The Easiest Blogger to Wordpress Migration guide

The Easiest Blogger to WordPress Migration guide

Posted by Suhas on September 3, 2010 in wordpress, z · 134 Comments

Like many others I started on Blogger but then, I wanted a little more freedom. So, went on to a self hosted wordpress. There are a lot of advantages with wordpress like SEO, customizability and most importantly freedom to do anything you want.

It is a preconceived notion that migrating from Blogger to WordPress would destroy your previously acquired pagerank, google juice, traffic, image (picasa) data. Well, its not, its not that hard as it seems. It is possible to do it without losing any of these..

This method will ensure complete Page Rank, Traffic, Image transfer. Everything will be retained. We will use 301 redirects to do that. So, you will not lose any of your traffic be it organic or referral, anything. Even your images on Picasa are taken care of.

I have written a plugin that will do everything. I believe that this might be the easiest guide you will follow. I strongly recommend you to do it yourself because it is not as hard as it seems.

A lot of work has gone into making the plugin and preparing this guide. If you want to thank me, please link to this article.

I am going to show you how to do it completely on cPanel. You can try similar steps if you want to do it on your local machine.

Disclaimer: This method works most of the time. It has gone through a number iterations to make it as easy as possible but there are still things that can go wrong, to name a few, php.ini configurations, mod_security rules, unix permissions, the blogger post import algorithm etc. I’m not responsible for any loss.

This method will work with both custom domains and .blogspot.com domain blogs.

Before you start

You’ll have to buy a good hosting package. I’d recommend hostgator (aff). After that, you will get an email with your account information. Here is a sample email.

Note down all that is specified. If you don’t have the temporary URL listed, ask the web hosting support. I’m sure, they’ll tell you.

Setup your Blog

1) Go to the cPanel (using the cPanel URL) –> Addon Domain (or even a subdomain would do) –> Add your domain name.

3) Install WordPress on your domain. Fantastico is my favourite

A. Preparing

Here, you import all the old posts. Setup redirects using a plugin.
A.1 Getting WordPress to Work on the Temporary URL:
Temporary URL is only necessary if you are using custom domain on Blogger and want to move it to wordpress. People on .blogspot.com URL need not do this (Step A 1)

1) In your cPanel, go to PhpMyAdmin. Click on your database (Fantastico will save it as “username_ wrdp1″ or something similar)

2) Click on wp_options. Change the siteurl to your temporary URL.

A.2 Importing:

2) Login to the WordPress Dashboard using the Temporary URL . In the tools menu, select Import.

3) Select Blogger (duh!)

4) Select “Grant Access”

5) Click on Import.

A.3 Redirecting:

Here, you’ll make sure you redirect all the traffic from your Blogspot Permalinks to your new WordPress Permalinks. We will make 301 redirects. All your traffic from organic (search engines) and inorganic (referral, direct) will still be retained. All your search engine rankings, Page ranks will be intact. And it’s super easy to do.

Basically, Your Blogger URL will be like:

http://www.suhastech.com/2010/01/wordpress-change-server-webhost-domain.html

Your new WordPress URL will be like:

http://suhastech.com/wordpress/complete-wordpress-guide-how-to-change-your-webhost-or-domain-and-still-retain-all-the-settings/

All of them will be redirected.

1) Install this plugin.

2) What do you expect, thats all.

The following steps are only for .blogspot.com domain users.

1) Go to WordPress Dashboard (wp-admin) -> Tools –> SEO Blogger to WordPress. Put in your WordPress URL and Generate the Template.

2) Copy all of the Generated text.

3) Go to your Blogger Dashboard -> Design -> Edit HTML -> Revert to Classic Template.

4) Paste all the Generated Template to the code area and click on save.

A.4 Tidying Up

Before your blog goes live. Make all the changes you want to do. Here’s a Check List that would help you:

1) Add a new theme.

2) Edit any posts if you must.

Changing the permalinks is a must for the plugin to work. When you change the structure, wordpress takes care of .htaccess.

3) Change your permalink structure. Settings –> Permalinks. I recommend /%category%/%postname%/

4) Install all the plugins you need. I recommend: All in one SEO pack, Akismet (Buckle up), Yet another related posts, Google Analyticator

A.5 Miscellaneous

You wouldn’t want to leave your subscribers behind. Make sure you redirect your feed.

Go to Blogger Dashboard –> Settings –> Site Feed. Set “Post feed redirect URL” to “yourblog.com/feed”

A.6 The Migration

You have your wordpress blog completely setup. Set your siteURL back to the original URL (As in A.1).

Now, you’ve to point your domain to the blog you have setup.

Go to your Domain Registrar (Godaddy / Namecheap) and update the nameservers provided by your hosting provider.

1) Login to your Domain Registration Control Panel.

2) Add the nameservers given by your hosting provider.

Nameservers will take about 3-4 hours (48 hours max) to propagate. After that you can pat yourself for a flawless migration. If it’s not, comments are welcome.

