Zahid Lilani – Technology and Social Media

WordPress.com to Self Hosted WordPress Blog in 5 Easy Steps

Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani in Blogging

Few days ago I helped Shari transfer her WordPress.com blog to a self hosted WordPress blog. This task might sound daunting but its really not and Shari is my witness. What is the difference? To avoid confusion I would like to mention here that there are two types of WordPress blogs, one is when you go to WordPress.com and sign up to get a blog address something like yourblog.wordpress.com and self hosted is when you go to WordPress.org, download the software and upload it on to your own server.

Main Difference
Wordpress.com is hosted blog service. You do not have to download software, pay for hosting or manage a web server.

WordPress.org is a website where you download the WordPress Blogging Software. You need a domain and a web server to make it functional.

There are number of other blogs that have talked about Advantages and Disadvantages of both the platforms and I am not going to talk about it again*

I will tell you step by step how to convert your WordPress.com blog into self hosted WordPress blog:

Step 1 – Go to your wordpress.com blog’s admin panel.

Step 2 – On the left sidebar, look for Tools and under Tools you will find Export. Click on it!

Step 3 – Download the export file and save it on to your computer.

Step 4 – Go to your new blog’s admin panel, look for Tools in the sidebar and this time click Import.

Step 5 – Look for wordpress at the bottom, browse for the file you just downloaded from your old blog and import.

Step 6 – You are done !

Let me point out one more thing, it’s better to leave the images on your old blog because it might give you an error if you try to import everything. Don’t worry, images on your new blog will still work.

* 15 Benefits and Limitations of WordPress.com Blogs, Blogger.com, WordPress.com or WordPress.org – Which One Should I Choose?,

Tags: Blogging, Wordpress