Need to copy a ‘free WordPress’ website and install it in IONOS webhost services
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Hi,
Has anyone ever (extracted, exported, downloaded, copied. . . whatever the technical term is) their ‘free WordPress” website, and pasted it into IONOS or any other webhost service?
Details:
I have a paid IONOS webhost service account, that includes my domain name that I pay in IONOS.Though, I have a ‘free’ WordPress account that I built a website at, and really like it, and would like a ‘copy’ of the free WordPress site I built, to be hosted under IONOS webhost services. IONOS uses ‘WordPress’ as one of it’s website building services.
In order to keep me from ‘rebuilding’ my website in IONOS all over again, I was given the following workarounds:
1st Option) IONOS can point, or link, my IONOS paid ‘domain name’ towards my ‘free WordPress’ website, but it still shows the advertisements and marketing that the ‘free WordPress’ installs (which I and most people don’t want). BAD OPTION
2nd Option) IONOS suggested I ‘export’ a copy of the ‘free WordPress’ website, but WordPress only allows you to ‘export’ an ‘.xml’ file (for the template), and a ‘.tar’ file for the content (pictures, video, etc.). IONOS says these cannot be used to install and instantly paste the website. Though, in order to properly download the files needed to do this, I need to install a “Duplicator” plugin in WordPress, but Duplicator plugins don’t work because I have a ‘free” WordPress website. ANOTHER OPTION (but then I have to pay for two webhost services because of my domain name owned at IONOS)
3) A 3rd Option IONOS mentioned is that I can download raw files from WordPress and ‘ftp’ raw files to IONOS, without me having to rebuild the whole website. Unfortunately, they don’t exactly know how or what files to extract from “Wordpress”.
Has anyone ever (extracted, exported, downloaded, copied. . . whatever the technical term is) their ‘free WordPress” website, and pasted it into IONOS or any other webhost service?
Any suggestions would be very welcomed. Thanks.
Mark
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If you have installed wordpress.org on your ionos hosting, just follow the instructions as given at https://move.wordpress.com/
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Thank you very much for your response.
IONOS already has a wordpress program installed in their service. though, unfortunately, its not as ‘abc’ as it sounds according to IONOS. The export from WordPress.com (not org), doesn’t export the files in the correct format.
Would love to find someone who also uses IONOS with WordPress, to figure this out. Thanks again.
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Wordpress.com exports your site in the correct format. The XML-file is 100% compatible with a normal wordpress.org install. As the wordpress.org hosting at ionos is a bit different, it’s up to their support to solve this problem.
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Apparantly, according to another source at IONOS, you need a ‘paid’ WP.com service plan in order to get the proper formatted exported files from WP.com to Import into the IONOS WP, which means I have to pay for ‘two webhost’ services.
So I will just have to pay for the WordPress.com service, to basically delete the advertising and marketing, and have my domain name (held with IONOS) point to my paid for WP.com site.
Thanks for all your help.
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Hi there,
IONOS wants you to do a full site migration. That is not possible for WordPress.com sites, period. WordPress.com uses our own, modified version of the WordPress software, and your site’s files with us are not compatible with the open source version of WordPress you’ll be using at IONOS. So even if we could give you all your site’s files, you still wouldn’t be able to upload it to IONOS’s servers.
The export file we offer is not for your entire site. It’s for the content only.
To import that file to your IONOS site, first install the WordPress software on your server there, then log into the WP-Admin dashboard. Then go to Tools ->Import, and install the WordPress importer plugin. Then you’ll be able to upload your file there to import your content.
I do want to mention this: as you’re hopefully noticing, IONOS doesn’t provide WordPress support. The advice they gave you is only for using their own hosting tools, and has nothing to do with the WordPress software itself. I’d really have hoped they’d at least know of migrating content only as an alternative to a full-site migration
If you move to them, whenever you need help with anything to do with the WordPress software, you’ll want to ask in the WordPress.org community forums at https://wordpress.org/support/forums/. IONOS won’t help you with that as they don’t provide WordPress software support, and we won’t be able to help you as your site won’t be hosted on our servers and not using our modified version of WordPress. If anything actually breaks, you’d need to fix it yourself – the people in the WordPress.org forums can only advise you on what to do, but they’re not your hosts, so they won’t have any access to your site to do stuff for you.
Here on WordPress.com we provide full support for the WordPress software itself, in addition to any hosting/account-related issues, and if something breaks we can actively help you fix it. So if your main goal is to remove ads and use your own domain, I’d recommend you compare the cost of our Personal Plan ($48 a year) to what you’ll be paying IONOS for hosting, and factor in the added convenience of support, and also security, spam protection, and automatic software updates and backups (all of which typically also cost extra at other hosts) that come included with your WordPress.com site, before you make a final decision.
If you have any more questions about this, please let us know :)
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