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The Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Table of contents for Migrating your blog

Check out the most recent guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress, from November 2008 August 2009 February 2012.

UPDATED 13 July 07 (step 6)

I assume that you want to move from yourblog.blogspot.com to www.yourblog.com. Otherwise, I say, don’t bother. There’s no benefit to moving from yourblog.blogspot.com to yourblog.wordpress.com unless you really want to use WordPress. I recommend, if you like your Blogger template (especially if you’ve heavily customized it), using Blogger’s capability to publish to your own custom domain (WordPress’s similar feature is a paid add-on). If you want to, you can stay with Blogger. The blogging police won’t come and get you.

But if you’re sure you want to switch, then here’s what you do.

1. Get a domain. Don’t own a domain? I recommend www.GoDaddy.com for domain registration; I use them mostly because I’d heard of them before. 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.)
  • 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.

3. Install WordPress. With Bluehost, just login to your control panel, click on Fantastico under Addons/Plugins, select WordPress on the left, click New Installation on the right. 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;

4. 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

5. Import your blog from Blogger. You absolutely MUST use the Blogger RSS Import plugin. If this link doesn’t work, try again later. Follow its directions. It loves you. One day it will be included in WordPress. This brings all your posts and comments over.

UPDATE, 16 May 07: That day is today. This import function is included in WordPress 2.2. The other steps here are still important, though, to maintain your permalinks.

6. Delete the Blogger RSS Import plugin from your website. COMPLETELY.

UPDATE, 13 July 07: Now, Blogger enables you to transfer your subscribers seamlessly as well. If you haven’t already, sign up for a FeedBurner account. Then, login to Blogger and go to Settings > Site Feed. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter your new FeedBurner address. This will redirect your subscribers, but you’ll want to be sure to integrate your FeedBurner feed with your new WordPress blog. (FeedSmith, owned by FeedBurner, is a plugin that does just that!)

7. Still 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 all your links will transfer automatically to your own domain, all your posts are on WordPress and you’re ready to blog on wit’ yo’ bad self.

Afternote. Clean up: You might have to import your images to WordPress as well. If they suddenly stop showing up on WordPress, then you need to import them. If you don’t have very many (I think I have 80-90 and I’ll end up doing this by hand because I’m afraid of the warnings on established plugins), you can easily “recode” your pictures. Login to your WordPress in one tab/window and login at http://picasaweb.google.com/ in another. In Picasa, click on the album for your blog. Select the photo you’re replacing in WordPress. On the right side, click on “Link to this Post” and copy the first link they give you. In WordPress, edit the appropriate post, looking at the code tab, and replace the link that follows the code <img src= with the link you just copied from Picasa. I think that will continue to work.

Also, unfortunately, your Technorati links will not move with your blog. HOWEVER, links themselves are redirected.

Disclosure: the GoDaddy and Bluehost links are affiliate links.

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36 replies on “The Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress”

Well written, clear and concise. Perfect!

I’ve been a WP user for a year now, and having tried Blogger along the way, I can safely say, WP rocks.

I tested it on this blog for a few minutes and it worked fine for me without any plugins.

By Post Author

Hi Jordan. I couldn’t find your email address anywhere, and since this is just personal mail, I will put in a couple of URLs, that way, you will get the chance to moderate it and discard. Anyway, thank you for sending me this post. I didn’t allow it to post, only because I am trying to discourage new posts on my old blogger blog. I can’t use it (the ideas), because my blog is http://www.lunametrics.com/blog not http://www.myblog.com or something like that. i.e. not in the root. (there, I got in all the urls.) I didn’t know you were a reader and am so glad to meet you. Robbin

[…] nuova versione di Blogger a WordPress è una passeggiata), guide di tutti i tipi (fra le quali cito The Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress, più che altro per il nome lapidario), e ascoltato i suggerimenti (anzi, gli incitamenti) di vari […]

@windyridge—I assume you’ve already read the relevant part of this article. Any picture that you’ve uploaded to Blogger is saved in a Picasa Web Album automatically, so simply follow the directions from the post (listed below):

Afternote. Clean up: You might have to import your images to WordPress as well. If they suddenly stop showing up on WordPress, then you need to import them. If you don’t have very many (I think I have 80-90 and I’ll end up doing this by hand because I’m afraid of the warnings on established plugins), you can easily “recode” your pictures. Login to your WordPress in one tab/window and login at http://picasaweb.google.com/ in another. In Picasa, click on the album for your blog. Select the photo you’re replacing. On the right side, click on “Link to this Post” and copy the first link they give you. In WordPress, edit the appropriate post, looking at the code tab, and replace the link that follows the code <img src= with the link you just copied from Picasa.

By Post Author

Hi,

I have a burning question which I hope someone can answer. What will happen to my page rank when i migrate?

For instance, if my current blog (“myblog.blogspot.com”) has a PR of 3, will my new blog (“myblog.com” using wordpress)keep the same page rank?

