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 like
learning and doing things themselves, then follow our step by step
tutorial below.
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. 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 Importer
plugin. 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.
Note: if your file size is larger than 2MB, then you have two
options. One is to ask your web hosting company to increase that limit
temporarily, so you can get on with the process. The other option would
be to split your file by using a WXR file splitter.
When you start importing, you will have the option of assigning your
old content to a current user or create a new user. You’ll also have the
option of importing your old attachments (you want to make sure that
you check this box to ensure that your images are imported).
If you took the optional step of exporting your old links/blogroll,
then you should take this time to import them. The process is pretty
much the same as above. Go to the Import page from the Tools tab, click
on Blogroll, install the plugin, choose the location of the exported
link/blogroll file and import it.
Step 4: Setting your WordPress.com blog to private
The final step would be to set your WordPress.com blog to private. If
you don’t want to redirect your old users to your new site, then go
ahead and follow this step. Go to the Reading page under Settings tab,
from your WordPress.com Dashboard and select the last option, “I would like my blog to be private, visible only to users I choose”.
Attention: If you have been writing for sometime,
and you have a loyal audience, then it does not make sense to leave them
hanging. Furthermore, if your blog has been out there for a while, then
chances are that it is indexed in Google and other search engines. You
should keep all the search engine juice and easily redirect your old
users to your new blog.
Step 5: Redirecting Visitors and Preserving SEO
Redirecting users to new location with a 301 header is the standard
solution to keep search rankings while moving a site from one location
to another. Since you don’t have access to .htaccess on WordPress.com,
you can not make any changes by yourself to retain search engine
rankings. However, WordPress.com offers a paid upgrade, Offsite
Redirect, which provide this functionality. Go to WordPress.com blog’s
dashboard and click on the Store menu item. The upgrade you are looking
for is called Offsite Redirect. At the time of writing this tutorial,
this update was reasonably priced at $13 USD per year. This upgrade
provides 301 redirect which allows your site’s visitors and search
engines to be automatically redirected to your new site.
Some of you will ask how long should I keep paying for this Offsite
redirect feature? The answer is for as long as you want to. However, we
personally think that 2 years would be enough time for your old users to
memorize your new domain name 
If you are changing domains, then another thing you want to do is
update all in post URLs. If you ever inter-linked your posts, then those
links have to be updated.
We hope that you found our guide on switching from WordPress.com to
self-hosted WordPress.org to be helpful. If you have any questions, then
please let us know by leaving a comment below.
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