How to Move Blogger to Self-hosted WordPress
In this example, say that you have a Blogger blog http://yourblog.blogspot.com and would like to migrate it to Self-Hosted WordPress with custom domain name newdomain.com.
-
Get domain name and purchase a hosting account
-
You must have or register domain name newdomain.com
-
You must have a hosting account.
-
Install a temporary WordPress Installation
-
If you have EBiz Linux Hosting account, you can login to your cPanel > Fantastico De Luxe > WordPress and install a temporary WordPress installation. You may also download WordPress installer from WordPress.org and install it manually.
-
In this example we install it to directory “/blogtest”
-
This temporary Wordpress installation is used to import all your blog posts and comments and to test and see if all your blog posts and original Permalinks or URL’s are being maintained.
-
Import All the Post and Comments From Blogger to WordPress with Importer option.
-
Go to Manage > Import > Blogger
-
Authorize the Importing process by Clickling Authorize button.
-
Enter your Google User Name and Password.
-
Click the Grant Access Button
-
You’ll be shown a list of all the blogs you own on blogger and the number of posts and comments. Click the blog that you want to import.
-
Once you click the import button you’ll see a progress Bar as the comments and Posts get imported. Once its Done the Text in the Button gets changed to Set Authors button. Click the button.
-
You will see your blogger username (if you have multiple authors you see them too) select Admin (This is the default WordPress user) from the drop down list and click Save Changes button.
-
Changing Your URL (Permalinks or Post slugs) to Maintain Your Google Juice and Page Rank
-
Go to Settings > Permalinks
-
Change Common settings from Default to Custom
-
Fill out Custom Structure text box with /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
(This is to match the post structure in WordPress with former Blogger posts)
-
Checking Your URLs and Permalinks
-
Check your blog posts in WordPress if they are working fine.
For example, original URL is blogspot is something like
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/iwebhositng-launch-new-website.html
URL after importing to WordPress will be,
http://newdomain.com/blogtest/2006/10/iwebhositng-launch-new-website.html
-
-
Move Everything To Fresh WordPress Installation
-
After you check your WordPress installation and blog posts are working fine, go to your temporary WordPress installation dashboard
-
Go to Manage > Export and Click the Download Export File button. Download and save the XML file.
-
Install a fresh copy Of Wordpress. In this example, you would like the new blog has custom domain name in your new hosting account root directory. So you need to install the WordPress in your hosting account root directory. Again, you may install it through Fantastico De Luxe if you have Linux Hosting Account with cPanel.
-
Login to your dashboard of your fresh copy WordPress.
-
Go to Manage > Import > WordPress and import The XML file which you saved before.
-
Repeat step 4 to switch on permalinks in order to maintain your Permalinks or URLs.
-
Change over the URL
-
Back in Blogger, select Settings > Publishing.
-
Click the top link, “Custom domain.” Type in your new domain, www.newdomain.com. Save. Now all your links will transfer automatically to your own domain, but you’ll need one more step to transfer your blog home page over.
-
Still in Blogger, go to Layout>Edit HTML. Place the following code anywhere between <head> and </head>:
<meta content='0; url=http://YOURNEWURL.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>
-
This will sends visitors to your blog homepage directly to your new URL
Note:
- It will not import the images from your blogger.com. It will reference the images which are stored on Blogger server. So you will have to manually upload your image to a new photo sharing service such as Photobucket.com.
- It will import all your tags as categories. So suddenly you might have tons new categories import to your WordPress at the top level. You will have to manually change them to make it more meaningful.
- It will not import your sidebar links, widget, add-ons, css and layout. So you have to customize your layout in WordPress.
- It will not import your feed. You have to replace your old Blogger feed with the new Wordpress feed in your Feedburner dashboard.