I have decided that it is time for me to move my blog to its own domain name. Is it possible to move a free Wordpress.com blog to its own domain?
it's possible, wordpress allow you to export all your content including posts, attachment to a new webhosting.
Word of the wise from someone who has done it before, even after you move it just go back through and do some random checks to make sure all the images and all that sorta thing has come across properly... Nothing worse than doing it then a week or two down the track going arrrrgh none of the images are loading on archived pages correctly for example. It shouldn't happen but you know on occasion things go wrong, I just like to say it is good practice to CHECK. stu
No worries at all always happy to share from my experiences especially if I can help stop someone from running into issues #ProactiveInformationExchange haha oooh PIE I like that... I think I just coined a new term. You saw it here first hahaha (sorry LOL too much caffeine not enough sleep )
Copying content to a new wordpres blog is not quite as stright forword as other describe. Exporting the content from wordpress exports content of posts and pages - but not any images or widget data. So you might need to copy data from widgets such as text boxes individually and make a note of widget locations and settings. If you plan on using a different theme, then widget locations will almost certainly get moved around or even disappear. To copy images and make them appear as they are at present, you need to copy the wp-content/uploads folder from your existing blog site to your new site Normally you would do this using FTP - but if you are using free sites, such as blogger, you probably won't have access (then the only option would mean saving and restoring images individually). There are tools such as Jason Fladleins wptwin that are supposed to make this process easier - but it costs $97 and I haven't tried it.
I may have described what I am looking to do wrong. I am not looking to move to a new wordpress blog. I want my blog to be moved to a new domain. The reason for this move is because I have people who want to do giveaways on my blog but I read in the TOS that it is against the rules to host giveaways. So, I am thinking if I get my own domain name this will be something that will not get my blog suspended or am I still at risk? Preferably a domain that would allow rafflecopter.
You want to point wordpress.yourblog.com to yourdomain.com. What I believe seafrontsteve is saying is you'll want to save and restore the images individually on your hosting server since you used Wordpress servers to host your WP site instead of using your hosting server with your domain (e.g. mydomain.com) from the beginning. I hope my explanation is clear. If you host WP on a hosting server you pay for to host giveaways than you shouldn't have any problems because you're not using WP's server resources you would be using CPU resources of the hosting server you're paying for monthly basis. Does this make sense?
A little, but not really, I am currently searching for someone I can pay to have this done because obviously if I try to do this on my own I am going to mess something up.