A.7 Download Images from Picasa Albums to your WordPress Installation

Now, that you’ve installed my plugin. Go to Settings –> SEO Blogger to WordPress.

Click on “Download”. After the process is completed, click on “Clear Temporary Settings”.

How the migration works:

This paragraph below is an email I wrote to one of my clients.

Let me explain you how the “.blogspot.com” to “.com” migration works. Hope I don’t confuse you.

Blogger.com doesn’t provide you with the facility to 301 redirect people and robots to any other site. So, we use a link parameter called rel=”canonical”. Initially, this was used to prioritize in-domain URLs but now, all major search engines have agreed to use it cross domain. See the last question here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394 .

Here, we make a template on blogger with rel=”canonical” and meta refresh to http://yourdomain.com?blogger=http://your.blogspot.com/blah-blah.html. rel=”canonical” tells the search engine robots to “crawl this yourdomain.com URL next time you come across the blogspot URL”.

“Meta refresh” refreshes the webpage and redirect to yourdomain.com URL as soon as a real person opens your website.

On the other side (wordpress) we 301 redirect http://yourdomain.com?blogger=http://your.blogspot.com/blah-blah.html to the original wordpress URL.

Now, for this to work, you have to import your posts using the “Blogger Importer” given in the WordPress tools as it adds a meta data value with the blogger URL. Copy Pasted stuff will NOT work.

Custom domain to WordPress is a pure 301 redirect.

Suhas
So lazy that he can't even fill this column out.

http://www.pagerank-checker.com Teylor

Thank you. nice article…
http://bestlifequotesblog.com kertoon

I have problems migrating from Blogger to WordPress. Now when I click on the browser, it first goes to my old Blogger site, for a couple of seconds then only redirects to my newly setup site on WordPress. When I click on posts from “Recent Posts” widget, 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.”

Next, when I click on the internal links from the posts, firstly it goes to my old Blogger post (as clicked), then after a few seconds, it redirects to my HOMEPAGE of the newly setup site on WordPress!

What or where have I messed up or left out? Your help is greatly appreciated.

My newly setup site is http://bestlifepostsblog.com. The old blogger site is: http://thebestlifequotes.blogspot.com
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

@kertoon… Actually, a better way to migrate would be to add your domain to your blogger account… Then, after somedays, transfer it to wordpress.. Please look into the “Before you start” section…
James

Could I use a custom domain of blog.domain.com in the “Before You Start” part, have that for a month, and eventually have the redirects go to http://www.domain.com/blog (where my self-hosted WP installation is?)

Thanks, great articles!
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas
Hello James,

Yes you can do this. You’ll have to make changes in the redirect script. (.htaccess)

Here are some changes you’ll have to make in the “redirecting section”.

1) Create a new file called “redir.php” in your WordPress directory (the “http://domain.com/blog” directory) . Copy this code.
```
<?php require_once('wp-load.php');
$res = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT post_id, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'blogger_permalink'");
$wpdb->print_error();
foreach ($res as $row)
{
echo "redirect 301 ".$row->meta_value." "."http://domain.com/blog/?p=&quot;.$row->post_id; echo "<br />";
} ?>
```
http://domain.com/blog

2) Enter “http://domain.com/blog/redir.php” in your browser.

Redirecting code will be generated. Copy all of that.

3) Create a .htaccess file on your “http://blog.domain.com/” directory (add the subdomain and all of that).

4) Paste the generated code in that file.

I think this should solve your problem.

Cheers,
Suhas
http://sweatingthebigstuff.com/ Daniel

How long does it take for the pagerank to transfer over? I’m planning on converting a blog but that PR is very important to me.
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

about a month
amitkh

Hi there

I created the addon domain as required for a dummy blog..

But the.htaccess that I have on the root directory says something like this …

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Seems a bit different than what you have shown ..(where you have suggested to add on the generated code) .. So what exactly should be on the .htaccess file. I was able to generate the redirect code. but not sure about the exact syntax above the redirected code.. My .htaccess file has some different code..
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

Hi Amit,

It doesn’t really matter as the generated code is completely independent. Just paste the generated code after the existing code (append).

Cheers,
Suhas
amitkh

hi suhas

Thanks for the answer above .. However I finished everything so now when I go and check on an old post of mine .. it is redirecting to the new wordpress installation but it is saying not found.. Will it take some time before the redirects gets indexed.

The other question that I have is that you said that

“[Wordpress] How to change your webhost or domain and still retain all the settings (skip the 3rd part)”

What is that third part that I have to skip. May be that is the issue !
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

Hi Amit,

Can you try install this plugin – http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/ in your wordpress installation and tell me the results?

Oh yea, After you make the migration, everything will work fine (because you are still on the dummy domain, I guess). The third part is where you change the domain. ( Preparing MySQL Database from server 1)

Regards,
Suhas
http://londoneer.org The Londoneer

The advice above on PageRank is just plain wrong I’m afraid – Google’s public-facing pagerank is only updated six monthly at best, and their last update took place in mid-January, so if you move now expect your Pagerank to sit at ZERO until the summer at the earliest.

