This presentation covers the migration process from a hosted wordpress.com website to a self-hosted WordPress installation.
Covering considerations, hosting, installation, permalinks, exporting and importing, domain mapping, 301 redirects and spam.
By Sandy Sidhu & Georgiana Laudi
6. .com kinda rocks
• Interconnectedness of .com community
– Tons of support
– Homepage "Best Of" & category lists
– Link juice / SEO passed on to you
• No installations or upgrades
• No databases to mess with
• No domains (unless you want)
• Spam filters
• Live in the cloud
14. installing wordpress
1. One-click install via hosting provider
or
1. Download WordPress
2. Create MySQL database
3. Configure wp-config.php
4. Access file manager or use a FTP client
5. Upload wordpress folder to root
Follow instructions at
www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php
34. updating your internal URLs
Perform a database query to update
yourdomain.wordpress.com to yourdomain.com
• Internal links
• Images
• Documents
• General media
Old url
http://montrealgirlgeeks.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/october-
workshop/
New url
http://montrealgirlgeeks.com/2011/10/22/october-workshop/
41. thank you
Image credits:
Girl in box http://www.flickr.com/photos/sxld/6123441787/
Cramped apartament http://www.flickr.com/photos/robboudon/2536325641/
Cat in box http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/760054533/
Packing up http://www.flickr.com/photos/n0seblunt/3782818020/
Reading room http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterhess/6021485823/
Foundation http://www.flickr.com/photos/lien/8926661/
Paint bucket http://www.flickr.com/photos/frli/3720462800/
Neighbourhood http://www.flickr.com/photos/reallyboring/3208615382/
Mailboxes http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcjohn/8474890/
Map http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludens/4365239828/
Post office http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/2182796411/
House http://www.flickr.com/photos/spam/3794764166a/
Red Nose http://www.flickr.com/photos/redcow/3338601434/
Hinweis der Redaktion
every year thousands of bloggers still make the journey to the other side - the world of web hosting.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. In today’s talk we are going to cover moving from a wordpress.com hosted website to a self-hosted wordpress site.We will cover the following points:
Outgrown your digs? So you’ve probably been using Wordpress for awhile now and keenly looking at some of the other features that you could use if you self-hosted.But before you make the leap you should consider why it is that you want to move in the first place..there is added responsibility.. (When others have asked me whether they should move from WP hosting to paid hosting, I always ask them what it is they're trying to gain that WP doesn't offer. In my case, I needed advertising and the ability to directly control my theme, overall CSS, and even core functionality. If you can't name something very specific that you need to do with your site that can't be done there, then there's probably not a good reason to move)
Cause let’s face it… .com kinda rocks
You are in any of the wordpress.com listings of "best of" or "best performing" blogs or other categories specific to that community.And the natural sense of community and interconnectedness that exists on the WP-hosted blogs.As a result Benefit from link juice and SEO, supportNot to mention you do not have to deal with installations and upgrades, in the cloud everything is taken care for you..spam, no databases or domains to deal with unless you want to.So before you Go over the various advantages from being on .com (stress considerations..why is it that you want to move, what are you looking to gain?)Everything is taken care of: from setup, to upgrades, backups, and security, etcDowntime is unlikely because the blog is located on several serversPosts are backed up automaticallyEasy to find like-minded bloggers through tag and friend surfer
Basically...wordpress.com is easy. Create a blog, pick a theme, start writing...and that’s it! You’re good to go.
So if Wordpress. com is so rockin’...why am I moving again?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.
