how do I move existing wp blog into wp-based, self-hosted site?

In the Dashboard menu under Appearances select Menu

Add a custom link to the menu that points to your main site . If you want to include the entire main site menu, make a custom link for each page on your main site.

Put them in the correct order and Save.

Thanks, very much.

I can do that and it will look like they are all the same.

But is there a relatively easy way to really integrate the two into one wp instance and one wp dashboard? Right now I have two of everything — one wp install for the site, a second for the blog within that site.

Yes you can combine them.

If your home page content is currently a post not a page you have to copy its content to a new WordPress page called Home. That is because if it is a post the home page is configured as the blog (posts) page, and you want the posts page to be elsewhere.

Either way, make a new page called Blog. If the home page is now a post, also make a new page called Home.

Then go to Dashboard / Settings / Reading.
Set a static home page of Home and a posts page of Blog.

If using the WordPress menu system (Dashboard / Appearance / Menu) you will need to add these to the menu. Replace the existing Home option with the new page called Home, and the existing link to the blog with the new blog page.

Now you need to export your blog posts from the current blog
(Dashboard / Tools / Export) which creates a WordPress export file.

Then on the main site go to Dashboard / Tools / Import – you will have to install the import plugin as prompted – then specify the export file you created from the current blog which will load the blog posts into the main site.

If you want the blog URL to be https://starrline.com/starrtalk/ as it is now, you will have to take the existing blog offline as that URL is already being used by the second WordPress site. After you do that you can change the permalink on the new Blog page you made on the main site from /blog/ to /starrtalk/ which will assign the URL to the new blog.

A fast way to get the the old blog out of the way is using FTP change the name of the root blog folder /starrtalk/ to something like /starrtak-old/ Once you do that you will be unable to access the old blog in WordPress, neither the front end nor the admin area, so make that the last step after everything is working correctly on the new blog at the /blog/ url.

will give that a try — with backups first! thanks.

backup your database and your theme files!

Well, that mostly worked! The part about setting the dashboard/settings/reading with home page as static seemed to mess things up and make it so the homepage didn’t show up. I did rename my old index file as index-dec312011.html so it (presumably) would not work.

But even with that, setting the home page as the main static page made the site not show up.

But the blog moved! Had multiple blog pages going there for a while, apparently — url showed up as blog-2 and then blog-3, but I think I tweaked that away, too.

Thanks again for your help. Very appreciated.

Now I want to figure out how to insert a javascript piece that rotates 10 fabric images.

Any thoughts?

That is a whole other topic.

I suggest you Google for something like jQuery image rotator plugin. (A jQuery plugin is not the same as a WordPress plugin.) Most likely you will find some jQuery to do what you want.

If you find something suitable, there is material on the WP Codex about using jQuery on WordPress sites. If you need help installing it after reading those pages, I suggest you create a new WP forum post asking for assistance with that. This forum likes to keep things on-topic.

thanks and good luck

Take a look at this one: https://jacklmoore.com/zoom/