Transfering wordpress.com blog to your wordpress self hosted site:

1. First visit you old site, go to the dashboard and

2. Click “Manage”

3. Click “Export”

4. ”Click Download Export File” down at the bottom of the page

Save this data to your desktop so you’ll know where to find it for the next steps.  This makes me think of a crab moving into a bigger shell.  You have a naked blog-crab on your desktop so it’s time to move it into it’s new shell.

5. Go to your new sites dashboard 

6. Click “Manage”

7. Click “import”

You will see that you can import from not just a wordpress blog but also from other sites like blogspot. I wish I could say it’s as easy as clicking the system you wish to grab your posts from and  bring those posts to your new wordpress Weblog but it’s not.

If you have have a blogspot blog your converting to a wordpress Weblog you might want to read David HendeConversion before you get started.rson’s Blogspot to WordPress: Easy and Smart

8. click browse and choose your wordpress (naked-crab) file you have saved to your desktop

9.  Click” Upload File for Import”

THIS BRINGS YOU TO A NEW WINDOW.  

This caused me a lot of grief but I don’t think it has to cause you any.  DON’T check the box at the bottom!  And then just

10. click Submit at the bottom of the page. 

What I gather on this “Author” pages is that you (the author) need be be the author of both old and new blog.   

Check and see if all your posts from the old blog show up on your new one.  If not let me know we will try and trouble shoot.

Import. You will see an option for importing from a WordPress blog. Choose that and follow the instructions carefully.

I am learning this stuff myself. 

I am not a geek. 

I’m not doing this for profit and the services I’ll be tell you about are ones I have used or heard good things about by good people. 

I am learning how to turn my wordpress.com blog (about my book) into a mature, proffessional Weblog.  It is here where you can follow the steps I have taken.  I will also talk about how to take a blogspot blog and turn it into the same as above.

If you don’t have a blog and want to step right up into doing a self hosted Weblog, that’s cool.  Start at the step that’s aproprate for your needs.

I will do my best to be orginized and give posts clear titles.

I have JUST started documenting these steps.  I will be adding many steps in short order.  I try and document stuff right as I learn it to make sure I capture each step.

Your questions wil make this better, so comment freely, and help each other. 

I can’t spell.

You can look at what I have learned how to do so far on my Weblog: www.whynotrachel.com

Rachel

A host for your Weblog is not so differant than a host of a party.  When your friend Bob hosts a party at his house everyone goes and hangs out at Bobs.  When Bloghost.me offers hosting, everyones Weblogs hang out at Blobhost.me.

Right now we’re going to let the sentry know you’re an invited guest, here’s how:

1)  Click HERE to go to your Tubu account manager page.

2) Now go to your email account.  You should have gotten an email with a subject line of:         “Your new hosting account has been setup!‏” 

3) Open that email up

4) The body of the email should say something to this effect:

Dear Your Name,

Congratulations, your new hosting account has been setup. The details on your account are located below:

Account Username: yourusername
Account Password: cc3948c
Account IP Address: 11.11.111.111
Domain Name: yourdomainhere.com

5)

Don’t flip out on me, this isn’t a big deal.  Hell non of this is a big deal if you take it in small bite size steps like we’re doing.  The end result will be a professional Weblog all your own that you will know how to change and make look just how you want it to look. 

So now it’s time to sign up for a hosting account. On Andy’s

A blog, from the GetGo (this is his step 2)

Here are your steps for Hosting an Account:

1) I would like you to go to Bloghost.me to do this step. Trust me, these are good peeps. 

(There are other places to do your hosting but I am loyal to Bloghost.me. They are AMAZINGLY helpful.  Andy, our official geek for this part of the tour is the CEO of this service and has willingly stepped-up to the plate to help me help you.  That is what I call ”costomer service”)!

2) Once on the page, scroll down and click on “Select Plan”  (this is going to cost you 10 bucks a year, very reasnable indeed).

3) Type in your domain name.  In my case it was: whynotrachel.com

4) Then click to continue.

5) Enter your name, address and so ect.

6) Complete your order using PayPal

Andy says this is a pretty hard step to do cause it’s hard to find just the right name.  I am hoping that you have already played with name ideas while you were learning to blog and have something in mind by now.  If not, this is where rubber hits the road and you buy your name. 

So here’s what I would like you to do to get your domain name:

I would like you to go to: http://domains.tubu.net to check avalability and to purches your domain name.  There are a lot of other places to do this but this is where I HIGHLY suggest you go.  There are real people, nice, calm and helpful people you can talk to if you need help.  There’s a phone number right on their main page to call if you need to contact someone…wow.

This is huge, so go, get a domain name and come back for your next step.  Isn’t this easy so far?

Many people coming to this blog for help will have been enjoying authoring a wordpress.com blog.  You have posts and have people starting to read your blog.  You like the name of your blog but are ready to drop the wordpress.com part.

In my case I had the blog http://whynotrachel.wordpress.com.  I had actually about 7 other blogs too while I was just playing with names.  I like whynotrachel and wanted it to be what I used for my domain name.  Which means I wanted to buy the name whynotrachel.com. 

So I hope that you have explored blog names and are now ready to self host one, meaning you are ready to buy it as your domain name. 

It might be helpful at this point to read:   

Writen by Andy at techburgh.com.   Not to worry if everything he explains doesn’t make sense yet, we’ll be spelling it out even more right here.  Remember Andy though, he will be helping you a lot as we go.

You have found the right place if you are:

1) Not a techie BUT

2) You want to take your wordpress.com blog (or a blogspot or other blogs) and

3) turn it into a self hosted Blogsite.

I’m not a techie but I have friends who (thank goodness) are. Those friends have helped me and will help you get a professional site up and running. 

Please, as you go through these steps, make comments and help others that will come after you have an even simpler time creating a great Weblog for themselves.