Embedding element from one Wordpress site into another

September 28, 2016 12:45 PM

I manage a website hosted on wordpress.com -- which, annoyingly, does not allow uploading plugins. I manage another Wordpress website which is hosted elsewhere, and I can upload plugins there. Taking advantage of this second site, I created an accordion slider using a plugin which I would like to show on the wordpress.com site. Assuming this can be done, what's the best way to achieve it? (You can assume I have some, but not a ton, of experience with both Wordpress and HTML but very little with CSS.)
posted by karbonokapi to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Not possible, I'm afraid.

The way that Automattic (the company behind Wordpress) guarantees uptime and performance on Wordpress (the open source CMS) sites hosted on Wordpress.com is by using a severely restricted form of Wordpress, relative to the Wordpress that can be downloaded at wordpress.org. It makes it much more predictable to host at the cost of customization. Because of that, most of the customization that is available to you on a self-hosted Wordpress instance just isn't going to be possible on a Wordpress.com site.

If you need an accordion slider, the only way I can think of getting it is to find an approved theme that has it as an option.
posted by daniel striped tiger at 1:58 PM on September 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: There's no way to use an embed code to do this?
posted by karbonokapi at 3:00 PM on September 28, 2016

No, WordPress.com strips out most code (including iframe & embed) for security reasons.
posted by belladonna at 3:59 PM on September 28, 2016

The bigger question is probably "why would you want to do this?". Wanting to escape the rigidity of wordpress.com is a common issue and what usually happens is that you export the entire site on wordpress.com and import it into a second site hosted elsewhere that gives you more control. You can then throw away the original wordpress.com site.

The export and import site option in Wordpress doesn't erase anything (so if it doesn't work, you don't lose anything) and couldn't be simpler in my experience. You just choose the export option from My Site → Settings and select the Export tab to download a copy of your blog’s content. You can then upload this into a new site.
posted by unless I'm very much mistaken at 6:07 AM on September 29, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks, all! "Why would you want to do this?" was indeed the correct question and "to avoid kind of a hassle" was the (not very good) answer. I bit the bullet, wordpress.com gave me a refund, and I switched to a better host.
posted by karbonokapi at 12:39 PM on September 30, 2016