This 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).
After the migration in complete, all your older blog links will continue to work and visitors will be redirected to the new site.
Why move to WordPress.org?
Like most other people, you started your first blog on WordPress.com because the service was free, you weren’t required to have any technical skills and there were plenty of widgets, themes and plug-ins to help you quickly customize the blog.
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’t allow JavaScript so you couldn’t use advanced tracking software like Google Analytics.
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.
Step 1: Get a domain name and rent some server space
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’ll host that blog.
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 – people won’t be able to see your address or phone number from the whois record of your domain.
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 hosted on Dreamhost.com PS and am fairly satisfied.
Step 2: Transfer posts from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
Now that you have the basic infrastructure in place, let’s setup a WordPress blog. All web hosting companies offer 1-click WordPress installation so this shouldn’t be a tricky thing but make sure that you install WordPress software in a sub-directory – see instructions.
Next go to your old WordPress.com admin dashboard, click Tools –> Export, and save the XML file to your local computer (fig. A). Now, in your new site’s WordPress admin panel, click Tools –> Import and then choose WordPress. Select the file you previously downloaded. On the next page, choose the authors, and check the box that says “Import Attachments.”
Everything from your old WordPress.com blog, including images and other attachments, will now be automatically imported into your new WordPress.org blog.
Step 3: Redirect visitors and search engines to your new blog
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.
This is not that difficult either. First, login to your domain registrar (the company with whom you registered the domain). Then change your domain’s DNS settings so that your domain points to WordPress.com servers.
Important: Make sure that you write down the existing nameserver addresses, as you will need them later on.
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.
From your WordPress.com blog’s dashboard, select Upgrades -> Domains. Enter the URL of your new domain, and click “Add Domain to blog.” Then click “Map Domain” when asked to confirm that you wish to add this address to the blog. You cannot have www in the URLs and also don’t put the trailing slash.
Domain mapping is a premium service and will cost you $10 per year. You can pay with either PayPal or a credit card of your choice.
Once this is completed, you need to set your personal domain (abc.com) as the primary address for the WordPress.com blog. In your WordPress.com admin panel, go back to Upgrades and select Domains. Select the checkbox for the domain you just added and click Update Primary Domain.
Step 4: Reverse the DNS Nameserver changes
Change your web domain’s DNS servers back to the original nameserver settings. Save the changes, wait for a while and now both your personal web domain (abc.com) and the old WordPress blog (abc.wordpress.com) will take you to the new site.
That’s it. Incoming links, search engine traffic, RSS readers, and everything else will get redirected to your new site. You will however have to renew the domain mapping upgrade from WordPress.com every year if you wish to keep your WordPress.com address redirecting* to your new site.
[*] WordPress.com uses a 302 redirect with domain mapping which means a “temporary redirect” and therefore search engine bots will continue to index your old site in addition to the new one.
[**] If your blog is hosted on Blogger, read this tutorial to migrate from blogspot to your own down using WordPress.
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Reader Comments
Great info all in one place. A couple of additional points -
If Google Apps is the main motivation, then it is not really necessary to book the domain through Google. Even Dreamhost provides you with Google Apps as well as one click wordpress upon domain registration.
Also the domain mapping has two payment models – one where you can register domain as well as do domain mapping ( 15$ p.a.) , second where you can just do domain mapping ( 10$ p.a. ). So one can choose based on the requirements
-Inficone.com
Written by inficone on 02.19.10
Nice post Amit.
Really useful for newbies who wants to migrate blog from wordpress.org to self hosted domain.
Written by viral patel on 02.19.10
Recently i had migrated my blogger to wordpress domain. But while using the import option i tried to transfer the blog.
But due to some google certificate issue… it failed while hosting it to my hosting websoace. So i decided to transfer the blog from blogger to wordpres(shared hosting) and once again done a wordpress.com(shared) to self hosted wordpress.
But still iam facing lots of external broken links from google as the permalink got changed and differs little bit from google.
Do i need to add 301 redirects to all the links. I have 440 external broken links as per google webmaster. Is there any solution. And i had rectified the internal boken links problem by installing Link Checker wordpess plugin. And Iam facing problem only from external links especially from search engines and missing more than 250 visits every day as per my blog stats. Is there any simple solution to solve this? Will this affect my ranking performance in google,yahoo search engines, Alexa. If so how to rectify it.
Written by Rajandran on 02.19.10
I am soon planning to move to wordpress.
I want to know the best – Dreamhost, Hostgator, Blue Host, JustHost.
Thanks
Swamykant
Written by Swamykant on 02.19.10
Hi Amit,
If i register a domain with Google Apps, Do i have to pay again to transfer the domain to a service like GoDaddy?
Written by ravi on 02.19.10
@ravi – There is no need to pay anything extra. Google automatically buys the domain for you from its partners like ENOM and Godaddy. But i think it would be better to buy the domain from some domain registrar like NAME.COM or Godaddy and then signup for the free version of Google APPS [http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new] Name.com provides a one click Google APPS signup option and they too have the Private Whois and is a little cheaper that Google :)
Written by Aneesh on 02.20.10
Hi Amith, nice post but what about google page rank, how can we secure the page rank or how can we transfer the page rank from old site to new site, page rank is the main problem so could you please write a post on it. Please please please …
Written by sony on 02.21.10
Very informative post. Great step-by-step information for a new and clueless blogger like myself :)
Written by Jillian on 02.22.10
Thanks Aneesh, i just changed the nameservers at google(enom) to point to godaddy where i plan to host my blog.
@Amit- The wordpress export tool messes us the user export in group blogs, So the authors have to tweak their profiles a bit when shifting to a selfhosted blog.
Written by ravi on 02.23.10
Hi, I just purchased a domain name through Google Apps following your recommendation as I wanted to hide my details in WHOIS. I’ve just checked WHOIS and all my details are listed there! I can’t find how to change my personal information or at least hide it. Please help. Thanks.
Written by tracey on 02.23.10
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Written by Max on 02.25.10