one - later you can just redirect it to what will be your main site.

Install WP on the new domain.
Install/use whatever theme you want - it really doesn't matter, visitors usually don't care at all about our carefully picked theme (in plan English: they don't give a sh*t about the theme -- they come for the content!!!)

In WP there is a tool for 'importing' your blogger blog's content into WP.
Do it.

Check that everything is fine and working.

Take back your domain from blogger (hopefully, you can) and host it where your other domain is.

Delete the blogger blog.
---

From here you have 2 options:
a) to move the WP blog to your original domain + redirect the new domain to the blog
b) leave the newly made WP blog as you set it up on the new domain and redirect the old (ex-blogger) domain to it.

Again, I am new to all this, and I set it up with blogger because a) I was/am a noob and b) it seemed easier (guess there was a reason for that).

Maybe I'm explaining it wrong, or maybe I'm doing it wrong, but here is what my plan is/was:

1. Setup hosting account
2. Get free cu.cc domain
3. Setup Wordpress on hosting account (#1) with cu.cc domain (#2)
4. Once I have the wordpress theme tweaked to my liking export the theme, and import it to my good domain's wordpress setup.

or can I not export the Wordpress Theme, then import it to another hosting account? Obviously Wordpress is not the same as blogger, and maybe the way blogger works (exporting/importing themes) has me looking at this all wrong.

I don't want to switch my domain over to wordpress until I have the theme tweaked to my liking. Since it is for a professional service (mortgage broker) I can't imagine the visitors (although not very many as of yet) want to see the changes taking place little by little. Does that make sense? Is that not doable?

Dude,

You can get great hosting and a .com domain name for under $60 per year!

Quit going with the free stuff, it will not perform up to a professional standard and that is what you want for your business site anyway. You can setup up your blog on your local host on your computer and then you can build it and the upload it when your are comfortable with the look.

Joel

No, it is not doable - as you plan to do it.

Re: theme tweaking. If you just alter/edit the template files (and, eventually, image files) that are part of a theme - you can move it from one place to another; i.e. using FTP downloading/uploading the files.

However, most of the themes nowadays have lots of "options"... and you, probably, would use those to make it to your liking. Unfortunately, those options are stored in the MySQL database, so unless you take the database with you, too... all those 'tweaks' would be lost when you move the theme from one place to another. In other words, you would have to start the customization from scratch.

On the other hand, if you took the time to actually read (and digest) what I wrote in the post above, you could realize I have NEVER said to have a blog open to visitors while customizing/tweaking. I didn't give you all the technical details step by step... because I had no idea which way you plan to go.---

The main idea was/is: you can NOT do anything with that domain where your blogger stuff is as long as it is tied to blogger. Period.

You can develop/tweak/customize a WP theme is several ways:
- locally, on your own computer, using XAMPP or WAMP (I know, at this moment this is Greek to you)
- in a subfolder or a subdomain of an existing domain... provided you have full control of it on your own hosting - which is NOT the case with your bloggerized domain
- on a separate domain (or subfolder or subdomain of it) - see my post above

Forget your previous knowledge and bias related to blogger. They are useless when it comes to WP.

If you want to use WP, then you need to learn the way this thing works. And I just explained it to you above the main steps.
Now it's your turn.

Thanks for the insight Istvan Horvath.

Couple of follow up questions, with my domain currently pointing to the Blogger Blog, I assume that I will have to handle the customizing of the them locally (via XAMPP or WAMP). If I move that domain to the new web hosting (HostGator) then I wouldn't be able to have it point to the BLogger Blog while customizing the wordpress theme (via subdomain). Is that correct?

If that is the case, then my revised plan would be:

Using XAMPP or WAMP, customize the WP theme locally
Once I've got it to my liking, change the domain nameservers to Hostgator
Upload the customized theme via FTP
Done...

You mentioned that the tweaks to the theme would be lost because they are stored in the MySQL database, wouldn't that still be a problem customizing the theme locally?

Thanks again for the help and patience.