I know this to be the case because I moved from my blogspot domain to a custom domain about a month ago, and even though I changed within the blogger interface, my PR has dropped from 5 to 0 and I don’t expect it to come back for months. Be very mindful of that fact when moving to a custom domain – if I’d done my research properly beforehand I would never have switched to be honest!
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

@londoneer…

Sorry to hear that but, there’s nothing to worry about.

I have also gone through the process migration and the page rank (even if it is just 1) was transferred without hitches.

Once you give a 301 redirect, google registers your site as “Moved Permanently”. All your SERP positions will remain the same but the domain name will be swapped with the new one. After the migration, I was able to observe that with no loss of traffic.

1 month is enough time to crawl your website (check google webmastrers tool for confirmation). Once the page rank update comes along (as you said, 6 months) your new domain will be awarded the page rank.

Google’s official note on 301 redirect
http://dotcombuzz.in Sachin

Hi, Suhas I am presently with blogger. But I have bookmarked your article for when I will decide to shift to wordpress then definitely follow these instructions.

Very nice tutorial.

Regards
Sachin
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

Business gurus were right all along, freemium never works. People started taking advantage of me (though I’m not someone who’ll succumb to it). They started using this logic, if an apple costs $0, then 10 apples costs 10*$0 = $0.

So, from today, free blogger to wordpress stops. Send in your requirements and your blog address. I’ll analyse the situation and give you a quote.

Though, if you’ve screwed up somewhere and you’re stuck, provided there’s not much work involved, I’ll do it for free.

Click here to go back to the top of the page
Pingback: [Plugin] SEO Blogger to Wordpress 301 Redirector | Suhas Tech
http://fromthedungeon.com LordCM

i tried this yesterday and it works fine, the only problem i got is the Download images from Picasa to WordPress, it seems that the plugin is not working in WordPress 3.1.

Can you help me with this, i need to transfer the images to wordpress

Thanks
Anonymous

It has been fixed now.
Ron4242

I have already moved the content to my wordpress blog. Can I use this plug in for just the redirection?
Anonymous

Yup, that’s the purpose of the plug in
Jorge Salgado

is the image importer working in wp 3.1.4 ? i’ve just tried it several times and all it did was create the “image” folder but no image was copied in it. the plugin seems to be working at first, then there’s an empty screen and it’s finished.
Anonymous

Hi Jorge,

This plugin has a feature that lets you resume the image download. You have to click on “Clear temporary data” before you can try to download the images again.
Rich Kaszeta

Thanks, this plugin helped me undo the damage from a previously botched migration, and links from my old blog now cleanly redirect to the new one without blogger’s “Warning page”.
sean

Thanks for the great guide. I am moving my blogger blog to a wordpress theme that does not allow me to have my blog on my homepage or index file. The theme is designed for the blog to live on a separate folder (site.com/blog). Will putting my blog in a sub folder mess up my SEO or blog feed? I do not have a feed burner account so am I correct to assume that my subscribers are using Atom for the feed? I’m confused and don’t want to lose rankings or feed subscribers. Thanks
Anonymous

It will work just fine. The code works even on separate directories.
Also, updated my post with the feed redirection information.
Anonymous

test
Sandra Roberts

Thanks! I’ve been having problems with redirect and I think this is finally working! lol
Sean

Hello Suhas, I changed my permalink structure in WordPress BEFORE I downloaded and activated your plugin. Will WordPress still take care of .htaccess? Thanks
sean

I figured it out. It does work.
sean

I migrated my blog per your instructions and everything works great except my feed is not being redirected using the Post Feed Redirect URL. I put this address in for feed address. http://www.tacomaduilawyerblog.com/feed/ Any idea why it’s not working?
Anonymous

It should..

Were you using the same domain as custom domain?
seanheis

hi suhas, yes I was using the same domain. i fixed the problem by installing a redirect plugin and routing 404 page to correct feed page. thanks
Anonymous

Thanks for the input…

I think the feed URL is something like suhastech.com/atom.xml..

I’ll add the feed redirection in the next update of the plugin..
roshan

hi suhas,
I recently shifted my blog from blogger to wordpress and this last 5-7 days was very tough since migrating is not easy when it comes to blogger. I found many tutorial but didn’t work however finally i found your pulgin and successfully it worked, Please answer few of my question bcoz this things are making me nervous..
1.) My blog has page rank 3 and now new domain blog is 0, will i get my page rank
2.) I started losing traffic about 80% and now 50% after 301 redirect, However i haven’t added my new site on google nor on google webmaster is this is what effecting traffic.
3.) If i retain all SEO Ranking then how long i will get that..
Please help me with this doubt… I would highly appreciate that and thanks for the wonderfull plugin..
Anonymous

Sorry for late reply…. Have been a little busy.

