The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress
UPDATED 26 August 2009, with minor updates throughout, and a big change to step 3.
Want a full guide to setting up WordPress on BlueHost, an inexpensive, WordPress-recommended hosting company? Sign up for BlueHost with an affiliate link on this page, and email me (guide at mamablogga.com) for a free PDF guide on installation, set up, WordPress, add-ons and more!
I made the move from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress more than a year and a half ago. At the time, I wrote the original ultimate guide to migrating, but a few things have changed in the intervening months. So I present the fully updated, all new, ultimate guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress!
Be sure to check out my article on deciding and preparing to switch your domain. Once you’re sure you’re ready, then here are 10 steps to transferring your blog safely, completely and . . . well, awesomely. This method preserves your links, your subscribers, your comments and your content, and makes the move search engine safe.
Get the goods: a domain, hosting, and the WordPress software
1. Get a domain, preferably “yourblog.com.” Don’t own a domain? I use either GoDaddy or Bluehost for domain registration. Their prices are okay. I recommend three things here:
- Get private domain registration. No junk mail, no strangers getting your address from your whois info.
- If available, get yourblog.com , yourblog.net and yourblog.org. Sometimes GoDaddy offers a deal where you can get free private registration when you register 3 domains. (Then redirect .org and .net to the .com using account management. Select 301 redirects.)
- If you go with GoDaddy, search for “GoDaddy coupon.” Click on the first result and use whichever coupon will save you the most money (calculate out the % to see which one that is if you have to).
2. Get hosting. I recommend Bluehost.com; they came highly recommended and are a pretty good deal. Also, they’re one of WordPress’s recommended hosts and feature a very simple install for WordPress.
UPDATED 3. Install WordPress. With Bluehost, just login to your control panel, click on Fantastico under Addons/Plugins Simple Scripts under Software/Services, select WordPress from the list, and click the green Install Now button (under Install on an existing server—even if you’re importing your old blog, you’ll be using a new installation of WordPress). Fill in the forms and you’re done. If your host doesn’t have a similar install, you’ll have to install manually. It shouldn’t be too hard; WordPress gives you instructions (and they claim it takes five minutes!).
Prepare to transfer your feed: you don’t have to lose any subscribers
4. Blogger enables you to transfer your subscribers seamlessly as well. If you haven’t already, sign up for a FeedBurner account (if you need a walkthrough to FeedBurner, check it).
Then, login to Blogger and go to Settings > Site Feed. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter your new FeedBurner address. This will help redirect your subscribers.
Prepare your new WordPress blog: with some fun stuff
5. Login to your WordPress (might take a little time for the installation to “take”). Select “Options” then “Permalinks.” Select “Custom” and type this line in the box:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
This is to match the post structure of your Blogger blog, to minimize the number of broken links and redirects. (It’s possible to change this structure, too, of course, but it’ll take additional steps.)
Wendy Piersall has a few more steps to setting up your initial WordPress installation and getting it off the ground. All good steps!
Move your posts and comments
6. This is the easy part! In WordPress, go to Manage (Tools in WP 2.7+) > Import. Select Blogger from the list and enter your login information. This should automatically transfer all your posts and comments for you. 
However, some of your links won’t work anymore because Blogger and WordPress convert post titles into URLs differently—Blogger leaves out stop words like “and” and “the.” You can fix this, too, with another handy plugin, Redirection. Upload it, activate it and you can use it to easily track and redirect individual broken links (for example, from “/this-best-post-ever.html” to “/and-this-is-the-best-post-ever.html”).
There are also some other plugins to do this automatically. To get these (or any) plugins, in WordPress go to Plugins>Add New. Search for the plugins by name or related terms. (Searching for “blogger permalinks” brings up some plugins that can help with this and some of the other technical stuff.)
Transfer your feed: keep all your subscribers
7. Login to FeedBurner, go into the feed and click on “Edit Feed Details.” Change your Original Feed to http://YOURNEWURL.com/feed/ .
8. In WordPress, you’ll probably want to use FeedBurner as well, and if so, there’s another plugin to integrate the two services perfectly, FeedSmith, owned by FeedBurner (which is owned by Google).
Change over the URL: the final steps to move your blog
9. Back in Blogger, select Settings for the blog you want to transfer. Select Publishing. Click the top link, “Custom domain.” Type in your new domain, www.yourblog.com. Save. Now your links will transfer automatically to your own domain (though sometimes Blogger will show visitors a page to make sure they’re not being taken to a different site accidentally), but you’ll need one more step to transfer your blog home page over.
10. Still in Blogger, go to Layout>Edit HTML. Place the following code anywhere after <head>:
<meta content='0; url=http://YOURNEWURL.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>
This sends visitors to your blog homepage directly to your new URL, and, as Sebastian’s Pamphlets says, is a search-engine safe method of redirection.
Like the change in step 9, this can show visitors a warning page that they’re being taken to another domain. Some might think that it’s just as good to put a link to your new URL in your old blog and leave it up. However, it’s better for your search engine rankings to transfer it like this—if search engines see two copies of your content around the Internet, they may try to penalize one or both of your sites for “duplicate content.”
Be sure to test your main blog URL as well as some of your old post URLs to make sure everything is working, and of course, be subscribed to your feed to make sure that’s in order as well.
And you’re ready to blog on wit’ yo’ bad self.
Note: You might have to import your images to WordPress as well, but I haven’t.
Want a full guide to setting up WordPress on BlueHost, an inexpensive, WordPress-recommended hosting company? Sign up for BlueHost with an affiliate link on this page, and email me (guide at mamablogga.com ) for a free PDF guide on installation, set up, WordPress, add-ons and more! (Note: you must sign up with an affiliate link to receive the guide.)
Disclosure: the GoDaddy and Bluehost link is an affiliate link.
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[...] learned so much from Jordan at MamaBlogga about the ins and outs of blogging! She recently wrote The New Ultimate Guide To Migrating From Blogger To WordPress, and I’d recommend anyone who’s thinking about switching check it [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 amthis is one of the best explained steps to not only migrate old blogger accounts to wordpress, but for those new to the world of blogging on a domain they control. keep up the great work!
November 26th, 2008 at 8:24 amDo you happen to know if you purchased a custom domain on the Blogger page if you can take that with you to WordPress? I’m thinking about using WordPress instead of Blogger but I would hate to give up my domain name.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 amMy first impression is that you should be able to keep the domain. When you register a domain through Blogger, you’re actually using one of Google’s partners, GoDaddy (or possibly eNom). If you had to register with GoDaddy when you purchased your domain, you can sign in to GoDaddy with that information and change the nameservers easily.
If you didn’t register with GoDaddy, you will either have some DNS control within Google or you’ll have to write Google to have them unlock your domain so you can transfer it to another registrar (you can transfer it to your host, like BlueHost, too).
Does that make sense?
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 amMakes perfect sense, thank you. Are there any major benefits to move from Blogger to WordPress? My main reason for wanting to make the move is because the templates on WordPress seem a lot nicer.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 pmYou can find some pretty nice templates for Blogger, and you can hire out custom work pretty cheaply for either platform.
Here’s why I love WordPress, and I think the first point is really key: self-hosted WordPress can be made to do just about anything (through plugins or other customization). Blogger’s customization features are getting better, but they’re still behind WP’s.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:04 pmthis is amazing!!!!!
December 12th, 2008 at 1:55 amit was the coolest, easiest transition ever! thanks so much!
I do have a quick question… blogger won’t allow me to use timtabstudios.com/blog as a valid domain to foward my visitors to… do you know any way around it? blogger is just fowarding people to my site instead of my blog. Check it out http://www.timtabstudios.blogspot.com
a little more help would be greatly appreciated…
thanks
tim tab
@Tim—One option (though less than ideal) would be to use an intermediate redirect–have Blogger redirect to blog.timtabstudios.com and then redirect blog.timtabstudios.com to timtabstudios.com/blog . It’ll work okay for your visitors, but it might be a little messy.
December 12th, 2008 at 9:30 amGot my blogger blog all moved over to WP thanks to your help. I so appreciate your efforts on this. I probably wouldn’t have been successful so easily or quickly without you.
January 31st, 2009 at 8:57 pm[...] few articles online about how to get started with a WordPress blog. Mainly, I found everything at The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress (since my original plan was simply to move over and continue my personal blog) and A WordPress [...]
April 20th, 2009 at 7:35 pmAwesome!
