How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

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. 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. 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.

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 aWXR 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).

Step 4: Importing Your Blogroll Links

If you had been using the Links feature on your WordPress.com blog to store blogroll or other links, then you need to follow these instructions to export and import them. Users who were not using this feature can skip to Step 5.

Blogroll links are exported in OPML format. It is an XML format which allows you to export and import your links and link categories. Your WordPress.com links have an OPML file located at an address like this:

http://example.wordpress.com/wp-links-opml.php

Replace example with your WordPress.com blog’s subdomain. If you are using a custom domain with your WordPress.com blog then your OPML file can be accessed by visiting a URL like this:

http://www.example.com/wp-links-opml.php

Your OPML file will open in your browser window and you need to save it to your desktop. Press CTRL+S (Command+S on Mac) to save the file on your computer.

Now that you have a backup of your WordPress.com links, the next step is to import them into WordPress. However, self hosted WordPress does not have a link manager enabled by default.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Link Manager plugin. The plugin’s page says that it hasn’t been updated in last two years. That’s because it didn’t need updating and you can confidently install this plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item in your WordPress admin bar labeled ‘Links’.

Your WordPress site is now capable of managing links and blogrolls and you can safely import them. Visit Tools » Import and click on Blogroll to install the OPML importer.

Upon installation you will be redirected to the importer. Where you need to upload the OPML file you saved earlier and click on import OPML file button.

WordPress will now import your links and link categories from the OPML file. You will be able to see the progress and on completion you will see the success message.

Step 5: 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 6: 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, Site Redirect, which provides this functionality.

Go to WordPress.com blog’s dashboard and click on the Store menu item. The upgrade you are looking for is called Site 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.