1) Yes, Eventually..
2) It shouldn’t… Yes, they will be a slight decrease (5-10 %) in traffic initially… but they will go back to normal after a month..
3) I don’t get this.. SEO rankings will stay as long as your site is alive or maybe until an algorithm change…
Anonymous

Sorry for late reply…. Have been a little busy.

1) Yes, Eventually..
2) It shouldn’t… Yes, they will be a slight decrease (5-10 %) in traffic initially… but they will go back to normal after a month..
3) I don’t get this.. SEO rankings will stay as long as your site is alive or maybe until an algorithm change…
http://www.candysite.info/ Dragon

I believe you, I try
http://rodney-c.blogspot.com/ Rodneycdavis

Definitely not for dummies like me. I tried it and made a mess of it. I think I can eventually get it done myself if I keep working at it for a couple WEEKS. LOL
Anonymous

lol…

I have tried to make it as easy as possible. Atleast, you don’t have to write code manually. I have it neatly packaged in a plugin.
Sasha Estrada

I’m having problems with the plugin. When I try to put the code in my blogger template, I’m getting the following message “Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: The value of attribute “dir” associated with an element type “null” must not contain the ‘<' character."
Anonymous

Click on “Revert to Classic Template” and try again. It will work.
Sasha Estrada

It worked now! Thanks!
http://coolawesomemovies.blogspot.com/ Ventilation Shaft

When I try to import all the pictures from my Blogger blog to my new self-hosted WP on HostGator, I get the following error:

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 68419584) (tried to allocate 688 bytes) in /home/kowalski/public_html/coolawesomemovies.com/wp-includes/media.php on line 1006

People said I need to edit my php.ini file, which I wanted to do, but option to alter the memory allocation setting is unavailable. I checked the my host’s cPanel and saw the following stats:

CPU usage: 0.1% ~ 2.1%
Memory usage: 0.1% ~ 3%
Disk Usage 155.92MB / 20,000MB
Files: 9573/100,000

The memory_allocation is set on 64M.

No usage is nowhere near any limits, and yet the plugin stops working for the the lack of memory. Any help? The website’s url is: coolawesomemovies.com.

Thanks!
Anonymous

Hi,

The latest version of my plugin uses wordpress’ core inbuild functions to upload images. Try adding define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’128M’); into your wp-config.php file. That might be the problem. Not sure as I don’t have the complete picture.

In case, you want to use the legacy version of the plugin, please use http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/seo-blogger-to-wordpress-301-redirector.0.3.zip . It downloads the images on almost all installations with GD library installed. Pretty sure that your setup will fall in that subset. Though, the images won’t be added to the the WordPress “Media Library”. For some themes, this is needed to add the thumbnail functionality.

Regards,
Suhas
http://coolawesomemovies.blogspot.com/ Ventilation Shaft

Another question, about the 301 redirection – in short, they don’t work. I’ve tried several plugins, and all to the same: they redirect EVERY post on my old blogspot to the HOMEPAGE of my new self-hosted wordpress, and not the post they should to.

Example:

http://coolawesomemovies.blogspot.com/2010/08/john-rambo.html

should redirect to

http://coolawesomemovies.com/2010/08/john-rambo.html

But it redirects to coolawesomemovies.com instead, and the redirected url looks like this: http://coolawesomemovies.com/?blogger=http://coolawesomemovies.blogspot.com/2010/08/john-rambo.html

My site is hosted on Host Gator, and somewhere I’ve read that mod_security should be enabled on the server in order for the plugin to work. I’ve contacted HG, and they said that mod_security IS on. And still the redirections don’t work. I’ve also updated my permalink structure in WordPress. I went to my blogger dashboard, reverted to Classic Template, pasted the generated text inside the template, and saved. I’ve also imported the posts from blogger via “Blogger Importer”.

Basically, I did everything, step by step, and still the plugin DOES… NOT… WORK. Why?
Anonymous

It’s the opposite, you must disable mod_security especially the “HTTP protection” rule. Tell them to disable it.

Btw, try removing “http://” in the redirected URL and press enter.
Gayan

Gayan,

Hello Suhas,

When importing the picasa images… since I have added somewhat a decent amount of “captions”, will those text on the images be included when the images are imported to WP hosting?

Thanks.
Anonymous

I don’t quite understand your question. If you have the captions in the HTML, it will stay they as it is. It’ll just download the images and place it where ever it previously existed.
Cheryl

Thanks for a great plugin!

I’m having a little trouble with images, though. When I import them from Picasa, about 9 of 10 images don’t appear on the post page (that is, the caption and an empty box show up but no image). If you click on the image, it opens and appears fine, so it’s definitely pointing to the right place. Any ideas how I might fix this?

Thanks,
Cheryl
Anonymous

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.

It’s probably because you are still on the temporary URL. Once, you are on the real URL, it should show up.

To confirm, right click on the image –> Copy Image URL –> Paste it on your address bar –> Replace your domain with the temporary URL. The image should show up.

