Migrate a website to WordPress.com

If you have a website built with WordPress on any hosting provider that you want to move to WordPress.com, you can migrate it to WordPress.com using the steps in this guide. These steps will copy your existing WordPress site, including your content, media, plugins, and theme, to your new WordPress.com site.

To follow the steps in this guide, you will need:

• Your source site: a WordPress site with any hosting provider. Multisite installations are not supported.
• Your destination site: a fresh WordPress.com website with our Business or Commerce plan. Do not use an existing site with content you would like to preserve, since this site will be erased and replaced with the site that you import.
• All incompatible plugins must be deactivated on the source site.

If any WordPress core files (such as wp-config.php and functions.php) on the source site were modified, those changes won’t be migrated to the destination site. The migrated site on WordPress.com will run the most recent version of WordPress core and the latest compatible versions of PHP.

Importing your site involves three steps:

1. Prepare the destination site.
2. Install the Migrate to WordPress.com plugin on the source site.
3. Add the Migration key from the destination site to the source site and start the migration.

Each step is explained below.

Watch the following video to learn how to migrate your site to WordPress.com. Slow down or speed up the video using the controls in the lower-right corner after clicking the Play button.

1. Log into your new WordPress.com account or site (or create one here) that will be your destination site.
2. Navigate to Tools → Import in the destination site’s dashboard.
3. On the Import page, select “WordPress”.

Note: if your site uses WP Admin, click the “Get Started” option next to the “Use WordPress.com’s guided importer…” text first.

4. Choose the “Migrate site” option to import everything, including your source site’s content, plugins, users, and customizations.

5. On the next screen, select the “I’ll do it myself” option.

Next, you will be prompted to install the “Migrate to WordPress.com” plugin on the source site.

1. Click the “Install the Plugin” button to visit the plugin page in the plugin directory.
2. Download the “Migrate to WordPress.com” plugin from the plugin directory.
   • Alternatively, on your source site, visit Plugins → Add New and search the directory for the “Migrate to WordPress.com” plugin.
3. Install and activate the plugin on your source site.
4. Return to the Site Migration wizard on the destination site, and click the “Next” button.

5. Head to the “Migrate to WordPress.com” plugin screen on your source site, enter your email address, and click Continue. This is the email address you will receive updates about your migration status.
6. Click “Next” on the Site Migration wizard.

Last, add your migration key from your destination site to the Start Your Migration page on the source site.

1. On your destination site, click “Get Key” or navigate to the Migrate to WordPress.com menu on your site’s dashboard.
2. Click the “Copy Key” button under the “Migration Key” section.

3. Visit your source site and navigate to Migrate to WordPress.com in your dashboard.
4. Paste the migration key in the field labeled “Enter your migration key.”
   • (Optional) Click on “Advanced options to add additional credentials or customize your migration.
     • “Source site credentials”: If your site is password protected, provide your username and password to enable the migration to complete.
     • “Customize migration”: If you use files or data apart from the standard WordPress structures. If you’re not sure, and there are additional files or tables present, it is safe to click the “Select All” option.
5. Click the “Start migration” button to begin the site migration.

Wait for the migration to complete. You will receive an email at the address you submitted when the migration is done, and you can safely navigate away from this screen.

The migration process varies depending on the size of your site, and can range from 10 minutes up to several hours. During the migration, do not make any edits to either the source or destination site. Once you receive confirmation that the migration is complete, you can return to edit your site.

Once the migration of your website is finished, you will want to complete the following steps:

• Review your administrators and remove any who should no longer have access to the site.
• Review your installed plugins and remove any you no longer need on the site.
• Check any licensed plugins/themes to confirm that your licenses carried over. Check with your plugin or theme developer for additional information.
• Connect or transfer your custom domain name to WordPress.com. Learn more about the difference between connecting and transferring your custom domain.

If you encounter issues with your site migration, the following sections provide solutions to the most common problems.

If you navigate away from the Site Migration wizard, or encounter the error message “Sorry, we couldn't finish setting up your site“, follow these steps to retrieve your migration key manually:

1. Log into your WordPress.com account for your destination site.
2. In the destination site’s dashboard, navigate to the Migrate to WordPress.com menu item.
   • If you don’t see Migrate to WordPress.com in your menu, install and activate the Migrate to WordPress.com plugin.
3. Locate the “Migration in progress?” section and use the “Copy key” button to obtain your migration key.

When you paste the migration key into the source site’s Migrate to WordPress.com tool, you may see the following error:

It seems you have provided the source site's migration key. Please provide the migration key from the destination site to proceed with the migration. Contact us if you're still having trouble.

To resolve this error, make sure you are copying the migration key from the destination site; the site you are migrating the content to.

Another error you might see when pasting your migration key is:

Invalid Migration Key. Contact us if you're still having trouble.

Verify that you successfully copied the migration key from the destination site by using the “Copy key” button. The “Copy key” button copies the entire key into your computer’s clipboard so that you can paste it into your source site’s dashboard.

Special characters are replaced with a question mark (�) when the database encoding of the source site is different from the database encoding of the destination site.  WordPress.com defaults to using Latin1 encoding, while your source site is using a different character set, most likely UTF-8.

To resolve the issue, you can contact support. We will convert your destination site to UTF-8 for you, resetting your destination site’s database and content. Then, you can migrate your source site to the destination site again.

Alternatively, if you’re comfortable changing the database encoding of your source site, you can convert your source site to Latin1 and then re-run the migration. Our team can assist with your site migration but cannot help with changes to the database encoding on your source site.

A critical error on your destination site after a migration typically means that a conflict between a plugin or a theme carried over from the source site. Follow this guide on how to resolve common errors with plugins, or contact support for additional assistance.