A couple key questions given my situation and your expert opinion would be wonderful (very impressed with your site!). I recently started a new WP blog darwinsfinance.com and the results have been astounding. Search traffic coming in on day 1 and hit PR3 at first update. So much better than blogger and I’m not looking back. However, Everydayfinance is my initial blog and for now, I’ve kept both going. What I’d like to do is keep Everydayfinance (blogger platform) active since there’s still steady traffic and advertising commitments, but I want all the old content, comments, etc. to appear at a new WP-hosted blog and I’ll add from there (so yes, I’ll now be at 3 blogs, but each with a different focus and the blogger one will become legacy/low priority). Here are my questions:
1) If I leave the blogger blog active, but want to transfer all my content to a new one (Let’s call it BLOG-COPY), will BLOG-COPY be penalized for duplicate content in search rankings in the future?
2) Would BLOG-COPY have all the internal links that used to exist at everydayfinance pointing back to everydayfinance or will the steps you outlined now force the internal links to redirect into BLOG-COPY?
3) Once I get some new incoming links and establish authority, will Google search start to pick up traffic from content in my old posts? The reason I ask is that with the improved permalink structure and SEO plugins I can use with WP, I envision I could get mass traffic from my old content, if only I had it right in WP.
4) Can you outline what steps I should skip or alter from your post above if I want to follow this method of leaving the old blog active and just transfer the content/comments to a new blog? For instance, I don’t want to redirect from my old blog to BLOG-COPY automatically, need to keep the old one active.
5) On your permalink recommendation, I’m concerned about the long term permalink structure – best to start with postname as you know. Can I just structure it that way and let old external links coming in still go to my old blogger blog, but new posts I make will have the pretty permalink structure? Or do you recommend following your step above and then switching the permalink structure once the transition is complete? Sorry if I didn’t frame right, but I think you’ll get the gist.
Lots of questions; hopefully you can help me and all the other struggling Bloggers out there looking to take the leap!
April 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm1.) Probably. Possibly. If the search engines feel like it.
2.) Links will redirect to BLOG-COPY.
3.) On BLOG-COPY? Links are going to be most important, then on-page factors like title and content. Permalinks (and by this I assume you’re referring to using keywords in the URL) probably aren’t going to make or break your Google ranking. They may make a slight difference, but it’s probably not going to vault you onto the first page of Google where you’re normally on page 10. So not redirecting your old links is going to cripple BLOG-COPY.
4.) All right, here’s what I would probably do to try to avoid the duplicate content penalty: don’t do the custom domain or the meta refresh listed above. Use the WP import function above to get posts and comments onto BLOG-COPY. In Blogger, go to Settings>Let search engines find your blog and select no to keep your blog out of search engines. Unfortunately, your links would still only point to the old posts this way.
5.) The permalink structure outlined here is designed to make sure your existing links don’t break. If you don’t care about existing links going on to your new blog, then you can do whatever you want. (I would still block search engines from your old blog to avoid dup content, or consider the new canonical URL tag.) It’s probably not going to significantly impact your SEO if you have the year and month in there, though it may date your content. Once you’ve set it, don’t change the permalink structure unless you have something in place to redirect it (like the Redirection plugin from Urban Giraffe; can’t remember if this is automatic with WP with these days, but it might be).
April 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm[...] The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress @mamablogga.com [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 amThis is amazing…
I think mentally I am making it harder than it is. Well, actually I have lost patience for computer stuff since having the kids!!!
Can you use WP to blog from your mobile (ie: Blackberry)?
May 28th, 2009 at 3:08 pm@Jennifer—I think so. If your mobile browser can load PHP, it should work.
Alternatively, you can set up WP (or Blogger) to accept email posts.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:25 pmI have my own domain hosted by blogger. I want to switch to wordpress, the thesis theme, and a hosting service.
I’m afraid though that I will lose my photos or that they will not make the transfer to wordpress. I have thousands of photos and it would be a real pain to have to upload them all again to wordpress.
Also when I create the wordpress blog do I immdiately add the thesis theme before importing or after?
I wish I would have gone with wordpress in the beginning.
thanks!
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 pmI’ve never had to transfer my photos on my old posts; they’re still hosted on Picasa/Blogger.
It doesn’t make a difference whether your install the theme or import the blog first, but I’d install the theme first.
Good luck!
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:31 amVery informative post. I managed to migrate my blog from blogger to WP successfully, but had one problem.. The WP import tool did not import the “Comment_author_email” and “comment_author_url” fields for the comments. Is there any way I can get the info from blogger to WP.
June 9th, 2009 at 12:54 pmNow, it’s been a while, but my experience was that you had to enter those fields manually, especially since Blogger doesn’t store those in its comments. Even if the importer did try to take that info from your Blogger comments, it would only link to the comment authors’ Blogger profiles (unless, of course, they went to the trouble of using the Name/URL option when making their comments).
There’s no way to get those email addresses (unless the comment authors have them on their Blogger profiles). If you want their blog URLs, you’ll have to go through and find them manually via their profiles, unfortunately.
June 9th, 2009 at 1:14 pmThanks Jordan! Not what I wanted to hear tho
June 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pmBe careful about migrating from blogger to wordpress because the process will *not* import your images. Those are still hosted on blogger. And I have been told, although I am far from being ready or brave enough to test this, that if you delete your blogger blog, you’ll lose all your photos. If you don’t delete it, you well may have a dupe content problem. So, the images thing is something to figure out.
BTW, this is a great guide to an unintuitive process. Thanks!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:50 amThanks, Blake. The article does note that WP doesn’t import your photos automatically. I’ve never had a problem with using the img srcs from Blogger since my import.
I don’t recommend you delete your Blogger blog or keep it the way it was, but use the custom domain feature in Blogger to redirect to new posts. This eliminates both problems you point out—it keeps the images and doesn’t trigger search engines’ duplicate content filters.
HTH!
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pmHi,
Just wanted to stop by and let you know that this proved to be a valuable resource for the exercise I’ve just carried out; combining four Blogger/Blogspot blogs into a single WordPress blog.
Not everything was relevant, as I wasn’t doing a straight one for one migration, but your tutorial was far more helpful than anything else I came across.
Thanks again.
“Maskil”
June 29th, 2009 at 11:59 am@Russell—Glad to hear it! Happy to help and best of luck!
June 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pmHi there. A friend turned me on to this post as I’m about to migrate myself. However I see nothing mentioned about the backlinks and SEO being successfully transferred if you move from blogger to WP in this manner. Am I right to assume I will lose all backlinks and PR that I’ve accumulated with my blogger blog? And if so, how can I manage to keep my backlinks with a move? I know it involves a 301 redirect, but I am kinda newbish and have no idea what that involves, and if the 301 redirect can be used with this migration method.
By the way, this is easily the best and most well laid out method I’ve seen for moving my blog, and I’ve been searching forever! So thank you!
August 6th, 2009 at 6:57 pm@Peter—No, you’re not right to assume you’ll lose backlinks and PageRank. Actually, that’s exactly what a 301 redirect is for—it keeps your links intact and transfers the authority your blog has accumulated. A lot of this is explained more in depth in Safely move your blog.
Blogger has now added an interstitial page when someone clicks on the link to warn them that the domain has moved, but other than that, everything should transfer pretty smoothly, though there might be a few glitches with stop words (when creating the URL for a post, Blogger leaves out ‘to’ automatically and WP doesn’t, for example) and too-long URLs (Blogger cuts off the URL in a post a lot shorter than WP does).
Glad to help!
August 6th, 2009 at 7:21 pm[...] Need advise from a blog expert… Paulo, it is pretty easy to do. The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress | MamaBlogga Not my site but she shows in easy steps how to do it. Real easy to do and FREE. Don’t pay for it. [...]
August 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm[...] blogs, add-ons and more! (If you’re planning to import another blog, also check out my search-engine friendly guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress to make your switch safe and [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 3:15 pmGreat guide, this might come in handy for me in the near future!
October 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pmI just wanted to say thanks for this post. I migrated from Blogger two days ago, and this blog was integral to my success. I’ve run into some problems with “Redirection,” so I had to manually update my permalinks, but that didn’t take too long, and I’m not fully moved to the new space.
Thanks for the help!
October 9th, 2009 at 12:05 amHi there. Me again
Just wondering if it’s possible to move a blogger blog like this to a wordpress site that I already have up and running, or if I must do this to only a fresh install?
I ask because funnily enough I was too intimidated with trying this before reading your advice, so I just simply began another wordpress blog with the same topic and it is now ranking around the same position as my blogger. I hope to be able to combine the two, but I don’t want this to cause any issues in my ranking for either.
October 9th, 2009 at 6:37 am@Beej—Happy to help!
@Peter—Yes, you can import to an existing WordPress installation. You’ll just want to make sure you have the permalinks turned on. Good luck!
