Support Documentation

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Sites at Penn State and WordPress, from basic WordPress features to theme and plugin set-up instructions.

Moving a Site

You can find step-by-step guides below that will help you move your site to WordPress.com, move to a self-hosted WordPress site, move between Sites at Penn State blogs, transfer your site ownership to another user, and redirect visitors to your new site.

Export Your Content

Go to ToolsExport in your Dashboard to download an XML file of your site’s content. This format, which we call WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, will contain your posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags.

Dashboard, Tools, Export

Download your Content to an XML file

Note: The export will not include the theme, customizations, or plugins. Themes and plugins are licensed and cannot be transferred outside of Penn State. You can, however, purchase the license(s) to the themes and plugins you prefer to upload to your new WordPress blog elsewhere.

Moving your site to WordPress.com

If you would like to move your Sites at Penn State WordPress site over to WordPress.com, you can follow the instructions on the WordPress.com’s support pages.

Moving to Self-Hosted WordPress (aka WordPress.org)

WordPress.com’s guide to moving your site will, for the most part, explain how to move your Sites at Penn State site to your own self-hosted WordPress installation.

Moving Between Sites at Penn State Blogs

The best way to move your site from one URL to a new URL is to request for a Site Clone to be performed. After you’ve cloned your site to its new location, you can set the privacy on your old site to be hidden (so you can keep a copy or essentially archive it) or you may delete your site permanently.

Transferring your site to Another User

Please refer to the Transferring Ownership documentation.

Setting Up a Redirect to Your New Domain

If you are moving your site to a new location either on the Sites at Penn State network or to another site hosted elsewhere, you can use the Safe Redirect Manager to forward your old site’s URL to its new URL.  Safe redirect manager plugin is automatically activated on all sites and you set up your redirections in Tools > Safe Redirect Manager by following these instructions.  

Delete Your Site

To delete your site from Sites at Penn State, please follow the instructions on our Delete Site page.