By now, you should already have your new WordPress powered website up and running. Obviously there are still some things you should do, to ensure that your new WordPress website is in good working order. Following below are some extra tips that you should do after installing and successfully importing your blogger blog to WordPress. In case you missed the first and second part of this tutorial, please check out the links below:
How To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress: Part 1/3
How To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress: Part 2/3
How To Redirect Your WordPress Feed To Feedburner?
Your original WordPress feed URL differs from that of feedburner and it normally looks like this, http://www.yourdomain.com/feed. Whether you are creating a new feed or redirecting to your existing feedburner account, you will have to change the “original” source of your feed on your feedburner’s dashboard. To achieve this, log in to your feedburner account and select or create your feed.
To redirect your feeds, you can install the FeedSmith plugin (Google recommended) or Blogger Redirector which will handle all the work for you or you can manually redirect your feeds by following the instructions provided on WordPress.org. Also, there many themes that already come with this feature included. All you need is to add your feedburner URL and you are good to go.
Let Search Engines Find Your Blog and Other Redirections.
Do not delete your blogger blog, instead turn on WordPress and turn off blogger’s feature for search engines to find you. This will avoid Google from considering your blogs as duplicate content. On WordPress, go to Settings > Privacy and select“ I would like my blog to be visible to everyone”. On blogger, go to settings > basic > and set the “let search engines find your blog” to NO.
In addition to the above and if you want to have an added security that all your redirections are OK, install Blogger Redirector, activate it and you’re done. Please note that this is a plugin, and installing too much plugins can hamper your website’s loading time. Now that site speed is a SEO ranking factor, you might want to choose another method, like editing your .htaccess file and placing some codes. Do this with caution. If you are not familiar with coding, I suggest you install the plugin and manage them wisely to avoid your website being too “heavy”. Here is a simple way to manually edit your .htaccess file should you wish to go this route.
Redirect 404 Errors With Permalink Finder
While this is not a must, I believe that it is worthwhile to install this plugin. The Permalink Finder Plugin detects when WordPress cannot find a permalink. Before it generates the 404 error it will try to locate any posts with similar words, by searching through the database trying to find any of the word values from the bad link. It takes the best match and rather than issuing a 404 error it sends back a redirect to a correct page. This is particularly useful when you convert your Blogger blog to WordPress. I tried it and it works. For example, I do not have any permalink that reads like this, https://www.iblogzone.com/seo. If you type this is in your address bar, it will take you to the nearest post that I have that contains the keyword SEO. Cool!
Finalizing Your Blogger To WordPress Migration
I have tried to make this tutorial as easy to understand as possible. Obviously, there could many other ways or steps to perform this transition. However, this is what I have done and it (hopefully) works. Please bear in mind that this is the “newbie” way of doing things and not for the tech savvy. Many thanks to the wonderful people who made this transition smooth for me and I suggest that you take a peek on these awesome post’s to further enhance your WordPress experience.
5 Foundational Plugins, Critical Infrastructure for Your New WordPress Blog
HowTo: Move From Blogger to WordPress
43 Blogger Tips – What you should do after installing WordPress
If you have made your transition through this tutorial, please share your experience with us. I will also love to hear suggestions so I may improve this tutorial as needed.
Related Posts
How To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress: Part 2/3
Ways to Gain Influence through Blogging
The Hottest Design Features from Magazines that Stopped the Presses.
7 Ways To Kill Your Blog
Are You Maximizing Guest Posting Initiatives? Why Posting on Low Readership and PR Blogs Is Important!
Top 5 Mistakes That Will Prove To Be A Hindrance In Your Blogging Success
Traffic Generation and the Survival of the Dodo bird!
Reality vs. Imagination in the World of Blogging
Hesham
I am sure that you had a great experience while immigrating to WordPress!
How you find WordPress so far?
.-= Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..3 Simple And Handy WordPress Tricks Without Using A Plugin =-.
I never thought I would actually say what I am about to say.. WordPress rocks and Thesis rocks more. Makes everything else looks “tiny” when compared. The control one has over “things” is simply unbeatable.
Now don’t get me wrong. I would still recommend blogger without hesitation, specially for the beginners. After that, this is the only way to go:)
Hesham
I am sure you will find your way smoothly!
It’s always good to go step by step, specially when it’s about blogging… I personally recommend WordPress.com free blog for beginners even before jump to self hosted blog.
