Questions after transfer to self-hosted

So before https://poeticaperture.com went to your WordPress.com site? And now it goes to the site on Bluehost?

Do you know if you changed Registrars (say from WordPress.com to Bluehost) or did you just change the information about the domain at your former (and current) registrar (e.g. GoDaddy)?

When you login to WordPress.com with the account you used to edit the old site, do you still see it listed (assuming, of course, you haven’t deleted it)? When you then go to its dashboard, and click Domains under Store, do you see an alternate address ending in wordpress.com?

Your answers to the above may affect my answer to #1, but my guess is that you’ll want the WP.com redirect.

2. Sounds like you have that right.

3. The blogs you follow are tied to your login account, not the old site so those shouldn’t change.

4. Did you do n export from WordPress.com and import to your new blog? Any chance you might have run the import more than once?

5. One big deal with self-hosted WordPress is that you have access to many more themes. It looks as if you may have just moved over the site that had been using the Twenty Ten theme, one of the defaults. Yes, a redesign of the sidebar is needed (that didn’t come over on the export/import), and it looks as if you’ve done that. You may want to schedule some time to browse the theme repository and see if a new look would be warranted.

6. As in #1, you should still see your old wordpress.com site when you login to WordPress.com — it’ll have a different address, but I’d expect that the history and stats are still there.

Hope that helps some — best wishes with your new environment!

This helps immensely. Thanks for taking the time to clarify some things.
I will just keep my .com account then so I can follow the blogs in my Reader there. I am using Bluehost now and my new blog is up and running fine. Yes, when I didn’t think the import was working, I did try to restart it a couple times. Oops.
Great idea to look at using a new theme. Thanks again!

One more question: my readers via email are getting 2 separate emails with my post. Why is this and what can I do about it??? Thanks!
Naomi
https://poeticaperture.com

Can you ask one of them to send you the headers of the two different messages?

Or are you “following” yourself? Do you get two copies? Can you look at the headers and see where the messages are coming from?

If both the old and the new site are shown in the headers, it’s possible that the WordPress.com folks (who are moving towards centralizing the stats functions) may have migrated your subscriptions.

I am following myself!
One is from: Poetic Aperture <[email protected]>
It says “new post on Poetic Aperture” and has my little flower symbol on the right.
For some reason the photos are not in the email. Also it arrived in my inbox two hours after it was published.

The other (the one I like) is from WordPress.com <[email protected]>
It arrived on time and looks perfect.
It says “new post on https://www.poeticaperture.com&#8221; and has the “W” symbol on the right.

Thanks so much for your help.
Do I need to delete one?

Since they are both coming from WordPress.com, something might have gotten confused in the site move. You may want to ask the WordPress.com support. But they may want the full headers.