The Easiest Blogger to WordPress Migration guide

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.
hosting-company-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.

sub-domain-addon-domain-cpanel

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

.fantastico-new-installation-wordpress

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.

edit_siteurl

save_temporary_url

A.2 Importing:

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

tools

3) Select Blogger (duh!)

blogger_select

4) Select “Grant Access”

grant-access-blogger-google

5) Click on Import.

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 postsGoogle 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.

nameserver-update

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”.
download-picasa-image

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.


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

244 Responses to “The Easiest Blogger to WordPress Migration guide”

  1. Teylor says:

    Thank you. nice article…

  2. kertoon says:

    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

  3. Suhas says:

    @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…

  4. James says:

    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!

  5. Suhas says:

    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=".$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

  6. Daniel says:

    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.

  7. Suhas says:

    about a month

  8. amitkh says:

    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..

  9. Suhas says:

    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

  10. amitkh says:

    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 !

  11. Suhas says:

    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

  12. 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!

  13. Suhas says:

    @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

  14. Sachin says:

    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

  15. Suhas says:

    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

  16. […] Here is the updated Blogger to WordPress guide to go with the plugin. Download […]

  17. LordCM says:

    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 🙂

  18. Anonymous says:

    It has been fixed now.

  19. Ron4242 says:

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

  20. Anonymous says:

    Yup, that’s the purpose of the plug in

  21. Jorge Salgado says:

    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.

  22. Anonymous says:

    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.

  23. Rich Kaszeta says:

    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”.

  24. sean says:

    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

  25. Anonymous says:

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

  26. Anonymous says:

    test

  27. Sandra Roberts says:

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

  28. Sean says:

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

  29. sean says:

    I figured it out. It does work.

  30. sean says:

    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?

  31. Anonymous says:

    It should..

    Were you using the same domain as custom domain?

  32. seanheis says:

    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

  33. Anonymous says:

    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..

  34. roshan says:

    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..

  35. Anonymous says:

    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…

  36. Anonymous says:

    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…

  37. Dragon says:

    I believe you, I try 🙂

  38. Rodneycdavis says:

    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

  39. Anonymous says:

    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. 🙂

  40. Sasha Estrada says:

    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."

  41. Anonymous says:

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

  42. Sasha Estrada says:

    It worked now! Thanks!

  43. 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!

  44. Anonymous says:

    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

  45. 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?

  46. Anonymous says:

    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. 😉

  47. Gayan says:

    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. 

  48. Anonymous says:

    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.

  49. Cheryl says:

    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

  50. Anonymous says:

    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

  51. Euroangel says:

    this is very informative.thanks for sharing..

  52. Riah says:

    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.” 🙂

  53. Seo Cádiz says:

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

  54. Anonymous says:

    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.

  55. Seo Cádiz says:

    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.

  56. Anonymous says:

    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..

  57. Harleena says:

    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.

  58. Suhas says:

    You’ll need to wait for about a month

  59. Jodi Horsley says:

    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!

  60. Acreech says:

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

  61. Acreech says:

    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.

  62. Milli.K says:

    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!

  63. Anonymous says:

    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..

  64. Anonymous says:

     Thanks,,,

    I’ll add that in the next update..

  65. Anonymous says:

    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…

  66. Anonymous says:

     You have to wait for about a month..

  67. Milli.K says:

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

  68. Milli.K says:

    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!

  69. Anonymous says:

    Thanks…
    Committed the changes in version 0.3.3

  70. Andiophie82 says:

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

  71. Riah L. says:

    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

  72. Mian1234 says:

    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

  73. Cpl. Beddoe says:

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

  74. Amomhavingfun says:

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

    Thanks!

  75. Anonymous says:

    Sorry for the late reply…

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

  76. Anonymous says:

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

  77. Anonymous says:

    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/

  78. Riah L. says:

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

  79. Anonymous says:

    Done.

    Update to 0.3.5

    Let me know if you find any bugs.

  80. Riah L. says:

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

  81. Marc says:

    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

  82. Lembah1 says:

    Plugin still ot working with worpdress 3.3

  83. Mike Hopkins says:

    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!

