Sunday, December 28, 2008

Migrating from Blogger to Wordpress with Redirects

If you know me, you know I also run a travel website. I had started that website using a boring template through GoDaddy's Website Tonight. Being a cheap-ass and not wanting to pay for more than 5 pages, I started a blog on blogger to keep all my travel articles. Then, I simply linked back and forth between the two sites. It worked fine, but looked very clumsy. Once I started to get some regular traffic... 3-4 visitors a day-- YES!... I thought it was time to combine them into one, clean, self-hosted Wordpress site.

So, here's how I did it: Keep in mind, this is a VERY short outline of what I did. I'm happy to reply to comments about specific points in more detail.

First, I couldn't figure out how to do the custom domain on Blogger, but if I had, that could have been my first step. I didn't, and it still worked out okay.

1. I bought a hosting account on GoDaddy... the economy version. I set that up with a domain name I already had. (different from the Website Tonight URL, so I could do step 5) If you don't already have a domain name, you can buy one here, (and save yourself a few steps later on).

2. Found a free Wordpress theme I liked (or you can buy one), and downloaded it to my computer.

3. Installed the latest version of Wordpress on my new hosted account using GoDaddy's one-step install.

4. Used FTP to upload the new theme, then activated it.

5. Copied all my content from the website tonight URL onto the new Wordpress site, keeping all the page names the same. I found this easiest using the control-c/v in the HTML view.

6. Once the new site looked the way I wanted and had all the Website Tonight content on it, I downloaded a backup to my computer, copied all my pages in HTML format into notepad files, and deleted the old Website Tonight account.

7. Then, I went in to the new hosted account and changed the URL to the one the Website Tonight account had been using. (this is the one that has been indexed by Google, and has some link love already, and is the name I really want to use)

Windows and Linux Hosting Configuration 2.0
-Log in to your Account Manager.
-In the My Products section, select Hosting.
-Next to the hosting account you want to modify, click Manage Account.
-In the Settings section of the Hosting Control Center, click the Domain Management icon.
-Select your primary hosted domain, and then click Change Primary.
-Enter the new primary domain for your account, and then click Ok.

8. Since WP is URL-specific, this part got a bit tricky... I then had to go in and uninstall WP from the URL I signed up with, and re-install with the desired URL (the one I just changed to). I did have to rebuild all my pages, but it was really easy using control c/v in HTML view. Some of the info was picked up automatically with the new install. So, this only took a couple of hours the second time around. I had installed WP 2.6.5 the first time, and WP 2.7 the second time. If I had done 2.7 both times, I think it would have kept all the info with no extra steps. Or, if I didn't already have an active domain name I wanted to keep using. Live and learn.

9. Next, it was time to import the blogger posts into the new hosted WP site. Do this from the WP dashboard.

10. The fancy, make-it-all-fabulous part is next! This link is the way to go... http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress
It says it's for migrating to Wordpress.com, but it worked perfectly for migrating to self-hosted.

11. It's done! The original website and blogger blog are now merged into one, clean, interactive site.

12. Make sure to get in and play with the WP site, check the privacy settings, the default was set to 'hide from search engines', so I changed that!! Then, add some plugins for more personality and functionality.

For you non-bloggers, this is all a foreign language, I know. But, if you're considering making the switch yourself instead of paying $1500 for someone to make the switch for you, hopefully this is helpful. If not, it's a good reminder to me what I did. Good luck!!


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