How to Properly Move from Medium to WordPress

After reading our WordPress vs Medium comparison, several readers asked us to how to move from Medium to WordPress. In case you were looking to switch from Medium to WordPress, this step by step guide will help you learn how to properly move from Medium to WordPress.

Before we start, here is a breakdown of all the steps that we will be covering in our Medium to WordPress migration guide:

1. Install and Setup WordPress


2. Export your Medium stories


3. Import Medium stories into WordPress


4. Import Images from Medium to WordPress


5. Setup redirects (If you have a custom domain on Medium)

Step 1. Install and Setup WordPress

Unlike Medium, WordPress is a self-hosted platform. This means that you own and control every aspect of your website.

The first thing you need to do is install and setup WordPress.

You will need a domain name and web hosting for WordPress.

We recommend using either Bluehost or SiteGround because both are official WordPress recommended hosting partners and are rated best WordPress hosting providers by WPBeginner.

Both of these providers understand beginners needs that’s why they are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 60% discount as well as a free domain name.

After signing up for hosting, you will need to install WordPress. We have a complete step-by-step WordPress installation tutorial.

Once you have installed and setup WordPress, you’re ready to migrate your content to WordPress.

Step 2. Exporting Your Data from Medium

Medium is an innovative publishing platform with many features that help you easily publish your stories. However, when it comes to taking away your data, currently they don’t have the best tools for it.

With the help of this tutorial, you will be able to move your articles from Medium to your WordPress website. However, you will not be able to import your followers, likes, and responses to your articles.

If you have a custom domain setup on Medium, then you might be able to manually setup redirects from your Medium publication to your WordPress site. However, you will have to do it manually for each article.

Having said that, let’s look at how to export your data from Medium.

Login to your Medium account and then click on your profile picture at the top right corner of the screen.

From the fly down menu, click on the ‘Settings’ link to access your Medium account settings page.

You need to scroll down a little to the ‘Export Content’ section and then click on the Download zip button.

This will bring you to the export content page. You need to click on the Export button. Medium will then prepare a zip file with your articles and email you the link to download it.

This email can take a while, so periodically check your inbox for an email from Medium. Inside the email message, you will see a link to download your export file.

Go ahead and download the zip file to your computer and then extract it.

Inside the extracted folder, you will find your Medium articles in plain HTML format, you will also find an XML file called medium.rss.

You are now all set to import your content into your WordPress site.

Step 3. Importing Your Medium Articles into WordPress

First, you need to visit Tools » Import page and click on RSS link.

This will bring up a popup to install the RSS Importer plugin. You need to click on the Install Now button to continue.

WordPress will now download and install the RSS Importer plugin on your website. You need to click on ‘Activate plugin and run importer’ link to continue.

On the next screen, you need to click on the choose file button and select the medium.rss file from your computer.

Click on ‘Upload file and import’ button to continue.

WordPress will now upload medium.rss file and import your articles. Upon success, you will see the number of articles imported as posts with an ‘All done. Have fun’ message at the end.

That’s all, you have successfully imported your content from Medium to WordPress.

Step 4. Importing Your Images From Medium to WordPress

The RSS Importer will not be able to import images from your Medium stories into the WordPress media library. Those images will still be visible, but they will be loaded from Medium servers.

We recommend that you import those images into your WordPress media library. To do this, you will need to use a WordPress plugin called Import External Images.

Watch the video below:

Alternatively, you can follow the text instructions in our guide on how to import external images into WordPress.

Step 5. Setting Up Redirects for Custom Domain

If your Medium stories had a medium.com URL, then you cannot setup redirects.

If you were using a custom domain for your Medium publication, then you can setup custom redirects in WordPress.

First you will need to get all URLs of all your Medium articles and save them to a text file. After that you need to start setting up redirects for all your articles.

There are multiple ways to setup redirects in WordPress. You can follow the instructions in our beginner’s guide to creating redirects in WordPress for detailed instructions.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you properly move from Medium to WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Move from Medium to WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

WordPress vs. Medium – Which One is Better? (Pros and Cons)

We are often asked by users why they should use WordPress instead of other free blogging services like Blogger, Ghost, Tumblr, etc? Medium is a fast growing free blogging platform that allows anyone to create stories and have their own personal space on the web. In this article, we will compare WordPress vs Medium with the pros and cons of each platforms.

Important: Please note that this comparison is between self-hosted WordPress.org sites and Medium, not WordPress.com vs Medium. Please see our guide on the difference between self-hosted WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.

1. Ownership of Your Content

Medium is a free online community where anyone can share their stories. It is easy to use, reliable, and has built-in social networking features.

However, you do not own Medium. It is owned by ‘A Medium Corporation’, and they can decide to shut it down, announce new pricing plans, or cancel your account at anytime.

On the other hand, WordPress allows you to own your own content. Since you host your own website, you have full control over your data and who you share it with.

2. Growing into Your Own Brand

When you are using Medium, you are promoting their brand along with your stories. You don’t get paid for that. If you are not a famous author, chances are that Medium users would remember reading a story on Medium without even remembering your name.

Medium is also a network which means content from other authors often get displayed as next stories below your own story. Taking your users away to read articles by other brands and authors.

On WordPress, you have full control on how you want to promote your brand. As your site grows in popularity, you alone decide how to capitalize on your content and brand recognition. Your content and ideas are recognized by your name alone.

Since you have full control of your WordPress site, you can do a lot more to increase the time users spend on your site.

