Move WordPress.com Blog to WordPress.orgThis guide is for bloggers who plan to move their site from wordpress.com to a personal web domain using the self-hosted version of WordPress blogging software (wordpress.org).<\/p>\n
After the migration in complete, all your older blog links will continue to work and visitors will be redirected to the new site.<\/p>\n
Why move to WordPress.org?<\/strong><\/p>\n Like most other people, you started your first blog on WordPress.com because the service was free, you weren\u2019t required to have any technical skills and there were plenty of widgets, themes and plug-ins to help you quickly customize the blog.<\/p>\n Then, as your blog was getting popular, you found certain limitations. For instance, you could not monetize your blog traffic because WordPress prohibits the use of Google AdSense and other forms of advertising on free sites. There are thousands of beautiful themes for WordPress out there but your choices were limited. WordPress.com doesn\u2019t allow JavaScript so you couldn\u2019t use advanced tracking software like Google Analytics.<\/p>\n Other than Google ads and themes, a big reason why you may want to move from wordpress.com to a personal web domain is branding.<\/p>\n Step 1: Get a domain name and rent some server space<\/strong><\/p>\n Buy Domain from Google Apps To move your blog from WordPress.com to your own domain, you first need to have a web domain and some server space where you\u2019ll host that blog.<\/p>\n Though you may buy web domains at reasonable prices from site like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, I recommend Google Apps that costs $10 per year per domain. In return, you get all the Google goodies (like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.) but the best part of the deal is that your registration details will stay private \u2013 people won\u2019t be able to see your address or phone number from the whois record of your domain.<\/p>\n Web hosting services that you may want to consider for hosting your WordPress blog include Dreamhost, Rackspace, Media Temple, Blue Host and KnowHost. Digital Inspiration is\u00a0 hosted on Dreamhost.com PS and am fairly satisfied.<\/p>\n Step 2: Transfer posts from WordPress.com to WordPress.org<\/strong><\/p>\n Now that you have the basic infrastructure in place, let\u2019s setup a WordPress blog. All web hosting companies offer 1-click WordPress installation so this shouldn\u2019t be a tricky thing but make sure that you install WordPress software in a sub-directory \u2013 see instructions.<\/p>\n Fig A: Export WordPress.com Posts Fig B: Choose the WordPress System (bottom option) Fig C: Import old posts into WordPress.org<\/p>\n Next go to your old WordPress.com admin dashboard, click Tools \u2013> Export, and save the XML file to your local computer (fig. A). Now, in your new site\u2019s WordPress admin panel, click Tools \u2013> Import and then choose WordPress.\u00a0 Select the file you previously downloaded.\u00a0 On the next page, choose the authors, and check the box that says \u201cImport Attachments.\u201d<\/p>\n Everything from your old WordPress.com blog, including images and other attachments, will now be automatically imported into your new WordPress.org blog.<\/p>\n Step 3: Redirect visitors and search engines to your new blog<\/strong><\/p>\n Your new WordPress.org blog is a copy of your old WordPress.com site but search engines and human visitors will still land on your old site as they know nothing about the new one. Therefore we need a mechanism to redirect traffic coming to the old WordPress.com addresses to your new blog.<\/p>\n This is not that difficult either. First, login to your domain registrar (the company with whom you registered the domain). Then change your domain\u2019s DNS settings so that your domain points to WordPress.com servers.<\/p>\n Important: Make sure that you write down the existing nameserver addresses, as you will need them later on.<\/p>\n WordPress DNS Name Servers Add Domain to WordPress.com Blog<\/p>\n Once you have noted that information, change the DNS name servers to ns1.wordpress.com, ns2.wordpress.com and ns3.wordpress.com. The domain registrar, in some cases, may request you confirm the change in name-servers.<\/p>\n From your WordPress.com blog\u2019s dashboard, select Upgrades -> Domains.\u00a0 Enter the URL of your new domain, and click \u201cAdd Domain to blog.\u201d\u00a0 Then click \u201cMap Domain\u201d when asked to confirm that you wish to add this address to the blog. You cannot have www in the URLs and also don\u2019t put the trailing slash.<\/p>\n Domain mapping is a premium service and will cost you $10 per year. You can pay with either PayPal or a credit card of your choice.<\/p>\n Once this is completed, you need to set your personal domain (abc.com) as the primary address for the WordPress.com blog. In your WordPress.com admin panel, go back to Upgrades and select Domains. Select the checkbox for the domain you just added and click Update Primary Domain.<\/p>\n Update Primary Domain in WordPress<\/p>\n Step 4: Reverse the DNS Nameserver changes<\/strong><\/p>\n Change your web domain\u2019s DNS servers back to the original nameserver settings. Save the changes, wait for a while and now both your personal web domain (abc.com) and the old WordPress blog (abc.wordpress.com) will take you to the new site.<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. Incoming links, search engine traffic, RSS readers, and everything else will get redirected to your new site. You will however have to renew the domain mapping upgrade from WordPress.com every year if you wish to keep your WordPress.com address redirecting* to your new site.<\/p>\n [*] WordPress.com uses a 302 redirect with domain mapping which means a \u201ctemporary redirect\u201d and therefore search engine bots will continue to index your old site in addition to the new one.<\/p>\n [**] If your blog is hosted on Blogger, read this tutorial to migrate from blogspot to your own down using WordPress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Move WordPress.com Blog to WordPress.orgThis guide is for bloggers who plan to move their site from wordpress.com to a personal web domain using the self-hosted version of WordPress blogging software (wordpress.org).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17,15,14,5,4],"tags":[350,349,725],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-blogging","category-tips-n-tricks","category-tools","category-web-development","category-wordpress","category-xhtml-coding","tag-migrate-wordpress","tag-migrate-your-blog-from-wordpress-com-to-a-personal-domain","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}