Migrate from WP.org to WP.com

  • Unknown's avatar
    nevon · Member ·

    After being on self-hosted WordPress since Feb 2006 – just over 12 years – I’ve decided that my future still lies with WordPress but not self-hosted any more. I plan to move everything to WP.com, to a paid plan (I’ve actually been on WP.com since 2005 with a free plan).

    The site I plan to move is this one: https://www.nevillehobson.com/

    I’ve read up the details on how to migrate an existing blog from .org to .com so I’m okay with the procedure described here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-from-self-hosted-wordpress-to-wordpress-com/view-all/

    But I do have a couple of questions:

    1. When I export the content from my .org site, I get the XML file as expected. I choose the ‘everything’ option to include media. But does it? At 174Mb, it’s a relatively small file for it to include images.

    2. If I export content selecting only ‘media’, the XML file I get is less than 9Mb. Yet the uploads folder within WordPress on my server contains images and other files totalling 512Mb. That’s half a gig. Do these files really get exported?

    Thanks, appreciate your insights.

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

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Hi –

    Thanks for getting in touch.

    When it comes to moving media my suggestion would be to manually save and move the media.

  • Unknown's avatar
    nevon · Member ·

    Thanks, staff-zinnia, I appreciate your response.
    I was arriving at this conclusion, too. I have a couple of questions:
    1. How do I move the media to a WP.com paid account? Is there a file manager type of tool?
    2. What about file locations? Is the directory structure in WP.com the same at that in a WP.org installation?
    Thanks!

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    1. You will add it to the media library for the site.

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/add-media/

    2. You won’t have FTP access. Is that what you’re asking about?

  • Unknown's avatar
    nevon · Member ·

    Thanks for the link. That’s great for adding media to posts or making a gallery. I’ll want to do that, undoubtedly. But what I will need to do when setting up on WP.com is to bring in all the media from my current .org install.
    There are thousands of photos gathered over 12 years that appear in already-published posts. I’ll need to replicate the folder structure so that images appear correctly in my new home on WP.com
    Surely there’s a bulk-upload function? I can’t imagine doing this manually one by one!

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Oh, ok. I understand.

    The best thing is to process your .org export file and import it to the new .wordpress.com site before you change anything over with the actual domain.

    In the export file there is going to be references for the images files that should bring them over automatically to the new site – but it’s not going to actually contain that media. Does that clarify things?

    If things don’t go smoothly we will certainly be around to help you trouble shoot.

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