Transferring WordPress.com's hosting to Hostgator: Quick help needed!

• 

  chrisbrakeshow · Member · Nov 12, 2014 at 4:26 am

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  We have registered our domain name and have our hosting through WordPress.com.

  Want to move our site from WordPress.com’s hosting to our Hostgator hosting account.

  Found this about changing name servers: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/move-domain/#transfer-domain-registration-to-another-registrar

  After you change the name servers, what’s next? I think I need to back up our site and then go install WordPress on our Hostgator hosting… what exactly are the steps?

  1) How and what do I need to do to back up our current site and install it on our Hostgator hosting?

  2) I also want to still be able to log in to our WordPress.com account and follow other users, leave comments, etc when we move our site to Hostgator hosting.

  How does that work?

  Thank you!

  John Rapp
  the Chris Brake Show
  chrisbrakeshow.com

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

• 

  timethief · Member · Nov 12, 2014 at 11:51 pm

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  Here’s a summary of the steps you must take.

  WordPress.com and WordPress.org are completely separate.
  http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

  1. Hire a web host http://wordpress.org/hosting/

  2. Set up a WordPress.org install and equip it with a theme and plugins.
  http://wordpress.org/themes/
  http://wordpress.org/plugins/

  3. To move your content you need to create an XML export file of your content. It will not include the theme and widgets as they cannot be exported. Export your content out of your WordPress.com blog http://en.support.wordpress.com/export/ and import it into the install.

  4. WordPress.com is the top level domain here and all blogs hosted by WordPress.com are on .wordpress.com sub-domains.

  (a) Purchase a site redirect upgrade from wordpress.com
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/

  (b) Or if you have domain mapping then see here http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/move-domain/#change-name-servers-to-point-the-domain-outside-of-wordpress-com and here http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/move-domain/

  5. Transfer subscribers. See http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/moving-your-subscribers/

  6. Set your wordpress.com blog visibility to private. To change blog visibility to private go to > Settings > Reading scroll to Blog Visibility and choose option 3 . See the guide here http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

  Alternatively you can purchase a Guided Transfer and Staff will do the move and set up for you http://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/

  WordPress.com and WordPress.org have different log-ins and run different versions of themes with same names. If you don’t have a username account at WordPress.ORG click http://wordpress.org/support/ and register one on the top right hand corner of the page that opens, so you can post to the support forums there and receive advice from WordPress.ORG bloggers.