WordPress > Setup

6 minute read

How to move your website from wordpress.com to wordpress.org

Now a days, some of customers are hosted with WordPress.com and some are self-hosted their own website with WordPress.org.

If you are beginner and you want to design your website then WordPress.com is better platform to get started. But at some point you think to do something beyond WordPress.com because you are having only limited access to your website.

How to move blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

Why Should I move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

I am pointing out below reasons towards your doubt regarding WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

There may be a few reasons why do you think to do so. I am here listing the reasons why should you move from your WordPress.com to WordPress.org:

1) Limited Features Allowed: You cannot maximize your website’s design, style etc . with WordPress.com as they are your host and they just allow you advance features for your website.

2) Less Control: Your website under their control and they can change any theme without informing you if they think the current theme is not compatible with their terms.

3) Costly: WordPress.com charge $13 USD annually to allow to link your domain and you can point your domain by updating their name-servers.

4) Downtime Anytime: As your website is under control of WordPress.com and if they notice something illegal done by you with your blog then they can put your blog on hold and you may face downtime issue. Hence, your blog will get offline.

5) Inclusive of Ads: Your website will showing ads of WordPress.com and you cannot remove them until you cannot pay for that as there are $29 approx. to remove their ads from your blog.

You may be worrying about the budget. Hey, chill you have to continue your reading and you will be smile.

Benefits of WordPress.org over WordPress.com

There are several benefits that make you decide that yes, I should host my own site:

1) Install your Desired Plugins: If you want to install Plugins to add more functionality to your website / blog then you can install them once you host your website by yourself whereas WordPress.com never offers to install Plugins to your website.

2) Full Control: You are having your own data and full control on your self-hosted website and you can do a lot more things to customize, adding styles to your website.

3) Update, Customize Themes: Once you host your website by yourself you can install, customize and upload a themes by adding them styles etc. from themes directory of your choices.

4) Source of Revenue: You can earn money by selling ads and by referring to others via joining our Affiliate Program on our website rather to stay with WordPress.com.

Well, I am hoping you have been decided whether to stay with WordPress.com or move beyond WordPress.com to self-host your website.

If you really want to move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (self-hosted) website then have a look at below requirements:

Requirements for moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org:

The major requirements that you should be meet before moving from WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org are listed below:

1) Access to Your WordPress.com platform: The very first requirement that you should have access to your WordPress.com Blog so that you can easily move / migrate your whole contents, Posts, Images, comments etc to WordPress.org.

2) Custom Domain and Hosting: You need to have Custom Domain and Hosting where you want to migrate your whole contents of WordPress.com blog or you can buy New Domain and Hosting from a good company with WordPress setup and support.

I highly recommend you to choose DomainKing.NG the good Hosting provider with great WordPress support. You can install WordPress CMS Software just in 1-click from Softaculous application within 5 minutes in cPanel.

Now are you ready ? Well, let’s start the things how it should be done.

Steps to move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

You only need to do a few below things to move your WordPress.com to your self hosted website (WordPress.org).

Step 1) Generate the XML [Export File] from WordPress.com Admin Panel.

You can easily generate the XML file from your WordPress.com to migrate your blog to your self-hosted WordPress.

For generating the XML file you need to follow the below mentioned steps:

1) First of all you need to login to your WordPress.com account.

2) After login to your WordPress.com, you need to access your dashboard by clicking on “My Sites” on the top of the navigation bar.

Click on My Sites

3) On the left side of navigation bar, you need to scroll down to the bottom and click on Settings.

Click on Settings

4) Now you need to click on General and then scroll down to Site Tool section as shown in below screenshot.

5) In Site Tools section, you need to click on Export as shown in the below screenshot.

Site tool section in WordPress.com

6) To export your all content you need to click on Export All button.

Click on Export All button

7) After clicking the Export All button, the XML file will be generated and you can download it from same page as shown in below screenshot.

Download XML File

Step 2) Install WordPress on your hosting account.

Once done with generating the XML file from your WordPress.com account, now you need to import that file to your self hosted WordPress.

Before starting the importing process please make sure WordPress is installed in your hosting account and you should be able to access your selfhosted WordPress admin panel.

If WordPress is not installed on your hosting account then you can easily install WordPress on your hosting account by taking help from our guide.

How to install WordPress

If you are not able to install WordPress yourself then you can contact with our support team or chat support team at our website. They will help you to install WordPress in your hosting account.

Once WordPress has been installed then you can login to your self hosted WordPress to start the migration process as explained in step 3.

Step 3) Import the XML file in your self-hosted WordPress to migrate content

You can easily import your WordPress.com blog to self hosted WordPress by following the below under mentioned steps:

1) First of all you need to login to your self hosted WordPress admin panel.

2) On the left side of navigation bar, you need to navigate to Tools>Import.

tools import Import” style=”border:1px solid #000″>

3) Now in Import page, you need to click on Install Now under WordPress option as shown in below screenshot.

Click on Install Now button

4) After installing the importer, you need to click on Run Importer to start the migration process.

Click on Run Importor

5) Now in Import WordPress page, you need to select the XML option and then click Upload File and Import button to start the migration process.

Click on Upload File and Import Button

6) Once migration process has been completed, you need to assign author in same page. You can assign your WordPress existing user as author.

7) After assigning the author you need to check the option Download and Import File attachments and click on Submit button.

Step 4) Install your desired WordPress theme

Once the WordPress.com blog has been migrated properly, you can install any theme from WordPress library which will give the attractive look to your website.

You can search any theme from WordPress library and install theme as per the category of your website.

For Example: If your website is related to any sport like football then you can search theme related to sports.

If you are facing any issue while migrating and installing theme then you can contact us by raising a support ticket or you can contact with our live chat support team at our website.

Conclusion:

I hope the above article is so helpful for you in moving your WordPress.com website to your own self hosted website.

Now you can do a lot of things with your self-hosted website to give it awesome look beyond limits specified by WordPress.com.