Developing a WordPress website on a dev site and moving it to a WordPress.com account / site

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  bagbirdy · Member · Jun 23, 2020 at 3:22 pm

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  I had a developer make site, but our client is on WordPress.com – I was under the impression that didn’t really matter. If you made a WP site on a dev site you’d be able to transfer it over there as well. Am I wrong about that? :)

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  kokkieh · Staff · Jun 24, 2020 at 9:18 am

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  Hi there,

  It’s not possible to upload a local-hosted site to our servers on WordPress.com, no. We’re a managed host, meaning we manage all core WordPress files for you. We’re also a massive multisite network, meaning sites share both core and theme files with one another, so we don’t allow direct modification or upload of those files.

  The only way to move a site to WordPress.com is via a standard WordPress export file which you can then import at My Site ->Tools ->Import. Or else, if your client wants to use plugins or a custom theme, you can do a full-site migration via the Jetpack plugin on our Business Plan, but that would require the source site to be hosted online with an active Jetpack connection:

  https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-from-self-hosted-wordpress-to-wordpress-com/