Regards,
Suhas
http://www.europetravelpad.com Euroangel

this is very informative.thanks for sharing..
Riah

Thank you so very much, about a month ago I followed your sage advice and it worked wonderfully… today our PR Ranking went back up to the original ranking we had on blogger! I can’t thank you enough for your kindness in sharing this easy solution to the dilemma of how to move from blogger to wordpress and keep the rankings.

Now I really wish you could now right with instructions on how to problem solve when your blog search, select category and Archive selections aren’t working. *sigh* Yes I know, I have big dreams… sorry, but honestly your instructions on the Migration were so wonderfully complete and simplified so that even a Noob like me could do this successfully in just one evening.

Thank you again… now off I go to do further troubleshooting on my blog.

signed, “a truly thankful blogger.”
http://twitter.com/seocadiz Seo Cádiz

Yes, everything its working fine, but tagging (blog/search), Category and archive redirect to the homepage.
Can you help?
Anonymous

Actually…. All the category, archive pages are bad for SEO. You might have heard of “Duplicate Content Penalty”.

Anyways, Will update the plugin with the redirects for those when I get some time.
http://twitter.com/seocadiz Seo Cádiz

Thanks in advance.
About this, i did a little bit of researching and testing. And there are 2 things i found
The variable $BlogItemPermalinkURL$ doesn’t work if you are in an archive page or search page, and i cant figure out witch variable is the one that sends the archive url to the wordpress site has an argument.
And i also tried to manually send the url to wordpress and it doesn’t work. I suppose that you need to update the pluggin.
Anonymous

I went through it today… It seems the only dynamic tag that works in archive pages is the title tag…. Probably will have to play around with it..
Harleena

Hi Suhas, I tried your way, but I cannot get it work. I had a blogspot domain. I first registered a domain and pointed it to my WP webspace and installed WP. Then I imported all posts and installed your pluggin. I generated the template, pasted where required and reverted to classic template. I also changed the permalinks. I did everything, but still things don’t seem work and I do not get my original alexa and google PR. Am I missing anything or gone wrong somewhere? Can you help? Thanks in advance.
http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

You’ll need to wait for about a month
Jodi Horsley

Hi Suhas!

Thank you so much for you awesome instructions! I am getting ready to migrate to WP. I do already have my domain set up as well as the theme. Your instructions have you working off a temporary url. Can I use my actual url instead? Thanks!
Acreech

wordpress 3.2.1, importing photos didn’t work. Ran through the process correctly, but it says that it imported 0 photos. Any help?
Acreech

Just posted a comment about image transfer failed..solved it and wanted to share. using @GetImageSize to check that a file exists on a remote server fails if the server has locked down servers. the @ was suppressing the errors. added a url_exists function using curl and everything seems to be working.
Milli.K

Suhas, this is awesome. I got up to the step where you import the posts. All posts were imported correctly. But I have the same question as Jodi – I have had my domain for a while and wordpress is being installed on http://www.site.com/blog, and I don’t know what the temporary url is. Is there a way to do this without the temporary url?
(I tried it with the ‘real’ url and the 301 redirecter didn’t redirect.)
Thanks a lot for this great plugin + detailed explanation!
Anonymous

Yup…. The temporary URL is only for those who were using the same domain on blogger…. If you can setup wordpress on the actual URL then it’s awesome… You don’t even have to go the pain of setting up a temporary URL..
Anonymous

Thanks,,,

I’ll add that in the next update..
Anonymous

It seems my plugin doesn’t work on blogs installed in a particular directory.. It should be an easy fix.

I have my tests tommorow… Will hopefully fix it in about 2 days…

And don’t worry about the temporary URL if you can setup wordpress on your domain…
Anonymous

You have to wait for about a month..
Milli.K

Awesome. Thanks a lot. I’ll check back next week!
Milli.K

Hi Suhas,
Did you have a chance to look into this issue?
Hope you did well on your tests by the way
Thanks a lot for your help!
Anonymous

Thanks…
Committed the changes in version 0.3.3
Andiophie82

You have to wait for about a month.www.ophiee.com
Riah L.

any luck at all with this problem with the search/catagory & archive to work? My blog is in need of this for helping our readers find their way around. As a matter of fact the old stuff from the other blog that was moved over actually doesn’t work in the index page either for us.

We care about SEO but a review blog like ours does need a way to get around and potential companies should have a way to see the reviews etc that they are interested in reading, especially if they were needing to see it to feel better about running a giveaway for the readers too. That’s my concern way over the SEO mention that you had made.

Thank you again for your time.
Riah
Mian1234

Hi thanx For uploading this helpful inforamtion

i have done all the steps but my post not showing correctly

All my post and images are showing In this type Of coding

iv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”a
href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zZ5kwsTryVc/TotJnbOPS2I/AAAAAAAABm8/-gDiIISg84o/s1600/1966-updo-flower.jpg”
imageanchor=”1″ style=”clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ height=”320″
))
can u tell me whats the matter
http://www.usmc81.com Cpl. Beddoe

Worked well, many thanks for your well-written tutorial.
Amomhavingfun

Any idea why I would get a 500 error crawl error?

