My Blog On Blogger - What To Do?

[mommyenterprises]

My first blog that I created back in 2004 has been on the Blogger platform but hosting on my own domain. http://www.mommyenterprises.com/moms-blog.htm

As many of you know, they are discontinuing the FTP service next month.

I am not sure if I should move my blog to their new platform which hosts my blog on the blogger servers and forwards to my site or just move over to Wordpress.

I don't know what is involved with moving to Wordpress. I have many other Wordpress blogs and prefer Wordpress anyhow.

What do you suggest?

[angienewton]

Totally suggest moving to Wordpress however I'm not sure I would move the entire blog over but keep it live on Blogger since it's been around so long. That's actually what Lynn did. She kept her original Blogger blog up and started new at Clicknewz.

Other than that I would say move the whole thing over to WP but I personally wouldn't stay with Blogger.

[wade_watson]

The basics of importing a Blogger blog into a WordPress installation is very easy. Just log into your new WP Dashboard, go to Tool>Import, click "Blogger" and it walks you through the process of importing your XML data.

However you'll want to set up your WP permalinks to match those of Blogger so the search engines can still find the pages. And if you have any images with your Blogger entries, they will not be imported (though it will appear so because the will still be hosted at Blogger). You'll need to move and reinsert them all by hand, which can be a bit time consuming. I've had luck using the Search and Replace (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/) plugin to save time when doing this.

Wade Watson

[ideaqueen]

Since you've already got it on your own domain, I would suggest moving it over to WordPress. It's not hard at all to import files from the admit section of Wordpress, and they even have an option for importing from Blogger.

Like Wade mentioned, you'll probably want to make your old links match. That isn't hard with Wordpress, since it gives you the option of setting up your links however you want (for example, if you have it set up on Blogger to show a post as "/catagory/post", you can duplicate that on WordPress).

However, I just did a big overhaul on Idea Queen moving all the blog files onto the root from /blog. I did a redirect with an .htmacess file, and lost no rankings at all (oh yes, I check traffic and rankings daily!). So if done carefully, you won't lose your rankings.

[mommyenterprises]

I have really been wanting to convert to Wordpress too! I just am afraid I am going to mess something up.

When I first created the blog, I used the homepage as moms-blog.htm which should have been like /moms-blog

If I create a Wordpress blog for this and change the homepages to /moms-blog you think it is going to affect anything? Or maybe I should keep the http://www.mommyenterprises.com/moms-blog.htm with a note and link to the new homepage?

[wade_watson]

Well, you'll loose search standing if you change the URL. You might set up a WP install in a folder under mommyenterprises, but I can't tell you offhand how to make the page be named "/moms-blog.htm". Come to think of it, you probably can't do that in WordPress, since it's in PHP. I'll have to stew on that one awhile or, perhaps, someone else has a thought on it.

Wade

[mommyenterprises]

I actually don't want to make the homepage of the blog moms-blog.htm. I did that when I orginally created the blog because I had no clue what I was doing, LOL.

I just didn't know if that was going to affect the Wordpress import.

[mommyenterprises]

Now that I have been looking more into it, I have a HUGE problem (well at least I think).

When I setup my Blogger blog, it asked for the blog filename. I didn't put index.html because I wasn't putting the blog as the home page of the domain.

For the path, i put WWW

So right now, all my posts are going like this:

http://www.mommyenterprises.com/2010/02/blogpost.htm

I never created a separate directory for my blog.

When I go to setup Wordpress it is going to ask me the same thing. Again, I would need to create a directory because I don't want it overwriting my site.

Should I just start NEW?

[angienewton]

Stefani,
I think you should start new and I really wish Lynn was around to tell you exactly why she kept hers as she did on Blogger but she's traveling on business this week. I honestly think you should start a new one and link from the old to the new. Or don't jump into it yet and wait for Lynn's feedback next week.

[mommyenterprises]

I am really going towards the new blog too. I just wish we would have been gotten notice of this change a long time ago instead of giving us such short notice.

I am most worried about my feed since I have a TON of subscribers. Would I be able to keep the same feed address for my new blog?

[wade_watson]

I notice my RSS feeds from WordPress blogs end with "/feed". Your feed ends with "/rss.xml". So it looks like you'll loose the feed readers if you move it. I'm not going to say there isn't a way to convert/forward it, but I don't know of one. You could give feed readers a link to the new feed, but you'd loose quite a few I'm sure. I guess this demonstrates the value of an external feed management system like Feedburner.

Wade

[AlexNewell]

Stefani - I am not a blogging expert - there are plenty of them in the forum already - but I think all this is doable. The link you gave lead me to a 404 page so maybe your link was dubious.

Clicking around on your blog it all looks doable really. The crucial thing is to get your permalinks right and properly redirected which is easily done with a plugin.

The feed might be more problematic - I think blogger uses a type not used in WP.

if that is the case start building your email list with freebies and perhaps email coupon codes rather than publishing them on your blog

[mommyenterprises]

I already created a new blog yesterday in Wordpress. I thought I might as well get a head start on this. Just for fun I went to the setting to check out the Import tool. That import tool says you have to have a blogger blog that has the new layout or custom domain which I don't.

My luck is all bad with this situation. One good thing though is I am really liking the way my new blog design is coming along.

Here is the link to the new blog:
http://www.mommyenterprises.com/moms-blog

[AlexNewell]

"My luck is all bad with this situation"

Not at all!

What happens if you just import anyway?

BTW

Gorgeous design

:-)

[angienewton]

Looks nice Stefani! I love the theme.

[mommyenterprises]

Looks nice Stefani! I love the theme.

Thanks Angie,

Now if only I could get my darn permalinks to work right. I am having such a tough last couple days I tell you.