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Migrating a wordpress.com site to self hosted

I may have to migrate a website out of a paid wordpress.com hosted domain onto a real hosting account. Does wpmudev.org have a checklist / tutorial on that, or is it just as simple as it should be by using the export tool and then importing it into the new installation?

  • Michelle Shull

    Hello, xlnd!

    This guide is actually pretty great: http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/, it explains the whole process.

    Yes, you're correct. Moving from .com to .org is simply a matter of setting up WordPress on your destination site, exporting your data from your .com site, then importing it to the destination. It should go without a hitch. It may take a while, depending on how much content you have to move, and you may have some clean up to do with widgets/menus after the site is moved, but it should be fairly painless for you.

    Hope this helps!

  • Michelle Shull

    Hi xlnd,

    The main point I have to watch is that wordpress.com uses their own stats plugin that mimics analytics. The person I'm helping wants to keep it exactly the same because they are used to it, so need to make sure their existing stats data and the plugin itself transfer over nice and smooth so he can't tell the difference.

    Check out the JetPack plugin. It was designed to bring many of the features of .com to .org, so on the off chance things aren't perfect, you'll be able to almost fully recreate the .com experience with Jetpack, including WordPress.com stats.

    & there's no files outside the wordpress database to consider right? Being on wordpress.com I don't think they let you have FTP access to put things in different places to be left behind?

    Right, you definitely will not have FTP access on .com, unless it's a VIP account. As I understand it, .com blogs don't let members install custom plugins or themes, correct?

    Isn't there a way to get all the widgets to remain intact and keep their settings/data? I ran into that before where I lost all widget data and it was a pain... I seem to remember getting a link from another staff member here for a plugin for saving widgets...?

    There are plugins that allow this for self-hosted WordPress, but I didn't think .com users were allowed to install plugins?

    Let me know if this helps!

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