October 9th, 2009 at 8:14 amThank you so much for all of this fabulous info! I’m having a problem with my permalinks and am wondering if you might have an answer. I used the custom format (/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html) that you gave and some of my posts in WP are now different than they are in blogger. In blogger some of my posts with longer titles are shorter in the permalink, whereas WP is using all of the words. Do you know a way to fix this without going in and fixing each one manually?
October 31st, 2009 at 10:03 amI believe there is a way to do this—if you wanted to learn Apache and manually edit your .htaccess file. (I did this when I changed over to strip out the year and month info, but it took a long time to learn and can be pretty scary—you can mess up your site pretty bad if you do it wrong.) You can try that, or it might actually be easier and faster just to fix the post titles by hand.
October 31st, 2009 at 10:34 amThanks so much for this guide! I recently migrated from Blogger to Wordpress and this post was an invaluable resource. I gave you a shout-out.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:43 pm[...] just probably a lot smarter and more patient than me. The most helpful site I found was the “New Ultimate Guide“, randomly, on MamaBlogga.com (who would have guessed that a site based on “a [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 9:47 pmYesterday I migrated my blog from Blogger to WordPress. I used your post here as my primary guide. It is incredibly useful and helpful. I’ve also given you a “thanks” on my blog and also writing to you here to say THANKS!
My one problem is that when I migrated everything over, the posts all came, links seem okay, and most if not all of the photos also came. But none of the comments! Anyone have any tips on that?
November 18th, 2009 at 4:57 pm[...] This blog post has been incredibly helpful in the migration. [...]
November 18th, 2009 at 5:04 pm@Spike—I’m glad it worked for you!
I’m not sure what happened to your comments; I haven’t heard of this problem before. Did you have them through another service, like Haloscan?
November 18th, 2009 at 10:33 pmNo I hadn’t done anything like Haloscan or anything else non-standard with the comments. The program runs, I see the progress line, all the posts come over, comments transferred remains at 0 and it’s done. I’ve asked a friend of mine to poke through Wordpress support forums and he says he’s seen messages from others who had problems importing comments but no solutions.
November 19th, 2009 at 2:42 amStep 2: Why do I need a domain name AND hosting? What is hosting? Do I already have it if I got my google name through google apps (and godaddy)?
Step 3: Where do I need to/how do I install Wordpress using google apps site manager
I have a blogger blog, and a wordpress account and my own domain name on godaddy via googleapps (but I haven’t connected the three yet). I’d like to migrate my blogger blog exactly as is over to wordpress (keeping the same template, layout, images, posts, etc) while simultaneously putting the new wordpress blog on my new domain. It seems like this tutorial is how to do just that, but I’m still confused about the things I mentioned above,and about some other stuff (like importing my subscribers) but I think if I figure out those two main things, the rest should come easy.
November 26th, 2009 at 2:30 pmSorry about the delay in responding, Julia, I was offline for the holiday (and then really sick).
You need a domain name so people can point their browsers to your site; you need hosting to store the files so that people can see them when they access your domain. You definitely already have a domain name if you got a domain name (yourdomain.com) through GoDaddy and Google. As far as I know, Google doesn’t offer hosting, though they do offer limited services with Google Sites.
Although I’ve used Google Apps, I’m not sure what you mean by Google Apps site manager. Are you using Google Sites? If so, then you can’t use WordPress there. Are you using Google Apps for Your Domain? That also won’t let you run WordPress.
Keeping the exact same template and layout can be challenging in the change because the two platforms are so different. It will take some coding experience to create the exact same layout.
However, you should be able to import the rest of the content from both blogs onto a domain once you have a hosting package that will let you use WordPress. (I recommend BlueHost.)
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:22 amThanks for this helpful post. Is it possible to transfer your comments if you’ve been using haloscan, not the blogger comment format?
December 5th, 2009 at 12:02 pmApparently it’s a little challenging, but you might try this: http://justinsomnia.org/2007/11/importing-haloscan-comments-into-wordpress-23-from-blogger/
Good luck!
December 5th, 2009 at 3:39 pmthanks! Very appreciated. Not sure I’m up for it though. Haloscan may have anchored me to blogger.
December 5th, 2009 at 3:48 pmExcellent tutorial, I just completed the migration. It worked without a glitch. Thank you!
December 27th, 2009 at 11:12 pm[...] followed MamaBlogga’s tutorial. It worked without a glitch. This entry was posted in blog style and tagged blog migration, [...]
December 28th, 2009 at 8:15 amHi, I am using Blogger since Sep 2008 and my blog has been redirected to own domain .com on July 2009. I just signed up GoDaddy hosting and planning to migrate my Blogger blog to WP with own hosting.
I purchased the .com domain from Godaddy via Blogger and the Domain Setting via Google Apps but I signed up Godaddy hosting using another login username, is there any problem for migrating my .com blogger blog to WP in own hosting by changing the “servername” in the domain to Godaddy hosting? Where can I find the Godaddy hosting’s servername?
Can u guide me what should I do first because this is the first time I have an own hosting? I tried to follow your instructions above but I actually stuck at the first step. Do I need to change the “servername first” or add existing .com domain name to hosting first or install WP first…?
How to install WP in Godaddy hosting, any idea? I can’t see the “control panel” in my hosting, where to find?…so many questions and so sorry because I’m totally new, I don’t know how to start, please help! Thanks so much.
January 5th, 2010 at 9:42 pmYou’ll probably want to contact GoDaddy to merge your two accounts (I did that; it’s very easy). You’ve already got the nameservers set to Google to show your Blogger blog, so you may have to switch that off, unless they want to do it automatically to switch to your GoDaddy hosting.
GoDaddy Help has an article on how to set up WordPress: http://help.godaddy.com/article/834 .
January 5th, 2010 at 10:13 pmHi Jordan, thanks for replying me. I’ve done the setup followed your link to Godaddy’s help page and installed the WP as well. Now will try to migrate my blogger blog to WP follow your instructions in this post. Hope I don’t face any problem to migrate
Thanks so much!
January 8th, 2010 at 5:45 amHi Jordon, I faced another problem: My blog holidays-in-bali.blogspot.com was redirected to own domain bali-holidays.info earlier. Now when I go to WP tool – import and access to my Blogger account, the site bali-holidays.info shows no post 0/0 but there are actually around 20 posts there, so I can’t import anything, how should I do now? Appreciate your help. Thanks so much!
January 8th, 2010 at 7:18 amDid you resolve this? I checked your site and it looks like you got the posts imported just fine. If not, then, if I remember correctly, you may have to switch off the custom domain in Blogger to import the posts, then turn it back on once the posts are in place.
January 8th, 2010 at 8:58 amThanks for the tutorial…I’m still on edge as to wanting to change or not.
I’m curious, are all of the steps still the same if I already have my own custom domain and already use that custom domain on blogger (www.reallyareyouserious.blogspot.com goes to http://www.reallyareyouserious.com)?
January 8th, 2010 at 8:18 pmKrystyn—I know I’ve dealt with that before, but I’m trying to remember how we resolved it. I think (as I said in the comment above) that we switched the blogspot blog back to a blogspot address before we changed the nameservers on the domain, and then picked up at step 3. Then you’ll want to switch the custom domain back on later in the process.
January 8th, 2010 at 8:37 pmHi Jordon, I have solved the earlier problem by exporting blogger xml file of my blogspot blog and converted it to WXR format, then import the file to WP. Everything works well. Now I want to migrate my largest blog, it has around 2000 posts and the export xml file is around 11MB, which is very large. My problem now is I can’t even convert the xml file to WXR for WP coz the “converter” only allowed file below 1MB. Also heard that WP not allowed us to import(upload) large file, is it true? In this case, how to migrate large blog (11MB) from Blogger to WP? Any idea and advice? Thanks.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:18 amYes, there’s an upload limit of 2MB on WordPress (for most files; imports may be a different story).
If the problem is the same as before, I’d recommend switching off your custom domain on Blogger (going back to a blogspot address), then using the import tool on WordPress to see if that works.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:25 amHi, Jordon, before I can try your suggestion, I face another problem: my blogger blog is using own domain, I’ve added the domain to my hosting and installed WP, also changed the nameservers to my hosting’s default setting. I also deleted all the previous default DNS setting(Google) in my domain. Now when I entered my domain url, it shows “broken link” page instead of a “welcome” page in WP. I found something weird also, when I entered my domain url with www (http://www.funkydowntown.com), there is a Blogger favicon (orange B) in the address bar but for url without www (http://funkydowntown.com), there is no Blogger favicon. Why can this (Blogger favicon) happens? The Blogger favicon should not appear anymore, right? Normally it takes how long to show up the welcom page in WP for old domain just changed the nameservers? My previous one domain for another blog took me about 3-4 hours to get the WP page, this time is longer time to wait. I’m afraid I have something not done yet in the process to add the old domain to own hosting and change nameservers, hope to hear from you. I will still trying to find whether I miss out any part while waiting your reply…thanks!
