The migration was fairly easy, but a it time consuming. First thing you need to do is get a hosted service an install WordPress.

If you had a registered Domain you were using WordPress.com sites, you’ll need to change your name servers before you can access your new installation. Change the namesservers from pointing to WordPress to point to you hosting solution. In my case it is Godaddy. It took about 4 – 6 hours for the DNS to propagate before I could access my new installation.

Next, you’ll need to export your blog data from WordPress.com (admin function unter tools). Log into you hosted version of WordPress and in the same tools area, import your data. That’s the easy part.

Now the more difficult things:

First, you need to find a theme (plenty of free ones out there) and install it. Installing in requires saving the theme to you local hard drive then FTP-ing the directory to you hosting server space.  The entire directory is copied to the themes folder under the WP-Content directory.  Once this is complete login into WordPress and activate you theme under the ‘appearence’ – ‘Themes’ section.

Next you’ll need to select the plug-ins you want to install.

Here are a few of my choices

• Akismet - for spam protection
• All in One SEO Pack - for search engine optimization
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - for HTML sitemap generation.
• Google XML Sitemaps - for XML based site maps that can be submitted to Google
• Permalinks Moved Permanently - allows me to use SEO friendly URLs – a must!
• Secure WordPress - a set of tools to help better secure you installation
• Ultimate Google Analytics - requires setting up a google analytics account, but the best way to track our stats
•  Youtube Brackets - for embedding youtube videos
• WordPress Database Backup  – another must.
• Smart Ads - for serving Google adsense
• Sociable - adds links to posts for bookmarking to social sites (digg, delicious,…)
• Top 10 - Displays top posts, plus dashboard widget.
• WordPress.com Stats - WP stats in your dashboard

Most of these plug-ins require some level of configuration, but they are well worth it.

- Steve Hart