Six Easy Steps DIY: Move Your Wordpress.com Blog

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Wordpress.com currently hosts millions of blogs (and counting), most of them content with WordPress as the hosting provider. But every year thousands of bloggers still make the journey to the other side - the world of web hosting. To make this voyage shorter, sweeter and easier for the traveler we have written a step-by-step guide including all the steps you need to take in order to successfully move your blog from Wordpress.com.

If you are asking yourself, "What on earth? There is a Wordpress.COM and a Wordpress.ORG?!" Here is a description of each:

Wordpress.COM

• Everything is taken care of: from setup, to upgrades, backups, and security, etc
• Downtime is unlikely because the blog is located on several servers
• Posts are backed up automatically
• Easy to find like-minded bloggers through tag and friend surfer
• Your login is secure (SSL)
• No custom themes or tweaking of existing theme (unless you pay 'credits')
• Cannot change the PHP code
• The domain is actually a sub-domain of WordPress.com, therefore you cannot create a custom URL structure

Wordpress.ORG

• Own your domain name; especially useful if you are creating a brand or company
• Have the ability to upload themes and plug-ins
• Complete control to change code (if you are so inclined)
• A good web host is needed. This runs about $4-10 per month (on a shared plan)
• You are responsible for killing spam; using the API key plugin is one way
• Backups of the database are dependent on the user

Because migrating your blog away from a great hosting program such as Wordpress is not something to be considered lightly, we suggest you ask yourself the following questions first:

Do you want to advertise on the blog?

When you sign up for a Wordpress.com blog account, you basically agree to not advertise on it. The Wordpress.com codex clearly says: "Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds and other ads are not permitted to be added by users." If you want to start making money on your blog with ads, migration is required.

Have you found a theme and realized you cannot use it?

Having your blog on its own host means that you can upload any theme you want and tweak the CSS and PHP as you please.

Do you love your theme, but want to tweak the CSS?

If yes, you could buy 'credits' and activate the 'Edit CSS' in the WP.com control panel. You will be able to change the CSS but are limited by not being able to install an entire new theme.

These questions were designed to give you an idea of why moving a wp.com blog can be a good idea. But as you can see, there are still many things you can do with a wp.com blog. Bottom line is that if you want full control of your blog, changing to your own hosting provider is an idea worth considering.

So, now that you have fully thought out the pluses and minuses of migrating your blog and wish to proceed, here are the steps you need to take. For this tutorial we are migrating the blog noddledout.wordpress.com to the domain noodledout.com. This to give you an live example.