Moving Your Free WordPress Blog To A Paid Hosting Account

If you have a free blog at WordPress.com, it will be very limited to what you can do with it. You many want to consider moving your blog to a paid hosting account.

That way you will have complete control and you don't have to worry about WordPress deleting or tagging for blog for any Terms of Agreement violation.

Even if you don't have a lot of posts at the free WordPress blog but I am sure you don't want to lose them. These steps will make your move extremely easy.

1. Find a hosting company. A blog does not normally take up a lot of room so you can just start out with a cheap plan. Many hosting companies have an Economy Plan that is under $5.00 a month.

Of course the longer you purchase the hosting plan the cheaper it should be. You may want to purchase for 2 - 3 years, that way you can usually get a discount on the price and if you decide to move to a different hosting company you should be refunded the unused time.

2. Register your domain. Many hosting companies also let you register your domain name with them and give you a discount. Also, having your domain name and hosting account together makes it easier to keep track of.

3. Wait for setup. Once you have purchased your hosting and domain name (from whomever you decide). You have to wait for the hosting company to set up your host plan. This can take anywhere from a few hours to 48 hours.

4. Once setup is complete. If you have never had paid hosting take a look around in your admin area and look at all the different information that is available for you.

Once hosting is set up sign into your account.

5. Under the area of My Products (or something to that effect), click on your hosting accounts.

6. This will take you to another page that shows your domain name and if your hosting plan is ready, you can click on Open and it will take you to your hosting panel.

7. Your control panel. Most hosting companies now have an area for a quick set-up of wordpress blogging software. Look for something that may say "Fantastico De Luxe" or Hosting Connections. Here is the place where you can install WordPress to your domain.

8. There are a few different ways to add the WordPress blogging software on your new domain:

On the domain: yourdomainname.com

As a sub-domain: yourdomainname.com/blog

As an addon domain: blog.yourdomainname.com

If you only have the blogging software, it may be better to set-up WordPress on the domain name itself. But some people say that an addon domain is better if you are going to have a website and want your blog attached to it.

On the domain: Just click the install and it will ask you which domain, click on that and for the "Install in directory" leave this blank. The admin access data will be your user name and password, Then go through all the rest of the steps.

As a sub-domain: If you want to have it like that, you need to put in the "Install in directory", The name you want - example: blog, my blog etc... This will then create the directory for it. You do not need to create it.

As an Addon Domain: You need to first set up the addon domain before you can install WordPress. In your control panel, create an addon domain, Whatever you name this that will be where you put your blog.

So if you call the addon domain My Blog then the above will be the URL for it (myblog.yourdomainname.com). It may take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours for the system to set this up.

Once you have the WordPress installed on your domain. You will get an email with the login information (or you may have to use the one you created when you installed it).

Once your web hosting has been set-up and you have installed WordPress on your hosting account. Log into your free WordPress blog admin area.

Go to:

1. Tools

2. Click on the Export tab.

3. Export tab: will let you export (almost) everything to your computer. It does not save your blogrolls, but does save your posts, categories, comments, and custom field. Click on Download Export File.

A box will pop up and you want to click the box for Save to Disk. This then will save to your computer.

Remember where you have saved it. If you can't find it on your computer. Open the search box (on your task bar Start>search>files or folders and put the name of the file - usually called yourdomainname.wordpress.com )

4. Open your new WordPress blog at your hosting company.

5. Go to Tools (again) Click on Import tab

6. Import Tab: They will have a list of different types of programs. Go to WordPress link and click on it. Now use the browse button to find the WordPress.com information you exported above to your computer. Click on Upload file and import.

7. All of your posts, comments etc.. are now in your new blog. Make sure you keep the old blog at WordPress and add a post to let people know you have moved to a new "place".

Many of the web hosting plans have the ability to add WordPress (or other blogging software) to your new domain. If at all possible use the one click installation of the software to help with your move, it is much easier to do.

Enjoy your new location and control over your blogging!