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:37 amThe favicon is just something your computer brings up from its cache. They’re notoriously slow to change. It doesn’t appear on my computer (and the non-www version redirects to the www version automatically when I try it, though neither work).
My only guess here would be if you installed WP in a folder (http://www.funkydowntown.com/wordpress). DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to take effect.
Beyond that, I’m sorry, I just can’t tell from here what’s causing this problem. If your domain and your hosting are from GoDaddy, they’re probably better equipped to troubleshoot here.
Sorry I’m not more help.
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:46 pmHi, Jordan, it’s fine if you can’t help on this issue, you’d provided me many useful tips, you are better than Godaddy, they replied me with not relevant answer
I would like to ask some general questions:
1. Normally it takes how long to wait after nameservers changed(pointing) to another servers? 24 hours, 48 or 72 hours?
2. Is the broken link page you saw http://funkydowntown.com (with or without www) consider a “normal” page while waiting for propagation?
3. Another question, do I need to input the server IP address in my domain setting, anyway I didn’t do that for my earlier migration, just wondering?
Thanks Jordan, looks like I have to sit tighly & cross my fingers to hope the site will be visible within 48 hours, which I assumed this is a “normal” waiting period. Thanks Bro for your reply and nice to “meet” you here
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:39 pmHave you tried live chat for customer support? They’ve always been pretty helpful to me.
1. The max should be 72 hours.
2. I don’t really know what’s happening behind the scenes; I was redirected to my ISP’s search page, as I am for sites it doesn’t think exists.
3. No, you shouldn’t have to input the IP address. The DNS is designed to automatically direct to the IP.
(You’re welcome, but I’m a “she.” The “Mama” thing, and all.)
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:15 pm[...] mamablogga.com – The ultimate guide to migrating from blogger to wordpress [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 6:22 pmI have a blogger blog that I’m thinking about exporting to Wordpress. Now, I already got a custom domain through Blogger complete with the Google Apps account. How would the transfer process be different given this factor?
January 28th, 2010 at 8:52 am@Shaun—It kind of depends. To continue using Google Apps, it looks like you’d have to set up your blog on wordpress.com (as opposed to using self-hosted WordPress.org) and import your posts through their import function, then redirect your domain to your wordpress.com domain. Then to make sure that works, according to a page on the WP forum, you should:
1) Log into your google account through the Webmaster Tools Page.
2) Add your site
3) Go to the Statistics tab and click on the link that says verify.
4)In the web master tools section select “Upload an HTML file” as your method of verification.
5) Create a new page (not a post) and use the code they give you as the title. Example of the code:
google4f645e3adsdaa48g3a41z.html
6) Click to publish it.
7) Ask Google to verify your Blog.
If you want self-hosted WordPress (a lot more customizable), you’ll want to look for a full hosting account. WordPress (and I) recommends BlueHost (aff). It’s <$10/month.
January 28th, 2010 at 9:30 amAmazing information! I was very nervous about trying to make the change but it was so easy following your directions! I now have your blog saved to my favorites and I will be following! Keep up the great work!
January 30th, 2010 at 5:47 pm[...] frankly if I’d had to do that, I’d rather switch to WordPress and maintain control over the hosting. Not that I don’t like Blogger, but because there is so [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 11:19 amThx for this great tutorial! I followed your instructions & now Im up & running on Wordpress.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:17 pm[...] to make the Blogspot jump yourself–and it’s highly recommended–check out this useful guide as a jumping-off point. Officially, we used a meta redirect, but what really got this site pumping [...]
February 5th, 2010 at 1:25 am@Tafari—That’s great! So glad it went smoothly!
February 5th, 2010 at 10:12 amThis is a great tutorial but I am stuck on the importing posts and comments stage. At a certain point 1/294 posts and 394/4000 comments, it stops and the button changes from “importing” to “set authors”. Any chance you know the fix for this??
February 6th, 2010 at 7:33 am@Mardi— :\ I’ve heard of a couple reports of problems with the importer—I think it’s a problem with WordPress.
Searching the WordPress Support Forums, I see many people having the same problem ( http://wordpress.org/search/import+blogger?forums=1 ). There are some code patches suggested, as well as trying to import your blog to a WordPress.com blog, and then importing your WordPress.com blog to your WordPress.org blog (and deleting the WP.com version).
Hope that helps!
February 6th, 2010 at 10:03 amGreat tutorial – transition was pain less and I have planned to link to this tutorial from my blog as a way fo saying thank you. Only thing which didn’t happen was that comments did not come across. Is there any way of getting the comments to come across too?
February 12th, 2010 at 5:29 am@Sam—Thanks! I’m glad it worked well (mostly). A couple other people have mentioned problems transferring comments and it may be a persistent problem. I’ve heard that you could re-try the import, and WP should skip or delete any duplicate posts, but beyond that I don’t think the problem has been resolved. You could check out the WordPress Support Forums to see if they’ve resolved this or found a workaround yet: http://wordpress.org/support/ Good luck!
February 12th, 2010 at 11:34 am[...] quick search turned up these highly-recommended instructions on migrating to Wordpress from Blogger, and in fact Blogger importing is part of the standard [...]
February 18th, 2010 at 12:47 am[...] – How to Back Up your Blogspot Blog – How to Recover Your Deleted Blog – Transferring from Blogger to Wordpress [...]
February 19th, 2010 at 1:49 pmWhen you set a “Custom domain” in “Publishing” settings on Blogger, it will show
February 21st, 2010 at 8:48 amWhen you set a “Custom domain” in “Publishing” settings on Blogger, it will show a redirection warning for all pages, including the homepage. So no need to make the redirection code as it will be invisible.
I did this for my blog http://omarjallouli.com but google still ranks my old blog pages better than the new ones.
)
February 21st, 2010 at 8:51 am(And sorry for the first unfinished comment
[...] “Tools” section of the WordPress dashboard. Best of all, things to some advice from this article, I’ve even managed to preserve all my old [...]
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:19 amGreat post and thanks! Will this work for Blogger blogs that have been using their FTP publishing option? I already have a host and have been using Blogger to publish to it…
March 5th, 2010 at 11:58 am@Ethan—I haven’t tried it, but I think so. You might have to switch off the FTP publishing option before you do the import.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:04 pmJordan, you are so good to write this terrific piece AND to respond to the many comments. What a lot of work, even months after publication!
My Blogger blog is published via ftp and I will have to migrate it to a new custom domain URL or a blogspot URL by May 1st. All my files are at my Bluehost-hosted mydomain.com/blog already and I’m wondering if there’s anything I should know before installing WordPress. Is it enough to have mydomain.com/blog in place and can I use that as my url? Please tell me it will be super easy
Thanks a million.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:17 pmThanks, Mary! I think you should be able to install WordPress in mydomain.com/blog, but it depends on what kind of files you already have there—it might replace some of your files. The only other problem you might have is that Blogger Custom Domain won’t do redirects to subdomains. :\
March 16th, 2010 at 3:52 pmThanks Jordan. I did the move today and thought it went fine – I had to first turn off ftp publishing and move to a blogspot url in order to import the old blog into WP. Then I spent the remainder of the day’s brainpower customizing the style sheet and getting things just so.
THEN I started clicking on the archive links and discovered a big mess. Some files got moved, some didn’t, some comments got moved and some didn’t. Some links to posts take me to the old blog. Some images moved and some didn’t. I can only hope that the solution will come to me in the morning!
March 19th, 2010 at 7:09 pm[...] to this here Word Press. I used an extraordinarily useful resource from MamaBlogga called The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress. I would have been lost without [...]
March 20th, 2010 at 6:53 am[...] Blogger to this here WordPress. I used an extraordinarily useful resource from MamaBlogga called The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress. I would have been lost without [...]
March 22nd, 2010 at 1:04 pm[...] http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/ [...]
April 6th, 2010 at 5:24 amI read all the comments, and Im kinda stuck. Really Apreciate this post, helped alot. Im still stuck though :/
Blogger: http://www.djtexxxas.com
Wp: http://www.riddimhunter.com
Basically I did every thing, except step 7 feedburner.
when i go to blogger and put my new site riddimhunter.com it tells me
“The DNS record for your domain is not set up correctly yet. If you just purchased this domain the set up process may take up to a day. Learn more. ” is this whats missing?
if you go to http://www.djtexxxas.com/2009/10/feminine-riddim-2009.html it does not transfer you to the new site
April 20th, 2010 at 10:11 amThanks
That warning means that your DNS records don’t point back to Blogger, which they won’t. For me, the domain still redirects (although they added an interstitial page about a year or two ago).