Thanks!
Anonymous

Sorry for the late reply…

I’m a wee bit busy with my finals… Will try my best..
Anonymous

500 translates to “Internal Server Error”… So, probably a problem with the PHP / Apache configuration.
Anonymous

Very sorry for the late reply..

My guess is … it’s a problem with libxml2 library that wordpress uses… One particular version doesn’t play well..

http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/
Riah L.

No problem… I understand. Just hoping to fix the inconvenience for my readers and potential sponsors of my blog. Good luck with your finals!
Anonymous

Done.

Update to 0.3.5

Let me know if you find any bugs.
Riah L.

Thank you! I will let you know if I find anything. I appreciate all your hard work!
Marc

I think that is a great plugin, but when I install and activate the plugin I get this in the Plugins panel – “The plugin generated 2 characters of unexpected output
during activation. If you notice “headers already sent” messages,
problems with syndication feeds or other issues, try deactivating or
removing this plugin.”

Then when I click on a link from my old blogger blog I get this – “Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent
by (output started at
/home/stdo/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/seo-blogger-to-wordpress-301-redirector/seo-blogger-to-wordpress.php:506)
in /home/stdo/public_html/blog/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 866″Might you have any advice for a fix? The site is running WP 3.3
Lembah1

Plugin still ot working with worpdress 3.3
Mike Hopkins

I followed all of the instructions (thank you) but my posts lead to my WP page which is blank- and I get a note on the page that says:
UPDATE! HOLY COW IT IS WORKING! YOOHOO! You are DA MAN! ALL 3 of my sites! Now if I can get the pics to display I will mail you a cigar and a bottle of bubbly!
Mike Hopkins

Question:
I wasn’t able to use the blogger importer- It kept giving me an error about my domain not being registered and that another website accessed blah, blah blah…
Anyway, I had to export xml, upload into worpress.com (free) then export- would thic cause a problem?
I then ran your picasa importer and I get this on all 3 of my sites:

Can you give me an idea on what I should do?OKThe server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.Please contact the server administrator and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.More information about this error may be available in the server error log.Apache Server at forhuntersbyhunters.com Port 80
Anonymous

The posts must be imported using the “Blogger Importer” plugin else you’ll lose the meta data and the posts can’t be redirected..
http://www.mgfpodcast.com/ Cindy Jones Lantier

Thanks for the tutorial. The migration part absolutely doesn’t work for me, but the redirect did. How do I undo that so that my old blog is still visible until I get the migration issue worked out?
Anonymous

I’m not sure if I understand your issue… I think you can just set up another template and it should stop redirecting.
A_velvet_claw

Hi Suhas,

I’ve read your tutorial – definitely the best I’ve found on migrating a blogger blog to WP that I’ve found. However, I have a bit of a left field question and I was hoping that you could help me.

I have a blog (http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/) which I want to divide into two, and move one half of it to WP. One half is about Calligraphy and Illumination (C&I) and one half is about Historical Embroidery.
I want to migrate the Historical Embroidery part to WP.
I am no longer working on C&I but I want to retain the C&I part as a Blogger Blog as there is some good research work in there, I get 50% of my hits on that part of the blog, and I don’t want to take it away from my C&I readers. I don’t care about “hit ratings”, I care about the availability of research I’ve done on medieval scripts I certainly don’t want their existing links to my research to be lost!

So far, I’ve exported/imported http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/ to create a copy at http://temp-elmsely-rose.blogspot.com/.

I’ve created this copy of my blog to work with during the transition – I’m not going to start mucking around with deleting parts of my existing blog and risk loosing content because I make some stuff-up.

I’ll export http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/ to WP as you describe, and delete C&I posts to make it a blog just about Historical Embroidery.

At http://temp-elmsely-rose.blogspot.com/ (the Blogger Blog copy) I will delete the Embroidery posts from there, just leaving the C&I posts.

Voila – two blogs, one on Blogger about my C&I, one on WP about my Embroidery.

I can change http://temp-elmsely-rose.blogspot.com/ back to the original blog address http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/

So, that plan works nicely. And it’s dead wasy.

But I get to the part of your tutorial on redirection that says
“The following steps are only for .blogspot.com domain users.

1) Go to WordPress Dashboard (wp-admin) -> Tools –> SEO Blogger
to WordPress. Put in your WordPress URL and Generate the Template…………4) Paste all the Generated Template to the code area and click on save.”…and stop dead in my footsteps. How do I fit this in with the above plan, re-directing only half of my permalinks? *bang head on wall*

Note – the posts on C&I are all tagged “C&I” and the posts on Embroidery are all tagged “Embroidery” if that helps in the solution at all.I do hope that you can help me!

best regards,
Megan
http://metalpigs.com/ Metalpig Logo

Thanks for this very helpful Blogger to WordPress migration guide… you rocks!
A_velvet_claw

Hi Suhas,
I’m sorry to bother you – I’ve read that you are busy with your finals. (eeeerk!)
Are you able to address my problem when you have time? I don’t know what to do. Just knowing the answer is percolating away in your brain would be really reassuring

Megan
Anonymous

Here’s a better solution that works:

Import http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/ to your WP blog. Create another blog (say ci.blogspot.com). Import the posts to that blog, delete the historical part in ci.blogspot.