.-= Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..How Much Is My Site Worth? =-.
That’s a wise recommendation Hesham. It is actually interesting to start on WP.com to learn up front about wordpress, although the only drawback is that it won’t let you have your custom domain for free:)
Jaypee
Great way to end this blog series! Good job DiTesco and thanks for linking to my post. 😀
.-= Jaypee´s last blog ..Cebu Blog Camp =-.
Oh no! Thank you. Without your awesome post about this subject, I would have deferred my decision on a later stage. After reading your post, I said to myself, this is it. Do it now and I did. This series is just another approach on how to do things:) Thanks though..
Hi DiTesco,
Your tutorial is helpful to every blogger (newbie or not). I will be moving to WordPress w/ Fat Cow. I am very Thankful to Di Tesco.
Hi Jeevanjacobjohn, or should I call you John for short:) Welcome to my blog and I am glad you found this tutorial helpful. I have had the same situation as you and once I got all the pieces together, I went for it without hesitation. If you follow this guide step by step, I am convinced that your migration will run smooth. Good luck and let me know if there is anything I can help you with. Remember though for the downside. It is possible (maybe not) that you will loose comments within the process.
Dave
Great article and great tip about resetting the custom domain before importing.
I need some advice on my migration from blogger to wordpress. I have a custom domain called blog.mydomain.com pointing to my blogger account and my main domain http://www.mydoman.com is hosted elsewhere and runs my regular site. I would like to migrate from blogger to wordpress and run everything under my main domain and get rid of my subdomain. However Im not sure the best way to go about this as I dont want to lose my search traffic which currently comes through blog.mydomain.com
Any advice?
Cheers
Thanks Dave. I will have to check on that one. I do have a sub-domain too but it is still pointing elsewhere and not on WP. I was thinking to do what you intend to do, but decided to wait a little longer. Maybe now is a good time to find out. Shoot me an email and we’ll take it from there:)
wilson
Great tutorial on migration from blogger to wordpress. This post will come handy for me when its time to move to wp.
Grateful for Grace
This helped so very much! I can’t even describe. I have found the switch from Blogger to WP daunting and Thesis even more, but this series helped me through my final stage. A few more tweaks to do (via google again and hopefully I’ll find as wonderful help as this), and I’ll be ready to go live with it. A very big deal for someone like me who still doesn’t know what a css code, html code, or javascript is.
Hi Grace. Thanks for your kind words and I am glad that these series was useful to you. Good luck
Prerna
Hi,
Thank you for creating and sharing this tutorial. I have used it successfully to move from Blogger to WP using Thesis and Blue Host as you recommended. However, I have some questions/problems. I hope you’ll be able to help out –
1. How do I move my Blogger widgets to WP? When I select the Text Widget in WP, it doesn’t move to the sidebar. Is this because of Thesis?
2. My blogger blog had a PR of 3 and now the new WP one shows a 0 Rank! I did change the permalinks as you showed, but nothing:-(. How can I keep my PR?
3. Do I reapply for Adsense since the original account was for the blogspot blog or do I simply add the new WP site?
Sorry I have so many questions but your tutorial has been the most helpful so far and am really hoping, you’ll be able to help me out.
Thanks!
Prerna
Hi Prerna. That’s great that you have moved you blogger blog to WP. Good luck and I hope you enjoy using both WP and Thesis. They rock. Now for your questions:
1) You can not move your blogger widgets to WP. You have to create new ones from scratch. Send me an email through my contact form saying which widgets you are looking for and I will direct you to WP plugins that replace those previous widgets. If they are affiliate links or ads, on your WP dashboard, select widgets and drag “text” to the sidebar. Here is a video that shows you how to create a new widget on WP. It is pretty simple http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oO3_3F3AEg&feature=related
2) Did you have your own domain name in your blogger blog before or where you using the xxxx.blogspot.com? If you had a domain name, you should not have lost any pagerank or rankings. If however you had a subdomain on blogger, then unfortunately there is no way around this and it is most likely that you have lost your PR. If this is the case, just keep working on your blog and I am sure that the next update you will get your PR back. If you had inbound links, you should try to ask some of your friends that link to you to link to the new domain.
3) Do not reapply for AdSense. AdSense account works on any blog. Just get the codes and put them in your WP blog and you are good to go. I repeat, do not reapply. If you had set channels, just add your new domain and that’s it.
