Moving to Gator from free Wordpress

[cuzzy]

I am sure this has been asked before but I was getting mixed messages from customer service so I wanted to double check before signing up.

Can HostGator

transfer my wordpress.com hosted blog

to a new domain of my own hosted here?

I have seen the transfer form and just want to double check that they will go in and move it all for me even though it is a free wordpress blog.

I understand I will have to set up wordpress etc but I am talking about the bare bones of transferring posts, comments, pictures etc.

Any help, tips or advice would be welcome. I have been trying to do it all with godaddy and it has been hell.

[Chimpie]

If you haven't already, email sales@hostgator.com or do a Live-Chat session. They'll be able to give you a direct answer.

[cuzzy]

I did that (twice) and I got two different answers.

one person said they could

one person said they should be able to but was not sure.

this is why I am questioning signing up.

[Goddess Dix]

you're not actually moving a website, so i wouldn't expect it to work like backign up a cpanel account, and restoring on the new server. there may be some confusion since, most of the time, the type of site you have makes no difference and so moving a "wordpress blog" site is just another site. but since it's not your site with your domain, but instead hosting on the wp site, they won't do it the normal way.

however, wordpress hosted blogs give you an export option. so you would create your new site at hg, export your posts there, and import them into your new wordpress blog. should still be fairly low on the pain scale.

good luck!

[danstrom]

Goddess is correct... Export to an xml file from wordpress.com and then import the file on your new blog at hostgator. only caveat is all users from the wordpress.com site must be already defined on the hostgator blog.