migrating from wordpress.com

April 12, 2015 2k views
WordPress
itlearnses
By:
itlearnses

I’m migrating a blog from wordpress.com. I have my own domain that they host. I’ve looked at some migration guides, but they assume that I have a copy of my current database. All wordpress.com gives me is an XML file which contains all my blog posts, titles, comments, naviationg menus, and custom posts. I need to know how to move all of the above plus the following:

  • images: my images are hosted on wordpress.com and unfortunately they don’t have any tool for me to export these.

  • followers: I have around 700 something followers and wordpress.com doesn’t allow me to use any plugins, so I’m not sure how to export those.

  • anything else I’m forgetting?

So, how would I go about doing this? Any guides? Should I start a fresh install of wordpress and then just “import” this xml data? What about my images and followers?

Thanks in advance.

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2 Answers
ryanpq MOD April 13, 2015

This guide should assist you. Refer to the WordPress section. Once you set up your new droplet you should be able to import this data directly from the admin interface of your new site.

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thinkingmedia April 13, 2015

When you export content from WordPress in the XML format it includes referrals back to the media library as embedded URLS.

On the target Wordpress install you import the XML file. Wordpress will iterate over all the posts and articles downloading all the images from the XML references to the local media library.

So to migrate from Wordpress.com to a new server. You have to keep your Wordpress.com account active to finish the migration, because the new wordpress site needs to download the images.

You can’t use the XML export as a way to backup your media library, because the images won’t be retrieved until the XML is imported.

I don’t know anything about exporting the followers. sorry.

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