Direct control over any and every aspect of your site.You can put as much or as little advertising as you want.You can use ANY theme or plugin out there.With wordpress.com if things change tomorrow, you have no control or say over what happens. You are renting the space.(No custom themes or tweaking of existing theme (unless you pay 'credits')Cannot change the PHP codeOwn your domain name; especially useful if you are creating a brand or companyHave the ability to upload themes and plug-insBackups of the database are dependent on the userBecause 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
You can tweak any piece of code or formatting till it's just the way you want it. (Complete control to change code (if you are so inclined)You can use any JavaScript or piece of code that happens to catch your fancy and take advantage of more comprehensive analytics.Enahnced social integration: adding social features like facebookMulti-siteMulti-lingualMonetizationThat's just a short list, but you get the idea. Self-hosting is not right for everyone any more than WP-hosting is. The decision comes down to weighing the advantages against the disadvantages.Again, let me repeat, if you can't name something very specific that you need to do with your site that can't be done there, then there's probably not a good reason to move.And now the technical considerations
From now on wordpress.com & wordpressWordpress is a software and wp.com is a service (SaaS)Searching in forums or google you had to specify .com Now that you’d decided definitely that you’re ready to migrate to wordpress .org, we’re just going to go ahead and from now on refer to your wordpress.com site as wordpress.com and your new wordpress.org as wordpress. I’m sure you noticed when you were setting up your wordpress.com site, when you went searching in forums or googling things, that when you had a question you had to define wordpress.com, since when someone says just wordpress, it’s assumed that you’re referring to the self hosted version, the true version of wordpress.
Define DestinationHosting & DomainWordpress web hostingAny hosting provider you choose must includeMySQL databasesPHP compatibleOften needed is additional diskspaceNice to have domain registration There are lots of hosting providers that offer Wordpress Hosting specifically, make your life easier by finding one of those. The important thing to remember when choosing a host is that you need to find one that offers MySQL and PHP support. You may also want to find one that offers additional diskspace if you have lots of posts & images and plan to install quite a few plugins. A nice to have is domain registration. If you already have a domain, and you’re already domain mapping your wordpress.com site, we’ll come back to that later, but I’m going to assume that your current domain name is yourdomain.wordpress.com
Many hosting providers (especially those with Wordpress packages) will offer a 1 click installation, if you don’t have that option I’ll go over installation quickly, since this isn’t a talk on installing wordpress but it’s obviously an important part of the process of moving, so
Go to wordpress.org and download the latest version of wordpress to your computer, you’ll end up with a file called “wordpress” Make sure you’ve got access to your host account control panel (get your login details from your welcome email), next you’re going to need to create your MySQL database, using most likely PHPMyAdmin. Note down the name, username and password. Then go into the wordpress folder on your computer and find wp-config-sample.php and edit it with your new database info, save the file as wp-config.php Go to your file manager in your control panel, or use a 3rd party FTP to extract the contents of the wordpress folder to the root directory Once that’s done you’ll go to yourdomain/wp-admin/install.php and follow the instructions, congrats, wordpress is now installed!
Once you have Wordpress installed on the host, the next step is to make sure permalinks match.The standard permalink structure for a Wordpress.com blog is /year/month/day/postname/. Your installed Wordpress blog however, will be set on Default to show the post or category ID. If you do not change the permalink structure on your new blog before importing the content from your old, it could become a mess.Log in to your new Wordpress admin and go to Settings>Permalinks and change the permalink structure to /year/month/day/postname/. If changing permalink structure >Will cover 301’s later…
With a new hosting account and domain name set up and Wordpress installed, it is now time to migrate the content from your wp.com blog to your newly created MySQL database. This will basically export all the data from your current wp.com database, as an XML file, and import it to your new database.Log in to your Wordpress.com blog account, go to Tools>Export and download the XMLfile to your desktop.
Existing userdAnd mapping usersStart setting up categories, tags..UsersThen log in to your Wordpress admin on your new hosting domain and import the exported XML file. The XML file containing the content from your wp.com blog will then be imported to your new MySQL database. If successful you should be able to view your posts directly on your new blog.Specify author details, select Download… for Import Attachments and click Submit
Existing userdAnd mapping usersStart setting up categories, tags..UsersThen log in to your Wordpress admin on your new hosting domain and import the exported XML file. The XML file containing the content from your wp.com blog will then be imported to your new MySQL database. If successful you should be able to view your posts directly on your new blog.Specify author details, select Download… for Import Attachments and click Submit
Themes:Free – 1 click installation in Appearances menu > ThemesIf Premium or Custom - Follow theme installation instructions provided by author
Plugins:Akismet auto installedInstall any other basic plugins
Time to polishgo and look over imported posts...polish postsSwitching themes can do a number on your formatting..You’re launching, ready to go want to make sure everything looks exactly like you want I
Now that you’ve got all your content and theme imported and installed on your new wordpress site, it’s time to redirect traffic from your wordpress.com site to your new website. Domain Mapping This will redirect anyone visiting yourdomain.wordpress.com to yourdomain.com Log into your wordpress.com admin panel and go to settings > Domains This is where you’re going to attempt to add your new domain, ----
--- I say attempt because wordpress is going to require verification to ensure that you in fact own this domain. To do this we’re going to have to temporarily change the nameservers. We’ll come back here, once that’s done.
