Images – Moving from .com to .org

  • Unknown's avatar
    michaelakcohen · Member ·

    Hi,
    we’re planning to move our site to self-hosted WordPress. We will be keeping the same domain. The instructions provided at move.wordpress.com make sense, but in terms of the site’s images, I am currently not clear on how these will migrate. The exported WXR xml will refer to image urls that include ‘wordpress.com’ which means the image links will rely on the .com host. After importing the WXR on the .org WordPress, how do we go about preserving our existing media library and ensure that all of the posts and pages ‘point’ to the correct image urls, which will now be self-hosted with our hosting provider, and presumably need to be changed to urls that reflect this.

    I know there are plugins that can assist with the moving of images in this situation. However our WordPress.com plan is Premium and with one month left, we would prefer not to pay for a year of Business in order to use a single plugin for this purpose (since we will no longer be using the wordpress.com account after moving to self-hosted).

    Any advice on how images and the media library is handled in the .com – .org migration would be greatly appreciated, as a lot of the documentation out there is to do with importing or exporting images with an already self-hosted WordPress site.

    Thank you

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hey there,

    in terms of the site’s images, I am currently not clear on how these will migrate.

    Your thoughts make sense, so good job thinking through this.

    Luckily most of this is handled automatically: part of the importer checks for images sourced at the old site, and it will automatically update those source URLs in your posts, and pull the images into your media library and uploads directory.

    One thing I *would* verify though is that all of the images fully import. Sometimes the media portion of the import can time out, depending on your new host’s settings. You can re-run the importer if needed.

    Also, if your posts mention the old URLs as links and what not (as opposed to image sources), you might want to spot check a few to be sure they have updated properly. If not, you can use a find and replace plugin at the new installation to sort that out.

    Hoping this helps!

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