Easy Steps To Learn for Shifting Your WordPress.com Blog to WordPress.org 

Easy Steps To Learn for Shifting Your WordPress.com Blog to WordPress.org

WordPress is probably one of the coolest pieces of software around, simple to install and its quite easy to get the hang of. However, while having our first encounter with WordPress, most of us kick start our blogging endeavors on WordPress.com simply because it’s available free of cost and we don’t need to be a technical geek to understand its details. Also there is a reliable collection of widgets, themes, and plugins available to help you getting started with your website.

But as your website gains momentum, you eventually feel the desire of moving beyond WordPress.com. You come to a point where you are required to install more plugins, themes, and customize your blog to make it in-tune with the growing demand. You realize the monetization capabilities of your website and thus start demanding more control over its functioning. For that reason, it comes quite natural for the users of WordPress.com to take the leap to the self-hosted WordPress.org.

Migrating from WordPress.com to .org might be difficult for some users especially for those who have a lot of content and multimedia already hosted on WordPress.com. To overcome this complexity, I have prepared a tutorial which talks about the entire process of switching WordPress.com to .org. The tutorial is easy to understand and will surely help you to make the big switch.

1. Getting Your WordPress.com Blog Ready

Before you actually proceed towards the migration process, make sure you do the following things.

• Get rid of all ‘Pending’ and ‘Spam’ comments
• Purchase a domain name (or redirect your Name Server if you already own a domain name)
• Find a reliable host such as Blue Host, Rackspace, Dreamhost and more.
• Download and install WordPress software.

These are some basic points you should know before exporting your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. Once you are done with them, you can move on to the next step.

2. Exporting Data From WordPress.com

A blog contains variety of elements, namely text, titles, categories, comments, and the blog itself. All of them can be together put into the WordPress.com export file, which can be exported into your WordPress.org blog.

Exporting the data is a very simple process, all you need just login to your WordPress.com account and then go to your dashboard. Now, click on Export under ‘Tools’ menu.

Clicking on the export tool, you’ll be navigated to another page where will be getting two options Free or Guided Transfer. Select the Free option by clicking on Export. Now, on the next screen, you’ll be asked about the data you intend to export. Choose “All Content” and proceed to download Export File button. An XML will be downloaded in your system. This is the file which contains all your posts, pages, comments, images, custom fields, tags, navigation and other relevant information.

3. Importing The File to WordPress.org

Once you are done with exporting the data, next you need to proceed on to set up a fresh WordPress install on your web hosting. It’s a very simple process, and after its completion you can directly move on to import the data to your newly created WordPress.org website.

4. Importing Data to WordPress.org

Now that you have the exported file, it’s time to import the data into the new self-hosted WordPress.org. To import the content, click on Tools

Now, you’ll be provided with a list of all the format you want to import. Select the option and use Choose File to download the export file. To have a successful importing process, make sure that the imported data should be configured to suit your needs, to make it happen simply click on Upload File and Import.

Next, you’ll need to assign the author name for the imported posts, otherwise you can take the one from the old blog. Means, it’s completely up to you whether you want to continue using the current user or want to create a new one.

When start importing, you’ll find the Download and Import File check box. The checkbox will allow you to import your old attachments (while doing so make sure that your images are also imported). Once done, click on ‘Submit’. Depending upon the size of the imported file, it may take a bit of time to complete the process but it shouldn’t be too long to wait. Once the process is complete, go to the Posts and Pages screens to make sure whether everything have been imported successfully.

5. Redirecting Visitors and Search Engines

Your new website is simply a copy of your old WordPress.com, however; your visitors and search engines will land on the old one only as they are completely unaware of the changes made. Therefore we need to implement a mechanism that allows you redirect the traffic coming from the old website.

Redirecting your visitors and SEO is a very simple process. For this, you can make use of 301 header, which is recommended as a standard solution to preserve your search engine ranking while moving a website from one domain to another. Since, WordPress.com does not provide an access to the .htaccess file, you cannot make any changes to maintain SEO. But, you have a paid solution called Offsite Redirect, which can help you accomplish this task.

To do this, go to WordPress dashboard and select the Store menu item. This upgrade is known as Offsite Redirect, allowing you to redirect your site’s visitors and search engines to the newly created website.

All said and done, hopefully you have gained a thorough understanding of the process of moving your WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org. You can now enjoy complete control on your website, so keep blogging

Author Bio- Sarah Parker is a WordPress developer by profession, working for Designs2HTML Ltd.. Give your website an appealing look with PSD to wordpress theme conversion and maximize the profits by adding new features in the website.