3. Design Possibilities

Medium allows you to choose a layout for your publication. You add your own logo, background color, or image to the header. For layout you can choose grid or stream based layout. This drag and drop editor is very easy to use and offers multiple customization options.

However, still your publications appearance is limited to the choices available in Medium. You cannot choose your own design and layout for your website.

On the other hand, there are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available. These themes are designed by professionals with innovative designs and unlimited customization options.

WordPress gives you the flexibility to build a site that looks uniquely yours. If you can spend a little more, then you can hire designers and developers to create any kind of website imaginable.

4. Freedom to Move

Medium allows you to export your data in HTML format. This makes it difficult to export your data into other platforms like WordPress. Responses and likes on your articles cannot be exported.

Setting up redirects from Medium to WordPress is nearly impossible. Even if you are using a custom domain on Medium, you will still have to manually setup a redirect for each story on your new platform.

As an open source platform, WordPress gives you freedom to move all your content. You can import/export your data from WordPress using importer plugins.

You can also import/export users and comments. WordPress also comes with amazing backup plugins that allow you to restore and migrate your site to a new host or even a new domain name.

5. Support Options

Medium comes with extensive documentation and a ticket based support system. Currently, support is free for all users. Answers are provided by Medium staff and their response time depends on the number of support requests they have in pending.

WordPress is a community driven project. It powers more than 26% of all websites on the internet. Free community support is available through WordPress.org website. (See: why is WordPress free?)

Apart from that, you will find WordPress support on countless third-party platforms like StackExchange, YouTube, SitePoint, etc. See our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

WPBeginner itself is the largest WordPress resource site for beginners. We have hundreds of how-tos, tutorials, videos, and step by step guides to create any kind of website with WordPress. See our guide on how to make the most out of free WPBeginner resources.

6. Security

Medium is a fully hosted platform, which means you don’t need to worry about the software. Your content is served by highly secure Medium servers. Your private information is kept secure using the industry standard security measures.

WordPress is a self hosted platform. This means that you are responsible for safety and security of your website. WordPress is well-known for its quick response to security issues with immediate updates that are automatically installed on millions of WordPress sites.

At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri to protect our site against malicious attacks. Take a look at how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 of attacks in 3 months.

8. Future

Medium is a private company owned by ‘A Medium Corporation’. Currently, the company has limited monetization options offered by partnerships with select brands for fewer publishers. We don’t know for sure what the future holds for Medium. It can survive and make money, or it may disappear like dozens of other free content hosting services before it.

WordPress is an open source project, managed by a community of thousands of independent developers and users. WordPress Foundation protects the legal freedoms of WordPress which ensures that the project will continue even if core developers leave the project.

It has been around for more than 13 years and has grown into the largest content management system in the world. It is safe to say that WordPress is going to be around for years to come.

For more details, see our guide on who owns WordPress and how does WordPress make money?

Ready to get started with WordPress? Follow our step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog.

We hope this article helped you compare the pros and cons of WordPress vs Medium. You may also want to see our guides on the most common misconceptions about WordPress and Why is WordPress free?

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post WordPress vs. Medium – Which One is Better? (Pros and Cons) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Key Advantageous of Cloud Hosting for Small to Medium Businesses

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Introduction

The competitive advantage presented by href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-hosting-guides/a-brief-on-cloud-hosting/">cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been well documented over recent months, with the opportunity for a highly scalable service alongside excellent reliability and near 100% uptime proving to be key factors in such companies uptake of these services. Larger businesses have been able to roll out PaaS and SaaS to their sales forces and other arms of their operations – safe in the knowledge that they are receiving strong reliability, performance guarantees and 24 hour technical support.

However, as knowledge of such services gradually becomes more widespread, it is not only blue chip organizations that can benefit from the advantages that cloud hosting, PaaS and SaaS can bring to a business environment. Indeed, small to medium sized businesses are gradually beginning to take the plunge and begin to embrace these emerging technologies; seeing an opportunity for cost effective and secure solutions for their IT, software, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/">website hosting, system backup and electronic communication needs under 1 fully managed roof. Some of the potential advantages of such services for SMB’s are discussed below.

Cost Effective, Manageable and Scalable

By selecting a cloud hosting, PaaS or SaaS package that is tailored to the individual needs of their business, SMB’s can create uniquely bespoke, cost effective solutions that save money on “lump sum” direct costs (such as software licensing, servers etc), and instead replace them with more manageable monthly payments on fixed budgets. Bespoke software packages that are accessed remotely allow also small businesses to pay only for what they need and are easily scalable as a business grows.

Convenient, Secure and Reliable

With near 100% uptime and 24/7/365 expert support, cloud hosting services can allow SME’s to focus on the core aspects of their own operations with a minimum fuss, downtime, maintenance and hassle. With this greater reliability and continuity, there is also no need to call in an IT consultant every time there are any issues with your server – thus allowing for further time and cost saving opportunities and greater productivity.

Space Saving

Many small businesses simply do not have sufficient office space to house a large, bulky, in house server unit. The remote access available through cloud hosting services therefore gives SMB’s a much needed opportunity to save on precious office space and therefore maximise the potential of the small amount of room they have available for other more pertinent purposes relevant to the core aspects of their business.

Eco Friendly

By eliminating the amount of power consumption that may be used by in an house server and other electronic equipment and instead remotely accessing their hosting, data storage and backup facilities via the cloud platform, SMB’s can in essence become much more eco friendly and green in their day to day business operations – diminishing their carbon footprint while simultaneously saving money by reducing associated costs and electricity bills.

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