HOW TO: Transfer Your Blog From WordPress.com to WordPress.org [VIDEO]

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WordPress.com is a great platform for users who want to easily create a free website or blog. With more than 23 billion pageviews in 2010, the service is a hit with millions of users.

Premium themes are now available for WordPress.com, but the nature of the system still limits what plugins can be used and how deeply customized a design and overall site structure can be.

For that reason, it is natural that some WordPress.com users will want to take the leap to the self-hosted WordPress.org software.

Transitioning from WordPress.com to WordPress.org may seem daunting — especially for users who have lots of content and multimedia already hosted on WordPress.com. That’s why we decided to put together this screencast that walks through the entire process from beginning to end.

Moving From WordPress.com to WordPress.org

Note: This process covers moving from an existing WordPress.com blog to an existing WordPress.org installation. If you need help installing WordPress.org or finding a web host to use with WordPress.org, WordPress offers some recommendations.

Using Plugins to Re-create WordPress.com Features

As I point out in the screencast, the real key to getting WordPress.org to function (and look) like an older WordPress.com site comes via plugins.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has customized its hosted version of WordPress to include some built-in features that just aren’t included in a standard WordPress.org installation.

As a result, some media like videos, embedded tweets and polls may not show up properly.

I mention some of the most common plugins in the video, but here are some quick links:

WordPress.com Stats — This will give you the same kind of stats on WordPress.org that are available to WordPress.com users.
VideoPress — If you have ever paid for the VideoPress video upgrade, this plugin will bring the same functionality (and access to your VideoPress videos) to WordPress.org.
Wickett Twitter Widget — This is the same widget WordPess.com uses to display tweets in the sidebar of a blog.
Grunion Contact Form — This plugin was used as the basis of the new Contact Form feature in WordPress.com.
PollDaddy — This plugin will enable any polls created in WordPress.com.

After the Move

After moving content from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and installing any plugins to enable native WordPress.com functionality, users may want to consider purchasing the Site Redirect upgrade from WordPress.com.

For $12 a year, WordPress.com will redirect your old WordPress site links to the new site. These are proper 301 redirects which means search engines will get updated to redirect traffic as well. That also means that most users won’t need to pay for the upgrade after the first year.

You can learn more about Site Redirect at WordPress.com and add the feature from the Upgrades section of the WordPress.com dashboard.

Your Tips

Have you ever migrated from WordPress.com to WordPress.org? Let us know your tips in the comments!

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