Migrate from Blogger to WordPress (self-hosted) easily

Recently, I switched this blog from Blogger to WordPress. In the past few days, I was busy setting up the things with it. WordPress, being the best platform for blogging, has several advantages over the other services like Blogger. In this post, I am sharing with you how I switched my blog from Blogger to WordPress without losing the juice.

Initially, I had a free blog on Blogger and was using it with a custom, paid Domain name. Unlike the default Blogger albums on Picasa, I was using some free image hosting services. Now, I am using ~~HawkHost~~ HostGator to run this blog as self-hosted, thankful to Mrinmay Bhattacharjee who helped me a lot with it.

Why WordPress?

WordPress has numerous advantages not only over Blogger, but on other blogging programs as well. It is an Open Source tool specifically developed for blogging. Some of the most important features explaining why people choose WordPress are listed below, :

Easy to customize: Custom themes is a common feature available with Blog or website tools, but along with this, WordPress provides the support to the plugins, which you can install on your WordPress to accomplish specific tasks. There are thousands of plugins and themes are available particularly WordPress.
SEO friendly: WordPress provides several facilities to optimize your blog for Search engines, in fact, many plugins are available to do it on the go. By default, you can define slugs for categories and pick custom URL structures with WordPress, such and many other features make it outstanding. Significantly, WordPress blogs are effectively treated by Search engines.
Can be Self hosted: Unlike Blogger, WordPress can be self-hosted by purchasing Web space from a hosting service that offers PHP/MySQL support.

If you’re looking for a test, you should spend some time to understand the WordPress environment – to experience the things that you never had before with Blogger. You can create a blog on WordPress.com for free with some limitations like no advertising-monetizing and plugins installations. Such limitations can be overcome by getting a self-hosted blog.

Switching from Blogger to WordPress

Note: Before proceeding further, make it sure to backup your Blogger template and to export your blog. If you’re using a Custom domain with you blogger-hosted blog, switch back to the blogspot domain.

Setting up WordPress
- Register a Domain name and purchase some Web space from a good web hosting company with PHP MySQL support.
  Recommended services: Name Cheap, Hostgator, Hawkhost.
- Set up your web hosting account with the domain name. If you already own a domain name, you need to change the records accordingly to point it to your Web host. The propagation will take at least 48 hours to complete.
- Install WordPress on your web hosting space. Generally, hosting services provide applications like Softaculous, SmartScripts and Fantastico for single-click installation of open scripts like WordPress.
Importing your Blogger hosted blog in WordPress
- Next, import your Blogger blog by going to “Tools” » “Import” and choosing “Blogger” in your WordPress Dashboard. You’ll be asked to for authorization permissions, just authorize your blogger account to grant access to WordPress by clicking “Grant Access” and start importing the blog. [Updated: Jan 10, 2012]
Saving the juices
Blogger page and post URLs end up with ‘.html’ while wordpress finishes with a trialing slash ‘/’ in the end. Now when you’re going for WordPress, the old blogger post and page links indexed by Search engines, bookmarked or saved by your readers and used by other websites and blogs will be of no use and will create a Page not found 404 error. We’ll use 301 Redirects to avoid such a problem.
301 Redirects: We are using 301 Redirection to retain the traffic from Search engines, referrals and direct links. It simply redirects your old blogger blogspot post and page URLs to the new WordPress URLs, hence saving all the juice including Page and Search engine ranks.
- Install SEO Blogger to WordPress plugin on your WordPress.
- Navigate WordPress Dashboard » Tools » SEO Blogger to WordPress. Type in your WordPress URL (it could be the domain name or a sub-domain, whichever you’re using for your blog homepage) and Generate the template. Copy the Generated code.
- Now, go to Blogger Dashboard » Design » Edit HTML and click Revert to Classic Template. Paste all the copied code in the so obtained text area (template code box) and click the Save Template button.
Tip: You can also import the blogger interlinked images (the images you’ve used in Blogger while writing posts) to work with your WordPress posts. To do so, navigate WordPress Dashboard » Tools » SEO Blogger to WordPress and click the Download button. Click Clear Temporary Settings when downloading finishes.

Now, you’ve switched your blog from Blogger to WordPress successfully. Some important changes you must do after this are listed below:

Block Search engines for your Blogger blog: Go to Blogger Dashboard » Basic » Choose No for Let Search engines find your blog.
Update the RSS feed: Update the RSS feed URL on your Blogger-hosted blog by navigating Blogger Dashboard » Settings » Feeds with the new feed URL which will be something like http://yourdomainname.com/feed. Do the same with your feedburner account by editing the feed settings.
Update your WordPress blog: Add the title and tagline to your WordPress blog. Deactivate and delete the Hello Dolly plugin. Also delete the first auto-created “Hello, world!” post. Include the Meta data elements and scripts which you were using previously with blogger. Re-verify your website with services like Google Webmasters, if needed.
Install recommended plugins: The most recommended plugins for WordPress are Akismet (comes already installed with WordPress), Google XML Sitemap, All-in-One SEO Pack, WP Super Cache, WP Minify, WP DBManager.

I hope this helped you to switch from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress. Happy Blogging!