1. You can customize your theme locally or on another domain.
2. You are right: your existing domain (used with blogger) can NOT be in the same time pointed to your blogger blog AND hosted on your own hosting package with HG.
3. You always leave out from your plan the steps for export/import of the existing CONTENT. Is that a mistake or you really don't care about the content in your existing blog?
3a. The theme has NOTHING in it, i.e. no content: the entries are NOT stored in your theme - they are in the database (at least in WP). A WP theme is just an empty "clothing". The posts are not in the theme... Just saying because new users tend to be confused about where the content is stored. In WP there are 3 main parts:
- the blogging engine (i.e. the so-called WP core files)
- the content stored in a MySQL database
- the layout aka presentation aka theme aka design
You can take a content (technical term: the backup of a WP database) and 'dress it up" with 101 different themes - all on the same installation.
4. Re theme options in DB: it depends on the theme... as I said, most themes lately have too many options (they cater to the lowest end of users) and those are stored in the database. So, when moving, you either re-create what you learned on the test installation... or you learn how to export the DB with the setting. Either way it will be complicated (for you).

Here is my suggestion:
Get a domain and install WordPress and learn customizing themes by tweaking to death the default (2011) theme... unless you see how it works all the discussion here is (almost) useless.

It seems like you're in a fairly noncompetitive local market. I would just build pages on your site hitting more gen centric keyword terms and SEO those pages. You'll see more results that way since you are concentrating your SEO effort into 1 domain.

Thanks again for your patience. Trying to make sure I come up with a plan that is doable. If I setup WordPress with my free domain, hosted with HostGator, and once I get it customized to my liking, can't I just set the paid domain's nameservers to point to HostGator, and transfer my blogger content in, and be up and running? I was under the impression that if I setup Wordpress with Hostgator, even though initally done on the free domain, that I could just change the domain to my paid domain once I was done. If that is not doable, then here is my revised plan:

1. Leave blog at blogger for the time being (with my paid domain)
2. Take the free domain (cu.cc) that is hosted with HostGator and install Wordpress
3. Install Catalyst (WP theme), tweak to my liking
4. Use phpMyAdmin to export my database
5. Use FileZilla to backup my WordPress Content Directory
6. Changing the nameservers (currently pointing to blogger) for my paid domain to point to HostGator
7. Transferring my content from Blogger to Wordpress (using a guide I found online)

And then I should be up and running.

Ok, time to shoot holes in this, as I'm sure there are some.

Almost there...

What you wrote in the first paragraph - will NOT work. Not with WP, not with anything.
You are royally missing an important notion about having/hosting a website - The order of the operations are messed up in your paragraph (or in your head, LOL)
If you have a test WP on hostgator using one domain, that site will NEVER be on another domain... unless you transfer it; i./e. physically moving the files+database under the other domain.
No, pointing the DNS is not enough. (And for all the smarta$$ commenters that would say you can use a redirect - that's a stupid solution)

Next, going through your list:

1. Leave blog at blogger for the time being (with my paid domain)
2. Take the free domain (cu.cc) that is hosted with HostGator and install Wordpress
3. Install Catalyst (WP theme), tweak to my liking
+IMPORT BLOGGER CONTENT INTO THIS BLOG - WP has built-in tools for it!
4. Use phpMyAdmin to export my database
[which should have ALL your entries+theme+plugins]
5. Use FileZilla to backup my WordPress Content Directory
[you mean wp-content where the themes, plugins and upload are - YES!]
6. Changing the nameservers (currently pointing to blogger) for my paid domain to point to HostGator
+ INSTALLING A FRESH WP ON THIS DOMAIN AT HOSTGATOR
7. Transferring my content from Blogger to Wordpress (using a guide I found online)
[Disregard your #7: wrong place, wrong time ]
8. Upload the wp-content folder from the test blog
9. IMPORT the database with the posts/settings/etc. - Let it overwrite the empty, vanilla DB

Final note: the wp-content folder in the WP script is misleading
It will have all your uploaded themes, plugins and uploaded 'media', like images, video etc.
It will never have your entries, aka posts, Pages and comments! <-- in WP that's what we call "your content"...

Alright. Sounds like I have a plan then. I can't thank you enough for the guidance. Will report back once I have it up and running. (or probably sooner with problems that I'm sure I will run into).