@Yual—The short answer is yes, it should, but it might take a while.

The long answer is that the PageRank shown on Google’s toolbar is only updated 2-4 times a year. It’s a snapshot of a rounded estimate of your page’s authority in the eyes of Google that could be months out of date. PR doesn’t actually make you a ‘real’ blogger or mean much of anything.

By Post Author

Thanks so much Jordon. Yeah, it’s true, PR is just numbers and irrelevant to most people. However, in my case, I have a niche blog and the main source of income for this blog are paid reviews so the PR will help in getting more offers =)

The bad news, of course, is that they just updated the toolbar PR. I saw a slight increase sometime in the last month.

By Post Author

Thanks alot for the guide. You made it so clear and simple to move my blog postings from Blogger to WordPress. Will all my readers comments be migrated too? Are the above steps the only steps we need to take care of? Do I need to do any file backups in Blogger first? Thnks again for the helping hand mama.

Oops, another question. What is the item 4, customizing permalink for? Thnks.

Yep, all reader comments are migrated. I recommend reading my post, Safely move your blog to address a few other concerns you might have. It’s always a good idea to back up your blog, but your files will remain intact on Blogger. Customizing the permalink is important to make sure that you don’t break any incoming links to your blog. Customizing the permalinks must be done before you actually import the blog posts or links to posts on your old blog won’t redirect to the corresponding posts on your new blog.

By Post Author

Hi,
I’m trying to find a solution that’s detailed in this post here: http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/t/4e907fdd44c13721

We’re trying to move from blogger to WordPress on a custom domain. I know how to use the redirect feature to redirect folks if they’ve bookmarked specific posts or categories or it’s been indexed by Google.

But the redirect for the home page itself appears not to work in Internet Explorer.

We want to direct folks from example.blogspot.com to mydomain.com, and if we use the built in redirect in Blogger, the articles redirect, but the blog’s home page doesn’t.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Again, this is an issue in Internet Explorer, Firefox works OK.
J

I think the meta refresh that you mention in that Google Groups thread may be the only solution. I’ve been having a lot of problems with this same redirect, which I’d had in place for more than a year (so much so that I’m considering labeling this entire article deprecated).

I also think it may have something to do with Google finally checking to see if the DNS nameservers are pointing back to them, something they didn’t used to do. Did you have the subdomain nameservers pointing back to Google while you were using the .htaccess fix?

By Post Author

Hi Jordan,
I don’t have the DNS nameservers pointing back to them, because I want the blog to be hosted elsewhere. And I don’t think that’s it, because that wouldn’t explain the different behavior in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

I’ll also swear that something has changed recently, because I did this around 6 months ago without this issue. I do not recall having to click anything in Firefox to be redirected, so I’m positive that part is new. And if you’re right, this might be Google’s way of keeping folks with Blogger, forever.

Or it’s simply a bug and no one at Google is addressing it. The thing that troubles me, is that when I did this 6 months ago, since the redirect (in Firefox) was automatic, I was pretty confident that all the Google indexed pages would be pointed to the new domain. Now that you have to click something for the redirect to work, I’m wondering if this is still the case. Again, this might signal the end of being able to move from Blogger to WordPress (hosted independently).

What are your thoughts?

There’s a remote possibility that you’d be able to fool Blogger into thinking that the redirect is going properly with the DNS nameservers set there and domain forwarding or .htaccess redirects in place.

But since you’ve mentioned that it’s a browser-specific problem, it has to be something IE has ruined (or, as my software engineer dad would say “horked up”). I would think that Google should be working on this, though you’ve noted that they know about the problem and apparently think it’s fixed. Your best bet there may be to log a support ticket (or eight) if you haven’t already.

I’m concerned with the search engine indexing problem as well. Did I read correctly in the Google Groups thread that the redirect works automatically for post pages but not for the main page, or does it not work automatically at all?

Did the meta refresh help with the IE issue? If so, that’s probably the best you’ll be able to do for now. While it’s not the ideal solution as far as SEO goes, Yahoo and Google have apparently said that it’s okay (see Sebastian’s Pamphlets http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/google-and-yahoo-treat-undelayed-meta-refresh-as-301-redirect/ ).

By Post Author

Can’t we get an external internet sites that can automatically help users that are tech savvy.
Getting wordpress done usually requires patience that isn’t common with a modern day surfer.

thanks a lot for this great tip! i have finally moved my blogger account into wordpress platform including SEO points hopefully, it worked perfectly from my vertito.blogspot.com blogger account

nice ! keep it up!

I have a question. This may not be the place, but here goes. I had a blogger (myname.blogspot.com) and moved to wordpress. I imported my blogspot to wordpress. Can I now delete the blogspot? I have like 4 blogs, and am slowly adding them all to wordpress, the few missing days, and having it all in one spot and deleting old blog. Can I delete blogspot blog and the imported (archive) entries still be in the wordpress blog?

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