Hope this helps
Prerna
Hi DiTesco,
Thanks so much for your help! You are in my books, a Rockstar. Many Blessings and best wishes always.
Prerna
Julie
Thanks for the post… My problem seems to lie in the blog titles (slugs), since my domain was the same. When people do a search, it tries to go the blogger post, not the WP, and then they get a 404 error. I have the redirector, but I am not sure how to utilize it.
Hi Julie. What you are telling should not be happening if you have installed and activated the “maintain blogger permalinks”. Please read my Part#2 and try to see if it helps. If the 404 error still remains, send me an email and I will help you fix this. You might have to write a redirect on your .htaccess file. Also, make sure that you have redirected your “blogger site” to the same domain as it is now. Hope this helps
I should have come across your site earlier. I’ve already exported my BLOGGER site to WordPress. I followed some other instructions and still struggling with it.
Firstly when I click on my new URL, it still takes me to BLOGGER with this message: “You’re about to be redirected. The blog that used to be here is now at bestlifequotesblog.com.
Do you wish to be redirected? ” So, how do I rectify this?
My next problem is I have just published a new post (before the transfer), and it showed up fine in BLOGGER. After I have thoroughly migrated to WordPress, I found that this new post doesn’t show up in my WordPress site, but instead shows a DIFFERENT post!
What and where have I screwed up? Your assistance is highly appreciated.
Hi Kertoon. I have just been to your site and every thing seems to be working fine. I did not end up in blogger and for that purpose I am not sure what problems you are having. Are still having problems? If you are, shoot me an email and we’ll take it from there.
DiTesco,
Thank you for your prompt reply. Now there is no more Redirect page, but instead it goes straight to my Blogger homepage for a couple of seconds, then it transfers to my newly setup site on WordPress. Then when I click on the internal links, it doesn’t open up to the actual sites. Instead it goes to my newly setup WordPress homepage!
But now, I have another problem. When I click on the internal links, it doesn’t work anymore. It says:
“The page isn’t redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.”.
I have been clearing cookies and history, but the problem persists. And this only happens to this particular site.
Any ideas where and what have I screwed up this time?
Regards,
kertoon
Jessi
Just adding to this thread. I had a similar problem. Everything has transferred over to wordpress.org, however the individual post links just go back to the new wordpress home page. Is there anyway to manually fix all the individual post links so that they will work in wordpress.com? I want to continue using the entirely free service if at all possible and am not ready to have a custom domain at this time.
Would love your insight if possible! Great step by step!
Hi Jessi. I have been to your site and I do not see any problem with it. Can you give me a specific example so I may look at it and get back to you? thanks for stopping by
Joe Johnson
@Jessi
Go into your WP Admin ->Settings->Permalinks. Set the option to default and save your settings. Clear your cookies / cache and check your pages. Everything should work now; if everything is fixed, go back in to WP Admin ->Settings->Permalinks and re-paste in your permalink structure (ie. /%category%/%postname%/ ).
You should be good to go! I had this same problem and this fixed it. Good luck.
Mark Tui
I have problem with your step#5. Since I already have my own domain, I click “swtich to advanced setting”, it says: “Blogs may not be hosted at naked domains (ex: yourdomain.com). Please add a top-level domain (www.yourdomain.com) or subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com).”
What should I do now? Please advise.
Hi Mark. The way I see it, all you have to do is enter your own domain in the appropriate field and ignore the message. Remember first that you have to put www and then after that redirect the non www. Let me know if this works.
E Wilkerson
DiTesco,
I have a blogger account with a sub-domain, and tried to migrate over to WordPress (self hosted). When I went through the steps, it didn’t migrate all the posts over. Only about 50 of my 250 posts came over. Any idea what the problem might be?
Thank you for your help!
Can you send me your blog url?
Sarah T
From you tutorial, my understanding is you will have two similar blogs (old Blogger blog and the newly setup WordPress).
Will there be “You’re about to redirected” warning sign on the Blogger blog when one clicks on the Blogger blog URL? OR will it directly goes to the newly setup WordPress blog?
Hi there. Once everything has been setup properly and propagation is concluded, the “you are about to be redirected” will no longer show. I know it never did on my old blogger account.
Sarah T
Thank you for your prompt reply.