You have a site on WordPress’ multisite and you want to move it over to its own domain (www.example.com). How do you do that?
As always, when making major changes, first do a full backup of your multisite.
There is an article at wpbeginner.com that outlines how to do this in five steps. The five steps from that site are:
- Exporting a Single Site in WordPress Multisite Network
- Installing WordPress
- Importing Child Site to New Domain
- Setting up Redirection
- Troubleshooting the Migration
Prerequisites
Just a few comments before you begin. Do a full site backup. Be sure that you have decided on your permalink structure. Implement it on the multisite if you have not already done so. Both the new single site and the multisite need to be using the same permalink structure. Also be aware that your images may not be imported. That is okay because you can import them later in Step 5.
Step 1 – Exporting a Single Site in WordPress Multisite Network
Login to the dashboard of the single site you want to move, and then click on Tools -> Export. Ensure that all content is checked and click on the Download Export File button. WordPress will create an XML file containing all your data and send it to your browser for download. Save the file in your computer.
Step 2 – Install WordPress
The WordPress installation is not difficult, but I will not cover it here.
Step 3 – Importing Child Site to New Domain
Login to the WordPress Dashboard at the new website location and go to Tools » Import. On the import screen, WordPress will show you a number of import options. click on WordPress and then Install Now. Click on Activate Plugin & Run Importer. Upload the WordPress export file you downloaded earlier from WordPress multisite in Step 1. WordPress will now ask if you would like to import users as well. If you do nothing, then WordPress will import all users (which is recommended) if you do not want to change authors. Check Import Attachments so that WordPress can download images from your posts and pages (Don’t worry if it misses out some or most of your images. You can import them separately afterwards). WordPress will now start importing your content.
Step 4 – Setting up Redirection
You can use the Safe Redirect Manager plugin to setup redirection if you don’t like the code method. The code method involves adding just a few lines of code in your .htaccess file. To do this you may want to use FileZilla. The instructions are at the wpbeginner.com article mentioned above and will not be covered here in this post.
Step 5 – Troubleshooting the Migration
The article at wpbeginner.com lists a couple of common problems that can be overcome, such as an XML file that is too large or graphic files that did not get imported. Please refer to that article for more information.