5 Easy steps: Move your Site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

WordPress is one of the most-renowned blogging as well as content management platforms on the web. It comes with two different versions: WordPress.com (fully-hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted). Both are different in terms of functionality, pricing, and usability. If you are using WordPress.com for your blog and want to install plugins and themes to customize your site/blog, then you need to switch your blog to the WordPress.org.

It is because WordPress.com doesn’t offer you the flexibility to download or install custom themes or plugins on your website. Even, you can’t modify PHP code of your blog. So, if you want to monetize your blog, you need to move your blog to the WordPress.org.

In this post, we will explore the steps that will help you shift your WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org. So, keep on reading this tutorial.

Note: Before getting started with the conversion process, make sure that you have reliable hosting and a domain name.

Five steps to convert your WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org:

1.    Export Data from wordPress.com

The first step you need to do is to sign in to your WordPress.com account and access the dashboard of your blog. Now click on Export under the Tools menu. Here you will see a new page where you will get a new option to select between Free and Guided Transfer. After clicking on the free option by clicking export, you need to select the data (such as images, video, text or other content files) and click on the Download Export File button.

This particular XML file will encapsulate all the comments, tags, navigation, categories, menus, etc.

2.    Set up WordPress

The second step is all about installing WordPress on your web hosting. It is super-easy to install WordPress. After this, you can import all the data into your new self-hosted WP site/blog.

3.    Process of Importing Content to WordPress.org

Importing content to the new WordPress.org is as simple as clicking a button. You just need to click on the tools and import options into your WordPress.org blog/site’s dashboard. Now you need to click on the WordPress and install the WordPress Importer plugin.

The plugin will automatically help you upload your WordPress.com XML file that you’ve downloaded in the first step.

4.    Import your Blogroll Links

It is one of the crucial steps towards the completion of WordPress.com to WordPress.org conversion process.

If you’ve been utilizing the link feature in your .com blog to store links and blogroll, then you need to import them to your new org blog. The following are the essential steps to import or export blogroll links.

This is imported in OPML format. The WordPress.com links have OPML file that can be stored at the address, example:

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

The OPML file will be accessed right in your browser window that should be saved on your computer system. If you have created a backup of your WordPress.com links, you can easily import it into your WordPress. There is also a Link Manager Plugin that will help you add new menu item to your WordPress admin bar.

Now you can import and manage links and blogrolls on your WP site with ease.

5.    Redirect Visitors to WordPress.org

This is our last but one of the challenging steps. Here, you need to redirect your potential visitors to WordPress.org. Since you can’t have access to .htaccess on WordPress.com, you would find difficulties in making changes yourself. However, there is a paid upgrade, but Site Redirect is a great way to do so.

But you can only access the WordPress.com blog’s dashboard and save the menu items. The up gradation for this is known as Site Redirect. Therefore, this upgrade offers 301 redirects and enables visitors as well as search engine platforms to redirect your new site/blog.

Conclusion

These are the five essential steps that will help you migrate your blog/site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. Now, you can create, customize and monetize your site and generate more revenues.