Ok so you’ve been a user of WordPress.com for a while now. Things have been pretty nice so far, but you’ve come to a point where you’re ready to go beyond WordPress.com. You want to install plugins and customize your themes. You want to really start monetizing your site and be in full control. Well you are at the right place. We won’t discuss the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, we will take a look at a question that a lot of users have been asking: how to move your existing WordPress.com blog to a hosted WordPress.org site.
Things You Need Before You Start
You will need to have a domain name and a good web hosting company that knows WordPress. This is the point at which we can provide you the greatest assistance. Advice on the domain name, which will give you the best (and free) search engine optimisation, (SEO) and reliable web hosting with plenty of data storage means you can build your website, modify, change themes, add plug-ins, without anyone deciding you are going against their terms of service.
Lastly, you will need access to your WordPress.com account, so you can easily move all of your posts, pages, images, comments, and other data over to your newly hosted WordPress site.