Why migrate from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
Often, people realize the limitations of creating a blog on WordPress.com compared to creating it on WordPress.org.
In addition to being limited in terms of blog functionalities, it is also limited when it comes to exporting content.
The WordPress exporter is similar on both platforms; this tool only allows you to export the content using an XML file with a specific structure.
In addition to the exporter, WordPress has an importer that interprets the information from the corresponding XML file.
Export the data from WordPress.com
First, we will export the data from WordPress.com using the platform’s own tool. To do this, go to the admin area of your WordPress.com and begin:
This tool allows us to export posts, pages, categories, tags, WordPress media files… With this tool, we are not allowed to export widgets, appearance, or any element related to the site’s design.
We can only export content to migrate it.
There are two types of export. One is paid, with guided assistance from WordPress.com, and the other is free, which is the standard method and the one we will use in this guide.
To do this, click on Start Export. This way we access the export assistant panel.
Once we are in the export panel, we choose the All content option and click on the Download Export File button.
When we have downloaded the file, we will see something similar to what is shown below:
Import the content into the blog
Now it’s time to import the XML file into our WordPress installed on the hosting.
To do this, we access the wp-admin of the WordPress site where we want to import the content, which will be WordPress.org.
From the admin panel, we click on Tools -> Import. Next, we click on the WordPress option to download the import plugin.
A window will appear with information about the WordPress importer. At the bottom right, there is a button that says Install Now; click on it to begin installing the plugin.
When the plugin is installed, we go back to Tools -> Import, and a window will appear where we can add the file with the contents we want to import.
First, we upload the previously downloaded file, and then click on Upload file and import.
Once we click the button and the file is uploaded, we will see something similar to what is shown below.
On this screen, we have the possibility to assign a user to the imported contents, and we also have the option to Download and import file attachments so that the image files are downloaded to the new server where we have the blog hosted. Once the mentioned options are configured, we click on the Submit button. When the process is finished, we will see the following image.
Redirect from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
In this step, everything can vary depending on the client since not everyone has their own domain on their WordPress.com blog.
Several cases can occur:
If the blog has its own domain, we must change the DNS after the migration so that the domain points to the hosting. Then we adjust the parameters of the permanent URLs or friendly URLs so that they are the same as in WordPress.com. This way we preserve SEO.
If the blog on WordPress.com does not have its own domain, we must redirect from the subdomain
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.wordpress.comto the new domain. This is optional but recommended if we have previously worked on search engine optimization.
The configuration of the permalinks can be done from the WordPress back-end under Settings -> Permalinks.
Design and appearance
The main drawback of this action is that you only import the blog’s content; the design itself will not be migrated and will need to be redesigned. It is a tedious task, but it is unavoidable.
We hope this article on how to migrate from WordPress.com to WordPress.org has been useful to you. More information about this and other topics can be found at https://guias.sered.net/