Moving Personal WordPress Blogs
There are different ways to move your WordPress® blog between servers and hosts. This article addresses the most simple, common solution for migrating your blog to our servers. This option moves themes, posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. However, it does not migrate any plug-ins from the existing blog. If your blog is relatively small, with no plug-in modification, this option is ideal.
If your blog hosts a large amount of content and uses plug-ins, see Moving Your WordPress Site to Us from Another Host for more information.
To get started, you need to set up WordPress on your hosting account. For more information see Installing WordPress on Your Hosting Account.
Exporting and Downloading Existing WordPress Blog Data
To export and download personal WordPress blogs away from the current server, you need to have access to your WordPress administrator dashboard and have access to your existing server.
To Export and Download a Personal Blog Away from a Server
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard. For example,
http://coolexample.com/wp-admin, where coolexample.com is your domain name. - Click Tools, and then select Export.
- Click Download Export File. This saves an XML file to your computer— the file name looks like
wordpress.date.xml. - Log out of the WordPress dashboard.
- Connect to your existing hosting account using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). For more information see What is File Transfer Protocol (FTP)?
- Download the
wp-contentfolder to your computer.
If you're using the same domain name for the Wordpress blog, you need to update your DNS, which brings your current blog offline. See Setting Nameservers for Your Domain Names for more information.
Importing and Uploading WordPress Data into a New Location
To import and upload your personal WordPress blog to our servers, you need to access the new hosting server and WordPress administrator dashboard.
To Import and Upload a Personal Blog To a New Server
- Connect to your new hosting account using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). For more information see What is File Transfer Protocol (FTP)?
- Upload the previously-exported folder (coolexample.com, in our earlier example) and replace the contents of the existing
wp-contentfolder in your new hosting account. - Log in to your new WordPress dashboard. For example,
http://coolexample.com/wp-admin where coolexample.com is your domain name. - Click Appearance, and then select Theme.
- Select the theme you want, and then click Activate.
- Click Tools, and then select Import.
- Click WordPress, click Browse to locate the previously saved XML file on your computer, and click OK.
- Click Upload file and import.
- Click Submit.