When I click on your link, it does redirect for me.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:38 pmMy blogger blog got deleted again apparently for spamming..Thou I know that there aren’t any spamming on my site. With this repeated deletions, I have decided to migrate to WordPress.
My Google and Blogger accounts are still accessible, but the blog was deleted a few days ago.
Here are my info:
I bought my domain at GoDaddy thru Blogger last Jan.2010
Blogger is hosting my site
My blog got deleted a few days ago but is not spam (still awaiting result of review)
Here are my questions:
1) How to get my domain out of blogger’s hosting and transfer it to BlueHost?
2) If ever my blog gets restored, would I be able to transfer all my blog posts without losing my Google and Alexa Rankings?
3) i have backed up my posts and downloaded xml. If my blog will not be restored,can I repost my articles on WordPress and won’t be penalized for duplicate contents?
Thanks in advance for helping a newbie..
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:38 am@EihdraG—I’ve heard of that happening before (and if I remember correctly, I think it happened to me once on Blogger, and they did restore my blog).
1. To get your domain, I *think* this page can help: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/04/managing-your-custom-domain.html
2. Alexa doesn’t do the transfer, but Google should recognize the transfer fairly quickly.
3. If the content isn’t available on your old site anymore, then there’s no reason to be penalized as duplicate content. But the steps above should make sure you don’t have a problem with duplicate content either way. (Although we should always note that this is one of those “black box” things in search engine algorithms—we can’t say for certain how it works.)
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:56 pmWhen I go into WP’s import tool, it shows me the target Blogger blog I’m trying to migrate, but it tells me there are no posts/comments there. This blog has over 3,000 posts, so it’s obviously not reading them somehow. Any ideas? The site is hosted at GoDaddy and published by FTP through Blogger. Thanks in advance.
April 22nd, 2010 at 2:29 pmI think you’ll have to switch off FTP publishing to do the transfer. Good luck!
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:09 pm[...] used the instructions found at this tutorial for a guideline of what needed to be done. http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/ It was a bit more challenging then that, as first I had to migrate my blogger FTP blog to a blogger [...]
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:31 pmThanks for your reply. I have other questions. Pardon me for being naive as I am still a newbie at this.
1. If my blog at Blogger will not be restored, I won’t be able to get the permalinks, right? So, I have to say goodbye to the backlinks and PR?
2. I have backed up my articles, so since they deleted it, you said that I will not be penalized for duplicate content if I repost it on Wordpress.But, would my articles still show when searched in search engines but then point to a dead link?
3. Can you point me to a tutorial on how to still use my domain at wordpress but will be hosting it at Hostgator?
4. I see my domain name is locked with Google, so how do I unlock it to be able to use it again and host it somewhere than Blogger?
this is really frustrating. Just when i finally got my well deserved PR and lots of backlinks and a million drop down on Alexa and this has happened to me now. I have been thinking of switching to wordpress but have put it off. I know I should have followed my instinct and went ahead and switched a long time ago..
Thanks again in advance for your response..
April 24th, 2010 at 3:15 amHi Jordan-
Me again. Curious if you know this. Right now, I have a custom domain for my blogger account. Can I get a host and install WP on a subdirectory and mess with it and customize it there while leaving my blog on the custom domain? Does that make sense?
Thanks for your help.
April 25th, 2010 at 11:25 amtried migrating from blogger to wordpress and during the import process in wordpress i encountered this error message: “Unable to find the socket transport “ssl” – did you forget to enable it when you configured PHP? (0)” any thoughts on what i’m doing wrong?
April 25th, 2010 at 12:06 pm@EihdraG—Yeah, I know how frustrating that is. If you have no access to your blogspot blog, then the permalinks won’t pass along. It’s possible that if you get control of yourblog.blogspot.com, the permalinks would work again, even if the posts themselves aren’t restored.
Google grooms out dead links from their index. But if the links can redirect to your new posts, they’ll all be okay.
I’m not sure what you mean in your third question—you’re running WordPress on Hostgator, right? Hostgator says they use Fantastico. See step three in the original ultimate guide for how to use Fantastico: http://www.mamablogga.com/the-original-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/
You’ll have to contact Google, I believe. I found this article with Google: http://www.masskash.com/tag/google-blogger-domain-name/
@Krystyn—Should be totally fine!
@AlexP—See if these help: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/286296
April 25th, 2010 at 1:22 pm[...] you happen to be thinking of moving from blogger to a personally hosted blog, this guide should prove helpful. It helped me [...]
April 25th, 2010 at 2:07 pmHi again Jordan,
April 26th, 2010 at 10:11 amI have already set up my WP blog and publishing under the same domain. i just have to set the DNS to point at Hostgator. Guess, I won’t be needing the permalinks afterall.. i dunno what happened or what I did, but I retained the PR and Alexa transferred on my WP blog. Though the comments as well cannot be imported.But at least, it wasn’t a hard transition..
Thanks, with your post and help, it’s a relieve to be able to post without fearing of deletion again..Not that my blog is indeed a spam..lol..
Again, many thanks, most specially for the helpful responses..
[...] if they have gotten any links. To make the change as seamless as possible, there is information at MamaBlogga and Techknowl that will tell you how to download your Blogger blog into a file that can be uploaded [...]
April 27th, 2010 at 9:31 amHelp! I went thru all the steps ( using my custom domina and keeping at the same place)and 0 files from Blogger were imported, so it has the WP default page (installed WP thru Godaddy which has an easy installer). I did make an xml backup of the blog from Blogger plus saved all the individual files. Is there a way to use the xml file so that the original blog and posts willappear- or something else? Modify a WP php file ( I don’t know php but if there’s a simple line of code to change I can do that). Thanks so much for your help!
April 29th, 2010 at 11:13 amTime is ticking as Blogger migration ends in a day and myblog is in limbo. If you go to: janetscircle.com/blog/index.html you can still see it. When i try to post thru Blogger now it gets an error message and won’t post. Wordpress admin goes to a version of the blog w some images missing. At this point I may try to go back to blogger and uninstall wordpress … Any suggestions?
April 29th, 2010 at 12:42 pmSorry, Janet—my mailbox was over quota, so I haven’t gotten comment notifications in a week. Did you get the xml upload or transfer to work?
May 3rd, 2010 at 9:13 amI had been wanting to make the move from Blogger for quite some time now, so the FTP sunsetting just kinda forced us to get on with it. So, my wife & I just migrated our FTP-published Classic Blogger blog over to a self-hosted WordPress blog. She got all of the Blogger posts imported and they seem to be working just fine.
I was really confused about how WordPress shows a path to the new posts, yet they don’t actually exist in that structure the way that the Blogger post (.HTML) pages did. But Dede discovered that all of the post pages live within the WP database as virtual pages rather than literal .HTML files. So does this mean we’d be safe to delete the old Blogger structure now?
The biggest outstanding issue I’ve yet to sort out is that none of our old Blogger posts show up in the Archives dropdown widget. And none of the Blogger archive pages were pulled over. Any thoughts on this?
Also, I’m still figuring out how to tweak the themes code portions to make a few changes here & there, but I can’t get the pages styling (like the Hx font formatting, for example) to quite match the posts.
May 9th, 2010 at 4:46 amAll WP posts are webpages (and actual files) rendered through the PHP programming language. The exact paths can be customized with redirects through WP. If you’re using redirects through Blogger (you can test to see if these are working), you need to leave the old Blogger posts in place. If you’re not redirecting your old Blogger (i.e. it’s not published anywhere), you can delete it.
WP creates its own archives (and you can use the Redirection plugin [with wildcards or on a month by month basis] to preserve those links). I see several months of archives in the pull down menu, but I can’t get to the archive pages. I’ve never seen this issue with a WP blog before, and it looks like the problem isn’t a WordPress issue. It looks like you may be missing the archives.php file or your server/other CMS is prohibiting permissions to these directories. Maybe http://wordpress.org/support/topic/302720 could help.
If you want to edit the stylesheet, in the WP admin, go to Appearance > Editor. The stylesheet should be up by default. (Though I don’t see any difference in the rendering of the your headers between posts and pages on my browser.)
Good luck and welcome to WP!
May 9th, 2010 at 12:08 pmHello,
First of all, I want to thank you very much for this fabulous tutorial! This has been very helpful to me as I moved my site from Blogger to WordPress last week.
I am encountering a few issues and have spent all week searching Google, blogs, support forums and talking to my host’s tech support staff; so I thought I might pose some of my questions here in case anyone reading this is having the same problems.