DO NOT delete C&I stuff from either elmsleyrose.blogspot or wordpress else you’ll probably lose the the power to redirect.

Use the template generator in my plugin and use it in the http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/ blog. By this all traffic will be redirected to WP.

Now, edit the single.php in the WP theme file set. Add this bit of code.

if (in_category(‘the-ci-label-name’))
{
wp_redirect(‘http://ci.blogspot.com’.get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), “blogger_permalink”));
}

That should redirect all the C&I stuff to the ci.blogspot.com blog.

Cheers,
Suhas
A_velvet_claw

Hi Suhas
Thanks for answering! I put in a ‘prod’ comment at 3am this morning – thought you’d answered a heap of other questions, but is was actually pushed to the bottom of an existing thread.

Thanks – you are a sweetie.

I’ll look for a plugin/method to ‘hide’ the C&I category in my WP blog, so even tho the C&I posts are in there, they will be hidden from the users’ view. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this functionality. I really don’t want the C&I and Embroidery together – the content is too dense. Will this work ok with the solution you’ve given me (which I understand fine
Anonymous

Yup, that should work.

There seems to be a couple of plugins that do that:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-category-excluder/

PS: I haven’t tested them personally.
A_velvet_claw

Suhas, you’re a lifesaver! Thanks so much! I’ll go with the second one, which hides the C&I category from search engines as well, because I’ve read of problems with double entries. Do you want to know if it works?
All the best and kudos,
Megan
Anonymous

Sure. No problem.

BTW, you can do a 301 redirect. With that, search engines will only index the new site.

if (in_category(‘the-ci-label-name’)){wp_redirect(‘http://ci.blogspot.com’.get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), “blogger_permalink”), 301);}
http://twitter.com/gamesms Jaxter Cloverfield

worked all for me but when im downloading my picasa photos for my blog it give me out of memory error and the operation down any another method to get my photos from posts??
Shay Bocks

I am using this plugin at http://www.ohmy-creative.com/. I tried using the Download Images featured and I get the “Download Successful” message, but most of the images are still coming from Blogger and some images just disappeared. This isn’t good. How do I fix this??
Anonymous

Which version of the plugin are you on?
Anonymous

Which version of the plugin are you on?
PS: Sorry for the late reply
Shay Bocks

Version 0.3.9
Anonymous

It’s a bug in one of wordpress’ core functions… *Working on it*
http://twitter.com/gamesms Jaxter Cloverfield

Version 0.3.9
Angela Kohl

I cannot get this step to work:

The following steps are only for .blogspot.com domain users.

1) Go to WordPress Dashboard (wp-admin) -> Tools –> SEO Blogger
to WordPress. Put in your WordPress URL and Generate the Template.

2) Copy all of the Generated text.

3) Go to your Blogger Dashboard -> Design -> Edit HTML -> Revert to Classic Template.

4) Paste all the Generated Template to the code area and click on save.

The path for editing Step 3 is no longer available. I do not see the option to “Revert to Classic Template”. Am I missing something? Other than that, everything worked wonderfully!!!
A_velvet_claw

Hi Sushatech,
May I impost upon you for a non Blog-> WordPress migration issue, after you’ve helped me with migrating my blog (the one that had both calligraphy and embroidery in it, and I wanted to seperate them). I’m after a plugin that will put in a small standard image (you could call it a thumbnail but it doesn’t blog up to anything) in every one of my posts? I’ve been through plugins, custom fields, and my poor head is spinning! Inserting the image is part of trying to retain copyright on my work – it’ll be hard to get out ~grin~
Steve Tinter

HI – great tool and I tested it on a small site – works brilliantly and I gave you a 5 star rating. I do however have a problem – I have a larger site with 500 posts and about 1900 comments and the WP import tool just seems to get so far and then stop each time. Can you recommend a better import tool for the posts themselves?
Anonymous

Post pages are redirecting to home page…..

I’m testing it here http://themetest.newsbird.in
Anonymous

I suggest you increase the timeout limit in your php.ini configuration
Anonymous

http://suhastech.com/wordpress-automatic-thumbnails-of-blogger-picasa-hosted-images/
Mark R Kearns

you may have already fixed this but if not, and for posterity, here’s a workaround (aka hack) …

I changed the plugin code to process posts in one specific category rather than all posts.

To do this…

1. modify the plugin:
change the line : $wp_query = new WP_Query( ‘posts_per_page=-1′);
to: $wp_query = new WP_Query( ‘category_name=process&posts_per_page=-1′);

2. install the plugin Bulk Move (this allows you to remove the posts from the ‘process’ category easily)

3. select and bulk edit the imported posts – set the category to that in step 1. ie. ‘process’

4. run the SEO Blogger to WordPress image import

5. if it does not run successfully than reduce the number of posts you placed in category ‘process’ in step 3 until it does (I was ok at 60)

6 if it does run successfully do NOT remove the temporary data (just in case)

7. using the Bulk Move plugin (SettingsBulk Move) remove the posts from the ‘process’ category

8. goto step 3 and repeat until all posts are complete, then goto step 10.

