A Step-By-Step Guide To Migrate From WordPress.com To Your Self-Hosted WordPress.org

WordPress is one of the top recommended content management systems at the present date. It allows organizations to have their websites developed in a timely and cost-effective manner. One of the most important reasons behind all the popularity of WordPress is the availability of an enormous number of themes and plugins that allow developers to incorporate advanced functionalities and give an elegant look to their websites without doing much endeavors. Due to these reasons, the demand for WordPress developers is also raised significantly in the latest years.

Whenever someone is looking to create a content-based website, a blog, an online portfolio, or require to develop a high-quality website in tight time constraints then WordPress is expected to be their first choice. However, whenever someone chooses to commence with WordPress, they often make a mistake in selecting the correct platform between the two popular options – WordPress.com and Wordress.org. These are two entirely different platforms so it is important to have a deep understanding of both the platforms before making a choice and going further. Let us understand both the options in brief:

WordPress.com -An Overview

WordPress.com is a free blog hosting service that does not demand external hosting or domain name to get started with. Although WordPress.com is a good option for you if you are looking to start, it does not avail you with more customization options to develop an extraordinary website.

WordPress.org – An Overview

WordPress.org, on the other side, is an open-source platform that provides you a hell lot of customization options to create fully functional and flawless websites. WordPress.org is a famous self-hosted WordPress platform that is admired by one and all as it avails you with access to nearly all features needed to create a powerful website. 

WordPress.com v/s WordPress.org – The Main Differences

WordPress.org can give you full control over your website with a lot of customization options that enable you to mold your website in any way as you want that may not be possible with WordPress.com. 

WordPress.org facilitates you with hell lot of theme and plugin options that you can utilize on your website to incorporate more functionality to it and give it a better look. On the other hand, when we talk about WordPress.com, the use of plugins is not allowed, and moreover to this, the theme support is also limited. 

The SEO support you require from any platform to perform your SEO activities efficiently is much better in WordPress.org as compared to WordPress.com’s free version.

WordPress.com does not allow you to create an eCommerce with its free plan. WordPress.org, on the other hand, allows you to create a fully functional online store by making use of the outstanding WooCommerce plugin.

Looking at the above reasons, we can conclude that it is much better to go with WordPress.org than WordPress.com if you are looking to create a website with more functionality and a better look. 

Also, people often go for migrating their websites from WordPress.com to WordPress.org once they start their websites/blogs with WordPress.com and realize the need for more functionality and customization later on. If you are also the one who is planning to migrate your site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org then we are also including the steps below for your ease that you can follow to do the migration. However, there are a few prerequisites that you are required to ensure before moving to further steps. You are required to have a domain name, a hosting account, and a fresh installation of WordPress before you move further. 

Steps To Migrate A Website From WordPress.com To WordPress.org

• Go to the back end of the website that you wish to migrate into WordPress.org.
• Click on ‘Tools’ given in the left sidebar and select ‘Export’.
• You will see an option ‘Export All’ on the displayed screen. Click on that.

• You will see a success message along with a download link after the successful download.
• Click on the download link. A compressed file will be downloaded to your system. Save the file on your local computer.
• Now, go to the folder where the zip file is saved. Extract the file and keep it for later use.
• Now, go to your WordPress.org dashboard.
• Go to Tools >> Import

• Now, install the WordPress plugin that will help you to do the imports.

• Click on Run Importer. You will see the below screen. Click on Choose File.

• Select the XML file you unzipped before and click on the ‘Upload file and Import’ button.

• Now you can do the necessary settings and submit them. Make sure to keep the ‘Download and import file attachments’ checked.

So, this is all that you need to do. Check your posts page to see if the required pages are imported to your WordPress.org or not. Hope you have successfully imported everything you wanted here. You can proceed with the customizations now as per your needs.

The Bottom Line

WordPress.com can be a suitable choice for the people who want to start their blog without making any kind of investment and are not very much concerned about the customizations as well as not looking to incorporate the most advanced features in their websites/blogs.

On the other hand, WordPress.org is an excellent choice for the people who are looking to leverage the most advanced features while creating their websites and blogs and are willing to spend some amount of money to start with. If they are ready to spend some money on purchasing hosting and domain name for their website then they should definitely opt for WordPress.org. However, a few drawbacks can also be connected with WordPress.org and those are – it requires a sound technical knowledge to work with WordPress.org, and secondly, an overhead of constantly maintaining the website is also associated with it.

However, if you find any kind of hurdle with working with WordPress.org, want to develop an outstanding WordPress site, or need any other kind of assistance, our experienced team of WordPress developers is always happy to assist you!