WordPress.com has an import feature — but where’s the export feature (UPDATE – we now have it!)

Update: Export feature now exists!  Access it through Manage|Export menu – thanks wordpress.com!
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It’s great that wordpress.com offers the easy ability to import posts, comments, and trackbacks from other blogging systems. But I find it very surprising that there is no similar option to export your existing wordpress.com blog so that it can be imported elsewhere. Even TypePad provides users the ability to export any or all of their blogs.

At the very least I’d think that this feature would be available for those who start out blogging on wordpress.com and then realize that they would like to utilize the additional power and customizability of the full version of wordpress (available at wordpress.org) and host their blog on their own domain name. But as it stands now, unless I’m missing something (and if so, please let me know by commenting on this post!) if someone wanted to move from wordpress.com to a wordpress blog that they installed on their own server (so they could use adsense, plugins, additional themes, whatever) – they would have to manually copy and paste each entry and comment to create the new blog. That’s just insane!

I love wordpress.com and the community feel that comes with it. However, I think it is very arrogant and short-sighted to not provide an export option and assume that everyone who starts a wordpress.com blog will find it to be their perfect blogging solution – especially when the company’s own product, WordPress 2.0.2, offers users so much more flexability. (Although it also doesn’t seem to have an export option either…)