  84. Mike Hopkins says:

    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

  85. Anonymous says:

    The posts must be imported using the “Blogger Importer” plugin else you’ll lose the meta data and the posts can’t be redirected..

  86. 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?

  87. Anonymous says:

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

  88. A_velvet_claw says:

    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

  89. Thanks for this very helpful Blogger to WordPress migration guide… you rocks! 🙂

  90. A_velvet_claw says:

    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

  91. Anonymous says:

    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

  92. A_velvet_claw says:

    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 🙂

  93. Anonymous says:

    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.

  94. A_velvet_claw says:

    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

  95. Anonymous says:

    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);}

  96. 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??

  97. Shay Bocks says:

    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??

  98. Anonymous says:

    Which version of the plugin are you on?

  99. Anonymous says:

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

  100. Shay Bocks says:

    Version 0.3.9

  101. Anonymous says:

    It’s a bug in one of wordpress’ core functions… *Working on it*

  102. Angela Kohl says:

    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!!!

  103. A_velvet_claw says:

    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~

  104. Steve Tinter says:

    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?

  105. Anonymous says:

    Post pages are redirecting to home page….. 

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

  106. Anonymous says:

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

  107. Mark R Kearns says:

    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

  108. Mark R Kearns says:

    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.

  109. Anonymous says:

    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.

  110. Jayne Lloyd says:

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

  111. Mrs Ballard says:

    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!

  112. Naveenkumar Meda says:

     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

  113. Naveenkumar Meda says:

    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…

  114. 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.

  115. Pamelafruechting says:

    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?

  116. Pamelafruechting says:

    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.

  117. roshan says:

    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

  118. roshan says:

    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

  119. roshan says:

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

  120. suhastech says:

    working on it!

  121. suhastech says:

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

  122. TYBO576 says:

    doesn’t work for the posts….

  123. suhastech says:

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

  124. suhastech says:

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

  125. suhastech says:

    0.4.1 🙂

  126. roshan says:

    hi suhas,

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

    Thank you so much…

  127. Koundeenya says:

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

  128. Lasindu Nadishan says:

    Grate Thanks Friend 

  129. Gwen says:

    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?  

  130. suhastech says:

    Hi Gwen, 

    Increase the timeout variable in PHP.ini and try again. Google should help you on your way.

  131. Lulu says:

    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 ?

  132. suhastech says:

    Hi Lulu,

    I’m not sure about OVH. In simple terms you change that pointer (to the server) on your domain to the new one. I guess, OVH support guys can help you.

    2. No that’s not normal.

  133. Shah Wharton says:

    Sounds great if I could only get to the stage of using the plugin. I cannot do the simple import? Any posts it imports are code and I NEVER get all posts/comments imported, no mater how many times I try? Please can you help me.

  134. suhastech says:

    If you read the post properly, you are infact staging the process. I can probably change the part “A6. The Migration” to “Deployment”

    And about that, If I remember properly, I did email you.

  135. Nargh2468 says:

    Hi, I have a question. When I try to import from Blogger I keep receiving the following message. I actually have never received this message before and I didn’t let any other site try to access my google account to the best of my knowledge:

    The page you have requested cannot be displayed. Another site was
    requesting access to your
    Google Account, but sent a malformed request.
    Please contact the site that you were trying to use when you received this
    message to inform them of the error. A detailed error message follows:

    The site “http://[my site].com” has not been registered.

  136. Ron says:

    Hi Suhas,

    I’m planning this for a site and I have a couple of questions before I start.

    1. Does your plugin need to remain active after the import of posts and images and the redirect is done?  I know that I need to have the blogspot site (with your redirect code) running “forever”.

    2. Do you see any reason why this would not work on WP multisite?  I do have the “WordPress MU Domain Mapping” plugin running.

    Thanks,  Ron

  137. suhastech says:

    1) Yes, redirect is never “done”. The plugin redirects in case a visitor from Blogger visits.

    2) I don’t see how it could fail. It should work.

  138. Ron says:

     Hi again.  I’m doing a couple of test run from a blogspot site that has little traffic.  You are right, there were no problems with multisite that I have seen so far.  However there are some “gotchas” I need to deal with.,

    I’m wondering what the checkbox “Download Interlinked Images?” is for.  The html code in my new WP posts was modified to get the image source from the wp media library but the tags still point to the picasaweb site.  I was expecting the download images code to sever all ties with blogspot/picasa / photobucket/ etc.   Is there something else I must do?

