Ok so you’ve been a user of WordPress.com for a while now. Things have been pretty nice so far, but you’ve come to a point where you’re ready to go beyond WordPress.com. You want to install plugins and customize your themes. You want to really start monetizing your site and be in full control. Well you are at the right place. While today’s article won’t discuss the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, we will take a look at a question that a lot of users have been asking us: how to move your existing WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. In this step by step tutorial, we will show you how to properly move your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. We will cover how to transfer all of your WordPress.com content to a WordPress.org site (yes this include images). We will also cover how to keep all of your search engine rankings along with how to redirect your existing users to your new site. Are you ready? Let’s start transferring your WordPress.com blog over to your new self-hosted site.
Things You Need Before You Start
You will need to have a domain name and a good web hosting company that knows WordPress. We highly recommend that you use Bluehost because they will give you a free domain and 50% off their hosting plan (special for WPBeginner users). Bluehost is also an officially recommended hosting provider of WordPress.
If your WordPress site already has a custom domain name, then don’t worry. We will cover that as well. Lastly, you will need access to your WordPress.com account, so you can easily move all of your posts, pages, images, comments, and other data over to your self-hosted WordPress site.
Before you get started with this migration tutorial, we want to let you know that we can migrate your site for FREE as part of our Free WordPress Blog setup service. This will be less hassle for you, but if you are someone who likes learning and doing things yourself, then follow our step by step tutorial below.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
Step 1: Exporting Data from WordPress.com
Sign in to your WordPress.com account and go to your blog’s Dashboard. Click on Export under Tools menu.
Clicking on the Export tool will take you to a new page where you will be asked to choose between Free or Guided Transfer.
Choose the Free option by clicking on Export. On the next screen you will be asked which data you want to export. Select “All Content” and press the Download Export File button. An XML file will be downloaded in your computer which will contain all of your posts, pages, images, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, navigation menus and other information.
Step 2: Setting up WordPress
Now that you have exported your WordPress.com data, the next step is to set up a fresh WordPress install on your web hosting. WordPress is very easy to install, and it only takes a few clicks. We have a step-by-step tutorial on how to install WordPress within 5 minutes. Once you have installed WordPress, it is time to import your content into your new self-hosted WordPress website.
Step 3: Importing Content into Self Hosted WordPress Site
To import your old content from WordPress.com to your new site, you need to click on Tools » Import option in your self-hosted WordPress.org dashboard.
Next click on WordPress. You will be asked to install the WordPress Importerplugin. Once you install it, activate and run the importer plugin. It will take you to a screen where you will be asked to upload your WordPress.com XML file that you downloaded in step 1 of this tutorial.
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