Blogger to Wordpress Tutorial

Now you know why you should convert your Blogger blog to Self Hosted Wordpress.The next step is to convert from Blogger to self hosted Wordpress.

There are many questions which come to mind before converting from blogger to wordpress.The most asked question is:

Will there be a decrease in blog’s pagerank due to the conversion?

If you are using a blogspot domain, you will be losing out on page rank because blogspot domain is only available for blogger and for wordpress you have to buy a custom domain. If you have a relatively new blog, then there is no need to think about page rank, because you can always regain it by posting good content and link baiting.

If you have already bought a domain and you are using it for your blogger blog, then you would not be losing on anything, so go ahead and convert.

Blogger To Wordpress Conversion

Blogger to Wordpress conversion can be done manually or by using Harsh’s excellent Blogger To Wordpress services.

You can convert your blog manually using the following steps :

1. Buy Web Hosting

The first and foremost step in conversion is buying a reliable web hosting. Web Hosting is required to set up your wordpress and also to add files. You don’t need hosting in blogger because blogger provides free hosting for posts and 1GB hosting for images which is enough for most bloggers.

There are a lot of  Web Host providers in the market. But there are only a few which have a good service and support.

Some Recommended Hosts

• BlueHost (It is recommended by  Wordpress)
• HostGator
• WPWebHost
• FatCow

2. Changing Nameservers

If you are already have a domain name, then after buying web hosting, you will receive a mail from web host provider containg nameserver details. You need to add the details of the nameservers in your DNS dashboard. This will help in forwarding your domain to the blog posts.

3. Installing Wordpress

In your email you will also receive your host account information. After logging in to your cpanel, click on Fantastico and then click on Wordpress and then install it. You will have to add details regarding your database, and then username and password. After filling in all the details your wordpress is will be up and running.

4. Importing Blogger comments, Blog Posts

Next step is to transfer all the posts and comment data to your server, this can be easily done using the Wordpress Import feature.

Go to Tools>Import

Then click on Blogger and then click on authorize.

You will be redirected to a page as shown below.

Click on authorize, then you can easily import posts from any blogger blog that you own by clicking on the import button.

5. Maintaining Blogger Permalinks

Blogger has a really different permalink structure than wordpress, it uses month and date and the title of the post in permalink, whereas wordpress uses postnumber(eg.http://www.bloggodown.com/?p=123). To prevent any loss in page rank, we need to modify the permalink structure used in wordpress, to keep the blogger permalinks intact.

To do this, Go to your  Dashboard and then click on Settings>Permalinks

And change it to Custom Structure and enter /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Keeping Blogger Permalinks Intact

6. 301 Permanent Redirects

301 redirects will be used to tell the search engine that your blog has been moved to a new place, and all your traffic will automatically redirected to thenew domain address.

For more info on 301 redirects follow the information provided by the following post

How to migrate from blogspot to wordpress with 301 permanent redirection without leaving traffic behind

Now start posting and try it out .