1. When someone types in my old URL, contest-corner.blogspot.com, it brings up a message from Blogger saying “You’re about to be redirected -The blog that used to be here is now at http://www.contest-corner.com/. Do you wish to be redirected?”. Unfortunately, because of this redirect message popping up,this has also changed the title and description of my pages in search engine results to “Redirecting”. See what I mean here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=coconut+flour+breadmaker&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US372
I am the #1 result on this page, but instead of giving the title and description of the page, it says this: “Blogger: Redirecting
Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video …”
Of course, this means that I have now lost all of my search engine traffic on all my old articles.
I’ve seen all sorts of articles about preserving SEO during a Blogger-to-WP move, but nothing on this particular issue.
2. I’ve noticed others above mentioning problems transferring content over from Blogger to WordPress, and I am also having issues. It seems that all of my posts have transferred over, but not the comments. The importer on WordPress only shows 62 comments on my Blogger blog when I have over 14,000. I have tried uploading the .xml export file from Blogger, and get an error every time. I used a XML splitter that I found via others who were having this issue, and was able to upload each individual .xml file, which worked somewhat better, but half my comments are still missing.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:13 pmHi Jordan,
Thanks for the great tutorial. I read through all the comments and am still a bit confused. I have a custom domain through GoDaddy that I use in blogger. I want to use that same domain (ourlittlebeehive.com) in WP. How do I style the WP blog, etc. while keeping the blogger domain active? Is it possible? Then when I’m ready to migrate from blogger to WP do I just switch the blogger back to blogspot.com and then follow the instructions above? Do I then keep the blogger blog at blogspot.com to preserve photos?
Thanks so much for your assistance!
May 14th, 2010 at 11:59 am@Beeb—I see your problem. I’m not sure if this is feasible for you, but you might try setting the DNS of your domain to the Google servers long enough to get the “legit” Custom Domain effect. Wait a few days to search engines log the redirect, then switch off the custom domain and delete that post from the old blog. Meanwhile, contact anyone you know with links to that post and ask them to update them, and work to get new links to that post with the new URL. You might see a dip in search engines, but if you continue to try to build links, you should be able to recover.
As for the comments problem, sorry! It’s a problem with WordPress and AFAIK they haven’t fixed it.
@Felicity—Looking back over the comments, it looks like people usually have to switch to a blogspot address to set up the WP blog (unless you want to put the blog in a subdomain on your new site—or, you could set up a subdomain on your new site for testing purposes. You’ll still have to switch to blogspot for the import, but you’ll have a chance to test your layout first.) And yes, I believe you should keep the blog at blogger to keep the photos (though above I recommend switching back on the custom domain option, but since your links won’t need redirection, that’s not as important. You can block search engines from the old version of your blog once it’s on blogspot to avoid a possible duplicate content penalty.).
May 14th, 2010 at 12:21 pmJordan – I can’t tell you how incredibly grateful I am for your help! I have literally been searching everywhere and you are the only person I’ve spoken to who knew anything about this SEO issue.
So let me make sure I follow correctly: Say I switch the DNS of my domain to the Google servers – I take it that will change my URLs from contest-corner.blogspot.com/2010/mycoolpost.html to contest-corner.com/2010/mycoolpost.html? So then theoretically, once search engines pick that up, I should be able to point the domain over to WP, delete the Blogger post and it should get rid of the redirect? Or at least get rid of the redirect description when the post shows up in search results? (Sorry if I’m way off here, I’m still learning my way around DNS issues!)
I don’t think it would really be possible to do that on Contest Corner right now, because I have so much new content at the WP site and giveaways going on. However, I am planning to switch my other blog over to WP this month, so this is invaluable advice of what to do beforehand.
I did tell Blogger not to list Contest Corner in search engines, but that hasn’t helped so far. Do you think I should delete the posts on my Blogger blog (after I back everything up of course)? Do you know if search engines will eventually pick up the old articles at their new location on WP? In many instances, my articles might not have a lot of people linking to it, but it comes up high in search results because of the topic it covers (for instance, I seem to have the only recipe for breadmaker bread made with coconut flour out there – LOL!); that’s why I’m wondering what to do about how search engines are showing the content now.
And, thanks so much for the answer on the comments, too! That was what I was assuming and I’m hoping that after WP 3.0 comes out that they might have addressed the bug.
Wow, that was a long comment. Thank you so much again for all your time in answering my question and making this awesome tutorial. I’m going to give your link to everyone I know!
~Beeb
May 14th, 2010 at 5:23 pmOk, just to recap: My wife & I migrated from self-hosted (Classic) Blogger to self-hosted WordPress this month. The domain remains the same and we were able to duplicate the year/month permalink structure, so all of the old pages still worked great. I could access those older posts directly or via Categories, but…
None of the pages with our old imported Blogger posts showed up in the Archives dropdown widget. The May 2010 archive (which would have only posts created in WordPress) worked, but accessing any Archive month prior to that resulted in this error:
Directory has no index file.
Browsing this site or directory without an index file is prohibited.
Then it hit me that there’s no actual /2010/05 folder corresponding to the May Archive – it’s just a virtual location. (I’m a rank newbie, so my understanding of this whole real vs. virtual structure might not be all that accurate, but you get the idea.) But there is an actual folder for each month prior to that where Blogger stored the individual post page HTML files. So on a whim, I renamed one of those folders and blammo! the Archive worked for that month. Apparently, there being an actual folder in a location where WP points to virtually was a BIG no-no.
Anyway, I thought I’d post this just in case some other Blogger expatriates were running into the same snag.
May 15th, 2010 at 7:04 pmDid anybody figure out the best way to import comments in addition to posts? Maybe the comments need to be in a certain format? Or maybe the blog needs to be a typical template?
May 20th, 2010 at 12:19 pm[...] my research into migration was a simple link http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/ that my good twitter friend recommended. It is a great link, if you KNOW what you are doing, and [...]
May 21st, 2010 at 8:57 pm[...] my research into migration was a simple link http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/ that my good twitter friend recommended. It is a great link, if you KNOW what you are doing, and [...]
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:38 am@Beeb—Well, that’s the idea
. Once you delete the Blogger posts, the remaining links to the .blogspot.com version won’t work (which is why you should contact anyone you can with links). I don’t think the option to keep your blog out of search engines from Blogger will work—it adds a meta tag to your posts, but your posts are (supposed to be) redirected to your new WP set up that doesn’t have the meta tag.
@Rob—Must be a Blogger FTP/WP issue. Thanks for sharing the solution!
@Krystyn—Last time I looked, there was no solution, sadly. But you can try the WordPress Forums to see if they’ve updated that feature yet: http://wordpress.org/support/
May 24th, 2010 at 6:07 pmthanks for the tips and steps of guide…well-explained…
June 1st, 2010 at 5:00 amthanks for all the tip! i wish i had found them BEFORE i paid someone to transfer me from blogger to wordpress. i was hoping you might have a suggestion….
I’ve been a dot com (not .blogspot) for years & have had feedburner feed associated with it for some time (again, not a .blogspot feed).
Prior to switching to wordpress, in my google reader, my feed showed as a feed burner feed.
After the designer switched me to wordpress, the feed in my google reader showed up as .blogspot feed & is obviously no longer updating
Now, when I log into my feedburner account, I’ve lost thousands of subscribers (because I believe they too all got switched to .blogspot)
Is there any way to fix this? Do I make any sense?
thanks so much! i appreciate any & all help.
June 1st, 2010 at 2:21 pmHm… You still have your old blog running in Blogger, right? Is it publishing to a .blogspot.com address? If so, try steps 4 and 7 above (and optionally, step 8).
June 1st, 2010 at 2:39 pmthanks for this post, i have been looking for a way to move my blog to wordpress.
June 4th, 2010 at 10:44 am[...] There’s a good, very comphrensive guide here if you’re moving from Blogger to WordPress: http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/ [...]
June 8th, 2010 at 8:03 amI’m confused about steps 4 and 7. Are you using the same feed both times? It looks like you have one set up, then you change it to another one? Or, do I use the same both times? If I’ve already got a feed, I just leave it in blogger, but update it in wordpress, right?
June 12th, 2010 at 8:56 amMe again. I’ve got about 1200 404 errors now logged in just one week from post titles being different. I guess I have to go in and change each one of those one at a time, right?
June 18th, 2010 at 6:37 amHey Krystyn—sorry about the delay; I had a baby two weeks ago so I’m a little behind on replies.
You use the same FeedBurner feed both times, but you change the Original Feed in FeedBurner from pointing to Blogger to pointing to WordPress (step 7). The name of the feed (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/FEEDNAME) must stay the same. You’ll leave it as-is in Blogger.
