I made the switch from WordPress.com to my own self-hosted WordPress site a few months ago now; I also just moved Urban Shore to its own Bluefur server over this past weekend and am about to move Grouse Park Sessions to its new home on the web. In moving both my personal blogs I saw an immediate increase in search traffic and was able to do far more with the design of my sites. Not only are there more wordpress themes available for self-hosted blogs, but you can choose to use premium WordPress themes or add any number of WordPress plugins to customize your blog.

The theme for this blog is Thematic; Urban Shore uses Fusion. The plugins I have installed here are Akismet Spam Blocker, WordPress.com Stats, ShareThis, All In One SEO, Google XML Sitemap, Smart Tube, and Comment Luv. There are plugins for translations, events calendars, image galleries, 301 redirections, polls… basically if you can think it up, someone has created a plugin for it.

Moving your blog from WordPress.com’s free service to your own server has some tremendous benefits, but doing so can be scary for anyone who isn’t very technical, like me. So here is a how-to, in very specific steps, that will outline the exact process I used to get my blog on to its own server. Forgive me if it is a big boring list of steps… that’s kind of how it works; you know… if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Getting Started: Domain & Server

Buy your domain
I like NamesPro.ca for domain name purchases though BlueFur, my recommended hosting provider, offers domain name hosting as well. Depending on whether your domain is .ca or .com, .biz or .info or what have you, the price will vary slightly, but it’s not a lot of money.

Order the hosting
I’m going to recommend you use BlueFur Hosting’s Mini Unix Package for $6.95/mo to get started. If you use the code ‘intrinsic’ upon ordering, you’ll get 10% off – thank you, affiliate programs. Select ‘Unix’ from the options and look for the ‘Mini Unix’ option. The drop-down defaults to one full year of hosting to save you 15% (that’s before the additional 10% for using the code ‘intrinsic’); you can change that if you’d like to monthly, quarterly, half year, or two years to choose the option that works best for you.

If you followed step 1 and bought a domain name ahead of time, enter it in the field when asked. If you’d like BlueFur to sell you one, you can select the other option – I just don’t know how that process goes. Once you’ve gone through the purchase process (you can pay via credit card or PayPal), you’ll wait up to about 12-24 hours for BlueFur to set up your account. Once they have, you’ll receive an email with a bunch of information. All you really need to know is your login info, ftp info and name server info. NOTE: This is not the login info for the help forums.

LOGIN INFORMATION:
Control Panel: http://yourdomain.com/cpanel or http://xxx.xxx.xx.xxx:1234
Username: username
password: x1x2x3x4x5x6

FTP INFORMATION:
FTP: yourdomain.com or xxx.xxx.xx.xxx
Username: username
password: x1x2x3x4x5x6

NAMESERVER INFORMATION
ns1.bf-baal.com
ns2.bf-baal.com

Export your WordPress.com blog
Visit your existing WordPress.com admin area, select ‘Tools’ and ‘Export’ and then ‘Download Export File’. Remember where you put the download file; you’ll need it later to import into your new WordPress admin area.

Change your DNS
Go to your domain name service provider, select the domain name in question and choose ‘specify your own name servers’. Then enter the name server information as it appears on the email you received from BlueFur.

Once you enter the name server info, you can select ‘lookup’ and it will automatically find the associated IP address and populate that field for you.

Then you wait. It can take another 12 hours or so before the DNS is switched and your domain name will be pointing to your new server. While you’re waiting for this to happen, you can install the WordPress software on your server.

Installing the WordPress Software

The reason I recommend BlueFur, is they have a simple one-click ‘Fantastico’ install process. All you basically do is log in to your cpanel and click ‘Fantastico’ and BlueFur does the rest of the work for you. So if you’re doing this before your DNS change has taken effect, go to the link on the email they sent and click on the link that looks like an IP address with ‘:1234′ at the end of it. If you’re taking this step after your DNS change has taken effect you’ll visit http://yourdomain.com/cpanel.

Once inside, don’t panic. It looks scary. Scroll down… and look for this:

Then click on the ‘Fantastico De Luxe’ button. Once you’ve clicked it, you’ll see this:

Select ‘WordPress’ from the list on the left, and then the ‘New Installation’ link once it appears.

The next window you’ll see will be a form. This information will be specific to your WordPress installation, not your server. In the first drop-down, your domain name should appear. Leave the next space empty. In the ‘Admin Access Data’ area, you set any username and password you want to use to log in to WordPress in your browser. After that, the info is self-explanatory.

Set Up Your Blog

Login to WordPress
Once your DNS change takes effect and the WordPress software is installed on the server, you’ll be able to log in to your WordPress admin area by going to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and entering the username and password you used during the installation process. From there, it will look pretty much like the WordPress.com admin area you’ve become accustomed to.

Add Yourself As A User (Optional)
This step is unnecessary if you like the login name you gave your WordPress account. When you import your blog file, it will ask you what user you want to attribute everything to. If you only leave the original admin login set up, all your posts will be attributed to ‘username’ as you set it up in the last step. If that is ‘Admin’ that’s who will appear as the author of all your imported posts. If you would prefer they show up with your name, go to ‘Users’ and click ‘Add New’, then add your name as you want it to appear in your posts as a new username, give yourself a password you like to use, and then give your new user (you) the administrator role.

Import Your Blog Content
Go to ‘Tools’ on the left and click ‘Import’. Then choose ‘WordPress’ at the bottom of the list. You’ll then get a file select tool that you can use to go find the export file from your WordPress.com blog and import it. If you set up a new name account, be sure to select it from the list. You can also create it from there, but when I tried it I confused myself. It’s easier to do it as a separate step.

Choose and Apply Your Theme
Find a theme you like from the WordPress Theme Directory or a premium theme from a reputable developer. Download the .zip file. Extract the files to a single folder and place that folder within in the /public_html/wp-content/themes/ directory on your server. The easiest way to do that is an FTP client – I used FileZilla (it’s free). Just login using the FTP info supplied in the original email you received from BlueFur.

Once the folder is in the right place, the chosen theme will appear in your ‘Themes’ page in the ‘Appearance’ section of your WordPress admin area. You can then select the theme you want and continue with it as you did when you first set up your free theme on WordPress.com

You will need to set up your user settings, again, like how you want your permalinks structured, preferred comment moderation etc. but there isn’t much left to do at this point other than browse various plugins and install them right in the WordPress admin area.

So that’s it… in a nutshell. Happy blogging!