Note: This advice applies to moving a self-hosted WordPress blog to another WordPress blog on the same host.
1. Purchase and register your new domain. If you are on WordPress.org, you can find out if your hosting companies sell domains. Mine does, but I bought my new one from GoDaddy.com and had to redirect my name servers and move my domain to BlueHost. This part is easy and relatively painless. It can also be done pretty instantly.
2. Now, the actual moving of stuff. I Googled and I looked on the help forums within my hosting company to see what it involved. If you’re a tech idiot like me, all the language is fairly technical and the amount of information, overwhelming. You will find that many sources will give you different information on the best way to move your blog content without losing anything. This is because there are least 3 to 4 ways of moving your content over (4 if you’re on BlueHost).I won’t go into the technicalities, let’s just say you need a little know-how so you don’t stuff it up.
3. Point #2 is just to let you know – if you want to do it yourself, you can. You can also ask someone who knows how moving process works and help you out with it. Bear in mind to find someone who is friendly, professional and who is going to be patient with the upcoming questions from your side. They can help you move your posts, pictures and comments, but also fix all the broken links and redirect the whole site within couple of days. To make a long story short, if’ you’re not technical enough, make sure to find someone who will help you with moving the site or any other WordPress related issue you may have.
4. Next, make sure you check your Feedburner! Don’t change the feed address as you’ll lose all your subscribers, RSS and email.
5. Don’t forget to check your email subscription settings to ensure that the title of your posts delivered to inboxes reflect the change in your blog name.
6. If you want a blog specific email, you can set that up in your Control Panel at your host. BlueHost has a Google App Wizard which allows me to set up my email within Google (like a Gmail account) with just a couple of clicks.
7. Do you have a Facebook page for your blog? If you do and you have 200 or more likes, note that you CANNOT change the name on your page. Facebook only allows you to change the name if you have less than 200 fans. You can only submit a name change request for your page if it is for a business or product, and they may ask for documentation to prove this.
What you need to do is to set up your new Facebook page, inform your fans about it and ask them to like it in order for them to stay updated with the forthcoming content.
8. Don’t forget to go to all your social media accounts (Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Instagram and so on) and update the details of your blog name and URL to the new one, as well as blog commenting sign-in systems like IntenseDebate, Disqus, LiveFyre and your Google and Gravatar profiles (if you have one).