Migrating WordPress Blog

This post is also posted at http://travel4work.wordpress.com/

Migrating WordPress from <yoursite>.wordpress.com – which is a free service – to another site that you are paying for such as <yourdomain>.com/<yourNewWordPressHome> is very easy and it is all done through WordPress.

In this situation, my new website has Fantastico and it allow WordPress to be installed on my domain very easily – few clicks of buttons. Now assume both <yoursite>.wordpress.com and <yourdomain>.com/<yourNewWordPressHome> are running, here are the instructions.

1. Go to <yoursite>.wordpress.com and login there.
2. Go to the classic Dashboard.
3. On the left panel, go to Tools – Export.
4. Choose to export “All Content” and when asked, save the XML file to your PC.
This XML file presumably contains all the data for the two WordPress to communicate.
There are lots of pictures in my original WordPress site, but the XML file is only over 100kB, so obviously the Contents are not being saved, ie not needed.

1. Now go to the new <yourdomain>.com/<yourNewWordPressHome> site and login.
2. 2. Go to the classic Dashboard.
3. On the left panel, go to Tools – Import.
4. At the Import page, choose the WordPress option, and you will be asked to install the plugin called WordPress Installer. Go through with this.
5. Then click on Activate Plugin and Run Importer.
6. Click the button to choose the XML file to import from.
7. In the Import WordPress page, choose Import Author and “Download and import file attachments”.

8. You can now go back to the original site and just manually check the old settings, and apply the same settings to the new website. Some example of this to consider are:
a) Appearance – Themes – search for the same previous theme using the search bar and install
b) Appearance – Widgets – Text – Add your text, including Google Adsense code.