You might try a plugin to remove the stop words to match Blogger’s URLs, such as this one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/remove-stopwords-from-slug/ . You set the stop words (a, an, the, of—whatever Blogger removed from URLs).
June 18th, 2010 at 11:12 amJordan-
Congratulations! No worries at all!
I think I’m going to have to change almost every single post title anyways. The posts got ‘2’s added to the end of the names also because I ended up importing duplicate posts! Not fun when there are almost 800 posts!
June 18th, 2010 at 6:07 pm[...] have to give the credit for this painless migration to two people. Mama Blogga wrote this awesome guide to migrating. It was so comprehensive, in fact, that I only had one issue. And the issue had [...]
June 19th, 2010 at 10:00 amhi,thanks for the tutorial,and how to change /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html to /%postname% i have searched a lot but could not find one,you to have said as additional steps but please explain me what are the additional steps to change permalinks structure while migration
June 20th, 2010 at 9:55 amThis is the technical way to do it; I’m sure there’s a plugin that can do this, too, but this is how I did it.
In BlueHost, I opened the File Manager to the directory root, and made sure the check box for “Show hidden files” is CHECKED. Then I opened the file .htaccess in the Code Editor. (This file is VERY sensitive so you have to be very careful.)
Leave what’s there in place. On a new line below that, add:
RedirectMatch 301 /200(6|7)/.*/(.*)\.html http://www.mamablogga.com/$2/
(It goes on a single line, and of course you’ll want to change mamablogga.com to your domain, and customize the year part correctly: 200(5|6|7|8|9) would cover 2005 through 2009, for example.)
June 20th, 2010 at 11:35 amthanks for your quick reply
June 20th, 2010 at 11:55 amHELP!! I did all of the things you said. Except the name of my blog is the same. I have my own domain. Now my blog is just the “Hello World” page on WP!! How can I get my posts moved over… ???
June 21st, 2010 at 4:37 pmIf you’re using Blogger’s Custom Domain, you need to switch to a .blogspot.com address before you import. Also, change your Blogger version to block search engines. If you’ve been using a custom domain for a long time, most of your links should already be correct.
June 22nd, 2010 at 12:57 pmI made the move seemingly seamlessly, however when I try to go to my old blogger blog: apassionforbags.com, as a curious visitor, a window opens and says
Google Error
Not Found
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:24 pmThe requested URL / was not found on this server.
I’d need a lot more information to really start looking for the cause here, but I can make a blind guess. If you’re moving from apassionforbags.com to a new URL, and you turned off Blogger’s Custom Domain to make the transfer, the old URL wouldn’t work until you turned back on Blogger’s Custom Domain.
Or, if you’re not changing URLs, you’ll need to change your nameservers for apassionforbags.com to match your new host.
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:40 pm“Also, change your Blogger version to block search engines.”
You mentioned this…do you mean, in blogger, block the search engines? Wouldn’t that also blog search engines from your WP blog if they come via your old blogger blog?
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:39 pmIn Blogger, go to Settings > Basic (the default page under Settings). Find the question “Let search engines find your blog?” and change the answer to No. This inserts a meta element in the version of your blog on .blogspot.com that tells search engines not to crawl that page. It can’t influence your blog on your new host and won’t change anything there. In this case, search engines actually can’t come from your blogspot.com blog to your new site unless it’s through old links on the blog using the custom domain. But they won’t need to, either. Search engines have already indexed your site using the custom domain URL, so they’ll return directly to that URL for periodic checks.
As I said before, I only recommend this if you’ve been using Blogger’s Custom Domain. This is because existing links to your blog should use the custom domain already, so they’ll go straight to your new blog. They won’t have to go through your old blog to work. (People using a .blogspot.com address need the redirects to work for existing links to work. However, Blogger is working very hard to break that capability.)
Search engines will penalize sites that simply repeat the content of other sites. (Most likely, your new site would be considered the “true” version, and the old blogspot version would be penalized—i.e. excluded from the results. You’ve seen those “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the one already displayed.” warnings in search results pages.)
I think the duplicate content penalty search engines may impose is probably not going to be a huge problem, but this avoids the issue altogether.
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:48 pm[...] mamablogga.com the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress [...]
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:54 pm[...] The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress: provides simple instructions that guide you from prep, to installation, to fixing broken links, and includes how to move your feed seamlessly. (I’ll need you to tell me if it worked.) [...]
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:39 pmJordan… Thanks! That worked except only 16 old posts switched over. I hit Restart (oops) and now I can not get the other posts. Is there a way to start over?
June 24th, 2010 at 9:54 amHm… Have you tried deleting the transferred posts and running the import again?
June 24th, 2010 at 10:04 amfirst I already transfered a blog to wordpress, doing it the hard way, first to wordpress.com then to self hosted so that all the images get hosted there (bluehost), but the posts are all messed up.
June 28th, 2010 at 5:35 pmSo what if I only import the posts from blogger and just make the blog at blogger private and restrain search engines to index it? (and leave all images where they are, at picasa web albums)
Because if I import the import the images at bluehost it will take time for search engines to pcik up on them right?
I think someone aksed this, but if a insert the meta tag that prevents search engines to index the old blogspot blog, then it wouldn’t index the images at the wordpress blog too, or am I wrong? (I hope I am)
If you’re not already using the Custom Domain option with Blogger, once you turn it on (as per above directions), you don’t have to worry about search engines indexing the old blog. (If you are currently using Custom Domain, then do switch on the block search engines option under Settings.)
Definitely leave your pictures where they are in Picasa. I’ve never had a problem with my pictures that are still hosted there. It should only take a few days for search engines to reassign the URL associated with the pictures (if they’re not already displaying them directly from Picasa Web Albums, that is).
And no, the meta tag on the blogspot blog can’t change anything on the new blog. But again, you only want to use that option if you’ve already been using Blogger’s Custom Domain option on your old blog. Otherwise, search engines won’t be able to find your new blog from your old blog.
June 29th, 2010 at 9:22 am[...] maintains the Ultimate Guide for migrating from Blogger to WordPress. Lots of information here and she will respond to any comments you may post. This is old, so be sure [...]
June 30th, 2010 at 4:14 pmI will migrating from blogspot to wordpress.Thanks.
June 30th, 2010 at 9:21 pmOk, I just got one more question, and it might be a stupid one, but I got to make sure. After I successfully move the blog to wordpress, should I delete the profile of the old .blogspot.com blog at Google’s Webmaster central, or should I just add the new blog there and keep them both? (this also aplies for yahoo’s and bing’s webmaster tools)
July 1st, 2010 at 3:08 amYep. An old .blogspot.com blog should be redirecting to its Custom Domain (and your new website). There’s not going to be any reason or advantage to keep it on Webmaster Central (or the others).
July 1st, 2010 at 10:32 amSomebody remind me why i want to convert? Scared to make it.
July 4th, 2010 at 5:02 am@Sarah
You are right to be scared, because it’s not as simple as a blogger blog, you need to be just a little bit more skilled, basic knowledge of HTML is needed. BUT self-hosted wordpress blog is ALMIGHTY compared to a blogger blog, the level of customization is way ahead of a blogger blog.
It really depends on the purpose of the blog.
Some say that self-hosted blogs get better page ranks in search results etc. if you are not interested in page ranks, just buy a custom domain through blogger.
I transfered two of my blogs and I am satisfied, if all goes well I will migrate all my blogs to wordpress.
Basically if you don’t mind paying a little extra, you should definitely try it out, you’ve got nothing to lose, JUST REMEMBER to follow the instructions here.
a SUGGESTIONS TO THE BLOGMASTER: since many people use this guide to migrate to wordpress and this post has a lot of comments, maybe you could look up the most common questions in the comments and update the post…
July 4th, 2010 at 7:22 am@Sarah I agree with Slavco…. I just switched and write about my experience. I put this page here as a resource and there are a few others. It is worth it, I think once you get it running. Just be prepared, it may take a couple days to take all the steps to get it online depending on how much customization you want. Good luck!!
July 4th, 2010 at 9:35 am[...] The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress [...]
July 7th, 2010 at 10:03 pmJordan a great article and comments from you. I have just spent an absorbing hour reading them.
I have recently set up a WP blog with a new custom domain which is working fine.
I was already using a custom domain on Blogger which is still PR 3 but seemed to be suffering some sort of Google penalty since- suddenly dropped from Serps last September. So I have taken the rather extreme step of starting again.
I do not want Google to associate my new blog with my old one so I am rewriting a lot of my previously high ranking posts and republishing on the new domain rather than migrating them.
On my old blog I have 180 odd subscribers who I have tried to contact, but fear I have missed a lot.