11. after the final successful run, click on the Clear Temporary Data button in SEO Blogger to WordPress page

11. delete the ‘process’ category.

Please note that this worked for me in wp 3.2.1 but this hack comes with no guarantees!

Mark
Mark R Kearns

hmmm, the more I thought about the less I like step 6. – removing the temporary data. I’ve now reverted to cleared the temporary data each time.
Anonymous

Great!
“Temporary data” is just a post_meta value that means “post checked” by the plugin. This will help if in case the import stops abruptly. As the temporary data is still there, the next time you press “Import” the plugin starts from the same place it stopped.
Jayne Lloyd

Thank you so much for this tutorial – your clear instructions are fantastic, and hopefully I’ve succesfully moved my blog!
Mrs Ballard

Is there any way to get this to work after I’ve already set up the whole blog and imported the posts and everything? I am afraid to delete all the posts and start over in case this doesn’t work!
Naveenkumar Meda

Have you received any reply for this? Because I have tried in my blog(which was migrated very long back) it didn’t work. please drop me the detail naveenkumar.meda@gmail:disqus .com
Naveenkumar Meda

Hello,
I have tried this on my exisitng blog(which was migrated very long back), But I could not success, Whenever I am trying to aceess old url, my blogger sending to my new domain with query string see below link http://prathiscuisine.com/?blogger=http://prathisnewtrails.blogspot.com/2009/10/pappula-podi-legumes-powder.html

after that it is doing nothing it just has my home page details it is not redirect to respective page in my webiste please help us…
http://www.nursing-philosophy.com/ Pamela Fruechting

I had personal .com domain on Blogger. I got BlueHost. Put in the ns1.bluehost and ns2.bluehost. Did the Import function on WP.org. I have my blog posts and pics, but when i try to ADMIN I get this:
Page not found
Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Nursing Philosophy… It Matters does not exist.Go to blog homepage

And I don’t know how to “upload” SEO after it’s on my hard drive. How do you do that? There’s no “upload” option when I right click.
I am SO hoping you can help me get this straightened out. WP does a horrible job of writing instructions for people that are not techies.
Pamelafruechting

Well,,,,maybe it’s okay after all….I just now checked 20 min. after I did it, and it looks okay. Do I still need that SEO thing?
Pamelafruechting

UH OH. On the side bar, the archives go back to the Blogger site, though all the articles are on the wordpress site.

Back to more problems with still getting that error message as in my first post above.
roshan

hi suhas,
I got my Page Rank 3 and every thing was working fine but recently something is going wrong..
The plugin is not redirecting the old post to new post.. earlier worked fine. After some update of ur plugin.. its not redirecting .. Plz CHk… need help

OLd post : http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2011/08/login-automatically-to-windows-without.html
when redirecting .. its redirecting to
http://www.techieinspire.com/?blogger=http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2011/08/login-automatically-to-windows-without.html
Kindly help on this…
Is this is an issue due to blogger changed .com to .in
roshan

hi suhas,
When redirecting from old post to new post… i see something like techieinspire.com/?blogger=http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2011/08/login-automatically-to-windows-without.html

Earlier it worked fine.. however i tried to contact hostgator to whitelist rules like 1434234
roshan

sorry, accidentally clicked on post comment…..
kindly help on this.. even after whitelist.. i am not able to redirect my old post to new..
suhastech

working on it!
suhastech

Yes, it’s an issue due to .in crap. Google have done it with pretty much all countries.
TYBO576

doesn’t work for the posts….
suhastech

Fixed in 0.4 … Google’s new local domain redirect was the problem.
suhastech

Fixed in 0.4 … Google’s new local domain redirect was the problem.
roshan

still redirecting to invalid address http://www.techieinspire.com/?blogger=http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2009/07/backup-restore-mobile-sms-contacts.html
suhastech

0.4.1
roshan

hi suhas,

You seriously rock man!!
Its working fine now….

Thank you so much…
http://twitter.com/koundeenya Koundeenya

Thanks. I’ve done that using this tutorial & even added this to my service list
Lasindu Nadishan

Grate Thanks Friend
http://www.theboldabode.com/ Gwen

I imported my blog recently, but the first 30 posts didn’t import. The same thing happened when I moved a friend of mine. I assumed that’s just what happens when you use the blogger import plugin. Did I miss something? Is there another way to do it to ensure all of your posts make the transition?
suhastech

Hi Gwen,

Increase the timeout variable in PHP.ini and try again. Google should help you on your way.
http://voyage-gourmand.blogspot.com Lulu

Hello ! Thank you for this great and well written tutorial. But I don’t understand the A.6The Migration step.
Could you explain it more please ?