You can migrate your WordPress.com site’s content to a new home online using the Export tool. This guide explains the step-by-step process for exporting your WordPress.com content.
In this guide
Before exporting your content from your WordPress.com site:
- Make sure your site’s privacy settings are set to Public. This is required to ensure images are transferred to your new website.
- Clean things up as much as possible, such as removing unwanted draft pages and posts and deactivating unused plugins so that the export file contains only what is needed.
- Review and delete any comments marked as spam. If there are pending comments, approve or delete them as needed.
Your site’s content is exported as an XML file. This file contains your posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags. An XML file is not intended to be read by human eyes; it’s optimized for use by software platforms:
- You can import the XML file into another WordPress.com site.
- You can import the XML into a WordPress site with any other host.
- Many non-WordPress platforms also support XML imports. If the platform you’re moving to accepts XML files, you can follow the same steps outlined in this guide to transfer your content to that platform.
Note that the XML file (also called a WXR file) contains content only—it does not include your site’s design, themes, templates, or plugins. To migrate the entire site, use a migration plugin instead.
Images and other media files are handled in a particular way in XML files. The XML export will include links to your media files, not the actual files. When you import the XML file to a new site, the files will transfer using those links, so keep the original site publicly accessible until all images are fully transferred to the new site.
The export process in this guide will export the entire contents of a website. If you want to export specific content only, you can follow the steps in our Export Specific Content guide.
To create an export file of your WordPress.com site’s content, follow the steps below.
Select the appropriate tab for your admin interface style:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Tools → Export.
- Click the “Export All” button to export a full XML that includes posts, pages, feedback, and links to your Media files.
- Alternatively, click the down arrow to choose specific content among the site’s pages, posts, and feedback. Learn more about exporting specific content.
- Wait a few moments until the message “Your export was successful! A download link has also been sent to your email.” appears.
- Click the “Download” button in the message or download the file from your email inbox. The link in your email will remain active for 7 days.
- You will receive a
.zipfile to save to your computer with the.xmlfile inside of it.- If you selected the “Export All” option, the file will contain your posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and references to your site’s images.
- If you selected the option to export specific content, the file will only contain the content you chose.
- Larger sites may include more than one XML file. When importing into another site, you’ll need to unzip the file and import each of the
.xmlfiles individually.
You can now import your file to the new site. If you’re importing to another WordPress.com site, you can follow the steps to import a site’s contents.
If your site contains content created with WordPress.com-specific features, and you’re moving to a self-hosted WordPress site, install the free Jetpack plugin on your new site to activate these features before importing your files. This includes Jetpack blocks, testimonials, and portfolio projects.
If you intend to delete your website after exporting it, it’s important to wait until after media files have been successfully imported into the new site, which may take up to several hours, depending on the size of the site. You’ll know when all images have been copied over when the number of items in Media is the same on the new site as what you had on the original site.
If you’re moving away from WordPress.com to another host and no longer plan to use your WordPress.com website, you may wish to:
- Transfer your domain to another registrar.
- Cancel your WordPress.com subscriptions.
- Divert your WordPress.com site address (such as
yourgroovysite.wordpress.com) to your new site’s domain. - Migrate your subscribers by installing the free Jetpack plugin and using the Subscriber Migration Tool.
You can download all the media library files (images, videos, audio, and documents) from your site. Visit the Export your media library guide to learn more.
If your site is hosted here at WordPress.com, we handle all necessary backups. If a very large meteor were to hit all the WordPress.com servers and destroy them beyond repair, all of your data would still be safe, and we could have your site online within three days (after the meteor situation died down, of course).
If you still want to back up your site content manually, you can use the Export option described in this guide. After downloading the export file, import the file into another WordPress site, such as another WordPress.com site or a local site. This will ensure images are backed up and you can access your backup site.
If your site has a plugin-enabled plan, you can download entire site backups and restore your site to any previous point in time. Learn more about these backups.
Sometimes, you may receive an error when exporting your site content from WordPress.com. The most common reason for this is very large files. To resolve this issue:
- Deactivate any plugins on your site (which are not included in the export file anyway.)
- Delete any spam or pending comments.
- Delete any pages or posts you don’t want to export.
- Filter the content by author, create date, status, or category to create smaller export files.