So now to my questions:
1. Can I use the redirect (step 9 above) to send any old readers and new ones from search engines to my new WP blog?
2. Would I need to do step 10 as well?
3. and the biggy… if I am indeed subject to a Google penalty will the redirect indicate to big G what I am up too and thus condemn my new blog to Google hell before its even indexed?
You thoughts are very much appreciated.
July 12th, 2010 at 10:32 pmHi Jordan – I just wanted to come back and thank you so much again for your help. I followed your advice about switching to the custom domain on Blogger on my second blog before making the switch, and it worked great – it really helped to preserve the integrity of my links on Google.
Also, on the first blog that I switched over and had all the trouble with – I found that after a few weeks, the new URL started to pop up higher in the search results and replace the blogspot URL, so I got my search engine traffic back there as well. HOORAY!
Thank you so much for your awesome blog!
July 15th, 2010 at 9:39 amhello jordan. Thanks for a nice briefing. I start a new wp blog with custom domain in free hosting. But i want to move now paid hosting. so how can i choose good paid hosting.
July 24th, 2010 at 9:44 pmi have a blog in blogspot and i am wondering if it is possible to leave a comment to a wordpress blog. I tried but i can not find the way. thank you
July 27th, 2010 at 4:32 amYou just left a comment on a WordPress blog.
But if you’re asking if you can sign in with your Blogger login on a WordPress.com blog, then, no, there’s no way to do that. You can either leave a comment and enter your URL manually or create a WordPress.com account.
July 27th, 2010 at 9:12 amI just finished migrating my blog from blogger to wordpress. I was terrified until I found your article and it went without a hitch! Thanks so much! I had my own domain name with my blogger site, all I had to do was take off the domain name and change the DNS settings with the registrar to point to bluehost. I am so happy I changed too, I am really loving wordpress so much!
July 27th, 2010 at 1:07 pm[...] to read this tutorial on how to move to WordPress and still keep my Google subscribers. so, to be [...]
July 28th, 2010 at 3:58 pm[...] Der Redirect von Blogger.com war anfänglich übrigens eine üble Geschichte. Dabei kann es sooooo einfach sein, aber erstmal musste ich unbedingt Code-Wichserei [...]
August 8th, 2010 at 8:43 am[...] The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress [...]
August 10th, 2010 at 12:07 pmTHANK YOU so very much for this resource. I cannot begin to tell you how invaluable it was today while I migrated my blogger blog over to WP. Especially the feed and redirection information.
August 19th, 2010 at 3:42 pmYou ROCK!
Hey Jordan! Thanks so much for this wonderful tutorial. What an excellent resource!
I’m in the middle of a Blogger-to-WP switch that has gone horribly awry, and was wondering if you had any thoughts. Basically, my Blogger file is just too dang big. With 900 posts and 22,000 comments, it’s coming out to about 48 MB, and I can’t get WordPress (self-hosted) to import it. I tried exporting the Blogger XML file and running it through http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/, but it was too big for that too. I’m totally stuck and was just wondering if you had any ideas.
Thanks!
August 21st, 2010 at 5:59 pmHi Jen! I’m a big fan of your blog, and happy to help.
The WordPress Codex offers one idea: you can manually increase the allowable file import size. Of the options to do this, editing wp-config.php is probably the easiest. If you log in to your hosting service, you can find this file in the root directory of your blog.
Add the line define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64MB'); (with straight quotes, not curly ones) to that file below the other definitions.
The Codex offers some more ideas here: http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_Working_with_WordPress#How_do_I_Import_a_WordPress_WXR_file_when_it_says_it_is_too_large_to_import.3F
Good luck, and let me know how it works out!
August 21st, 2010 at 8:02 pmExcellent suggestions, Jordan! I’ll give them a shot. Thanks so much for your response and your kind words. Keep up the great work you’re doing with this blog — I’m a long-time reader and love your posts.
August 21st, 2010 at 8:47 pmOh my goodness, I’m so flattered! Thanks, Jen, and good luck!
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August 21st, 2010 at 11:20 pmwhy don’t yiou use the blogger import plugin anyway? it’s easier and imports the posts with dates, with the XML file it imports them on one date.
August 22nd, 2010 at 2:49 amThat might be another option, but I’m guessing the built-in WordPress capability to import Blogger blogs (which usually imports all posts with dates by itself) was a problem because Jennifer’s blog is so large. I’ve never heard of that problem with an XML import.
August 22nd, 2010 at 3:23 pmslavco -
Unfortunately the import plugin doesn’t work. The error message isn’t clear, but from research it would seem that the problem is that my blog is too big.
I didn’t realize that the XML import often loses dates. Yikes!
August 22nd, 2010 at 4:02 pmyes it doesn’t work, you need to change it a little bit, could you post the error here, and I ‘ll see if it’s the same problem and tell you how to fix it. It’s sort of a general bug but there’s a fix to it.
August 23rd, 2010 at 4:36 amSlavco and Jordan -
Interesting update: all I had to do was upgrade the Blogger-to-Wordpress plugin, and the dreaded “Invalid Auth Sub Token” error was fixed. It turns out that the size of my blog wasn’t an issue after all. Whew!
Here’s another question for any feed gurus out there:
Though I’ve been using Feedburner for a couple years, I still have hundreds of people subscribed to Blogger’s default feed location: mysite.com/feeds/posts/default. The default feed location once I switch over to WP will be mysite.com/feed. I’ll update Feedburner, which will take care of the people who’ve subscribed to feeds.feedburner.com/conversiondiary, but how do I keep those readers who are subscribed to that Blogger feed? I’d love to hear any thoughts or suggestions! Thanks!
August 25th, 2010 at 1:45 pmFrom #4 above (it’s kinda buried in there): login to Blogger and go to Settings > Site Feed. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter your FeedBurner address. This will help redirect your subscribers.
HTH!
August 25th, 2010 at 9:21 pmHey Jordan -
Thanks for your response! I don’t *think* that will work for me since I already have a custom domain, i.e. a lot of people’s feed readers are pointing to mysite.com/feeds/posts/default — but once I transfer the DNS to point the domain to my new host, Blogger no longer has any control over what happens with mysite.com, so I don’t think any redirects from Blogger’s end would help. (However, I do think the Blogger redirect would work for people who are subscribed to oldaddress.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default from back before I had the custom domain.)
I’m working on figuring out how to put a redirect in place on my new host that will send /feeds/posts/default to my Feedburner feed. I’ll let you know if I figure it out!
Again, thanks for all your wonderful help!
August 26th, 2010 at 8:43 amJennifer –
August 26th, 2010 at 8:47 amI changed my old custom domain on blogger to a blogspot (since it will be inactive anyway) and this seems to work!
@Jennifer—ah, I see. I thought you were asking about hte other way.
Julie’s idea is great! If it doesn’t work out, you could try using the Redirection plugin to redirect /feeds/post/default to /feed/ . If you’re feeling really brave, you might try doing that by hand in .htaccess. I’m not totally sure any of those will work because of all the redirects it’ll involve, but it’s worth a shot!
August 26th, 2010 at 9:16 am@julie-inspired
August 26th, 2010 at 9:18 amBut if you change to the original blogspot.com address then you might lose search engine ranks and it would be a duplicate blog since the same content will be found at two web addresses.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO is create a feedburner.com feed (google service too) for the original feed and then use the feedsmith plugin that will point readers to the feedburner feed. this way you won’t lose any readers.
if yo need any help, just write….
The question was about redirecting feeds to FeedBurner feeds, so I would assume Julie was referring to that, too. You’re right about FeedBurner and FeedSmith as great resources—the original post here already advises readers to use them both.
When dealing with Custom Domains, the search engine ranking shouldn’t be affected if the URL is staying the same (or being redirected properly). Blogger doesn’t administer a redirect and the same content is simply available from on a different host.
Duplicate content filters, which we don’t totally understand because it’s all part of Google’s secret sauce, don’t automatically mean that all your listings will be removed. However, it’s also easily solved in Blogger: go to Settings and scroll down to “Let search engines find your blog?” Change the answer to No and Save Settings.
I realize this may look like a “just” a mom blog, but I’ve worked in SEO and Internet marketing since I graduated college.
August 26th, 2010 at 9:36 am@Slavco You don’t care about SEO for your OLD blog. You will change the settings to not even search that blog. It will not be duplicate content since it is a redirection. I wrote a post about this:
http://www.inspiredtowrite.com/2010/06/switching-blogger-to-wordpress.html
I actually referenced this post in MY post and some other resources I found valuable.
And Jordan is right, if it is the same custom domain, SE will not be affected.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:43 am