Changing nameservers of your new domain can be tricky if you’ve never done it before and every hosting provider is different but from your hosting account control panel you should be able to change them manually. If you’re having trouble finding it, I’d definitely recommend contacting customer service or checking their documentation to make sure you’re doing it right.Remember to note what the nameservers were before you change them (since you’ll be changing them back)Current nameservers should be changed to:NS1.WORDPRESS.COMNS2.WORDPRESS.COMThe nameservers change may vary from five minutes up to four hours.
You will know that the nameservers have been changed by returning to the wp.com admin and continuously trying to add thedomain to blog.
When the nameservers have been changed, you will be able buy ten credits by adding your domain again. 10$ is not a a lot ensure that all your traffic is redirected properly.
After that, make sure to set your new domain as the primary domain in your wordpress.com admin panel
now all traffic going to yourdomain.wordpress.com will be redirected!
Now since that was just for verification to wordpress, all that’s left to do is go back in to your admin panel and change your nameservers back, congratulations, now anyone visiting yourdomain.wordpress.com will be redirected to your new site.
If you change theurl of any page or post or your permalink structure changes, you’ll need to write some 301 redirectsChanging your permalinks in wordpress is 302 which are considered temporary and not SEO friendly301 redirects will transfer not only traffic but also rankings (you still may see a temporary dip). Morecomplicated but are:cleansearch engine friendly (Google loves them)Avoids any chance of duplicate contentworth the hassle if you have an established blogThere are plugins offered that will automate the process but those function from within the plugins folder so not the cleaned way to do it The best way to add rewrite rules is to go the root directory to your .htaccess
Make a backup!!This is the simplest form of a 301Add as many as you like, 1 per lineYou can do a lot with 301’s and rewrite rules… I suggest you look further into it if you’re looking to do something a little more complicated.
If WP fails to update internal links or import your imagesUse sparinglyRemember yourdomain.wordpress.com & yourdomain.files.wordpress.com This part is really a “just in case”, hopefully you never need to use this, but if you import your content more than once, you might notice wp isn’t perfect. Rather than going into each post and changing each url manually, you could peform a database query that will essentialy do a ‘find and replace’ for your old and nerurl.
There is a plugin that will do this for you (rather than digging into your database files), Velvet Blues Update URL’s automates the process. Just remember though, if you are looking to fix internal links, the url you want to replace is yourdomain.wordpress.com if you’re looking to update your image source urls, you’ll still need to import your images into your wordpress files using the same file path, and the url you’ll replace is yourdomain.files.wordpress.com
An important thing to bear in mind now that you’ve moved from .com to wordpress is that wp.com is no longer looking out for you. Once you go self hosted, spam is your responsibility. Wordpress thinks it’s so important in fact that they automatically install their preferred anti spam plugin, Akismet.
What you are responsible for though here is actually activating it. Go into your plugins and active Akismet, you’ll then see an warning message saying that you need to configure it, to do that, you’ll need an API Key from Akismet, click the link, request a key and then pay what you like. You essentially decide what it’s worth to you. If you really don’t know, try going without it for a couple months, you’ll be back. Once you’ve done that, simply go to the configuration page and save the key. Voila, your website is protected! Now all that’s left to do is add your content and monitor your comments and pingbacks as usual.
An important thing to bear in mind now that you’ve moved from .com to wordpress is that wp.com is no longer looking out for you. Once you go self hosted, spam is your responsibility. Wordpress thinks it’s so important in fact that they automatically install their preferred anti spam plugin, Akismet.