1. Manage Tab

2. You will see under it Posts, pages, etc.. 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 to which area that 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 http://yourdomainname.wordpress.com)

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

5. Go to Manage Tab (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 and all are now in your new blog. Make sure you keep the old blog at wordpress.com and add a post on there to let people know you have moved to a new “place”.

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

Enjoy your new location and control over your blogging!

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

b. 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.

c. Your control panel. If you did use Godaddy for your hosting plan, then click on the link that is located in the upper right corner that says “Go Daddy Hosting Connection”. If you have another web hosting company, look for something that may say “Fantastico De Luxe”. Here is the place where you can install your wordpress to your domain.

d. Places to put the blog: There are a few different ways to add a wordpress blog. This will give you an example of the different ways:

On the domain: www.yourdomainname.com

As a sub-domain: www.yourdomainname.com/blog

As an addon domain: www.blog.yourdomainname.com

I have mine set up on the domain since this is the only thing that I will use it for. Some people say that an addon domain is better if you are going to have a website.

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. My wordpress blog was set up within an hour or so and I received an e-mail for when it was ready.

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 it will be where you put your blog. So if you call the addon domain blog then the above will be the URL for it (blog.yourdomainname.com). It may take a any where 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).

Part 3 – will explain how to easily move your blog contents from wordpress.com to your new blog at your web hosting service.

The free blog was uponmainstreet.wordpress.com

The paid hosting blog is uponmainstreet.com

I didn’t have a lot of posts at the wordpress blog but enough that I did not want to lose them. If you are going to move to paid hosting, see if the hosting plan has one click install for a wordpress blog. This makes your move extremely easy to do and will explain in Part 2.

1. Find a hosting company. I used godaddy.com (see GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans)
for my hosted blog as I found they were the cheapest hosting company. The blog does not take up a lot of room so I just started with the Economy Plan. It is $3.99 for 2 months or if you want a 12 month plan it is $3.79. I purchased the plan for 36 months and it was only $3.39 a month. The reason I purchased so long was: 1. the discount. 2. If I decide in a year to move to another hosting company, I will be refunded for the time that I have not used. As time goes by, if I need more space I can upgrade but the Economy plan has plenty of available space!

2. Register your domain. I already owned my domain, but if you purchase the hosting plan through godaddy, your domain purchase will only be US$1.99 at the time you buy the hosting plan. This is so much cheaper than any other place I have found. I have seen other companies that a domain name purchase is up to $15.

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. My hosting was set up within about 2 hours and I was ready to rock and roll!

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.

Go to step 2 to see how you will be moving your information from your wordpress.com blog to your paid hosting account.