    Also, as you probably know blogspot pages are not imported by the blogger import plugin.  Do you know of an importer for that?

    And one last thing for now…  All my draft posts were imported as published!  I know that is not part of your awesome plugin, but what is the solution to keep draft post in draft status after importing?

    Thanks again, Ron

  139. TomFakler says:

    Hello,
    Some time ago, I copied Anitasfeast.blogspot.com to Anitasfeast.com (self hosted wordpress blog). I just found your WordPress plugin for redirecting and have redirected the to WordPress.  That was simple.

    When  a user searches for a post that shows up in (lets say Google) that is linked to the blogspot blog they click on the link and are taken to the new AnitasFeast.com but to the home page not that post. Which means that they now have to do another search in AnitasFeast.com.  Is there a way to take them directly to the same post on Anitasfeast.com not the home page?

    Thank you,
    Tom Fakler

  140. suhastech says:

    Actually, that’s how it’s supposed to happen. I see, it is happening like that 
    Eg: http://anitasfeast.blogspot.com/2011/08/moroccan-gift-of-beldi.html

    It’s only that don’t are archive and tag pages but not to worry, they don’t have any SEO significance. 

  141. suhastech says:

    Hi Ron,

    The image importer imports images from only blogger centric domains blogspot.com, ggpht.com. I looked into the code, picasaweb.com is not one of them.

    I’ll try to add a feature to download images from all domains when I get some time.

    You can probably try to make the pages manually (15 max iirc) and then add the “blogger_permalink” custom field with the old permalink value for example “/p/contact.html”

    Sorry for the late reply,
    Suhas

  142. Ron says:

     It looks like all the picasa images have a ggpht.com source so no problem there.. it finds them.  However, the images that coudl net get downloaded are the ones with a ‘+’ sign in the filename.  I know that urldecode (line 203 of your mainphp file) is supposed to handle them as spaces so it’s beyond me why thet would be skipped.  Can you help? Here is an example of a failed image url:
    https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SK_27K33rac/TrcNlhK6yII/AAAAAAAAEAA/pTg38tXFzjs/s400/oxtail+soup+in+bowl2.png.

  143. suhastech says:

    Yes, that was a part of the fix I did a couple months ago. I’m not sure how that cropped up again. It might be because of the change in the media_sideload function dependency. 

    Try replacing + with %2B in the imported URL. 

  144. Ron says:

    Well, I give up.  the download works for images without the + but all the others (hundreds! ) need to be re-upoaded.  I did try changing all the “+” chars to %2B in a test blogger post (both the href and the img scr) and the downloader actually did recognize and change the content of the wp post.  However..WP still has a issue with  the “+” (and the “%”) according to this wp bug fix http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/16330 scheduled for future release. 

    We brought this on ourselves by using image filesnames with spaces, which blogspot converted to + which WP chokes on.  So we are going to cut our losses and re-upload any missnamed images in each WP post.. grrrr

    I did not think this blogspot to wordpress conversion procedure was on the bleeding edge, but it is.  Being such a popular thing to do, it is suurprising that there is no solution that actually works from end to end.  Even the “blogger importer” plugin had a problem with drafts.

    Thanks for your help.. there is nothing wrong with your plugin, it does a good job, but would be nice if it did not stick all the images into one big folder, but used the year and month of the post to keep them in order. 

    I still have a big issue with the …/?blogger=…  parameter.  It only shows a blank page eventhough the permalink structure matches and the new WP post really does exist.  I don’t know why it is part of the redirection logic.  Here is an example on my test site: http://kiwigrower.com/?blogger=http://kiwigrower.blogspot.com/2010/04/overwintering-kiwi-cuttings.html

    I’m good at uncovering bugs aren’t I !?

  145. suhastech says:

    I think you are using an old version of the plugin, it doesn’t stick all the images into one folder. It keeps in year and month order. 

    I’m not sure about ?blogger= too, it should work. I don’t see how it should not work. It might be your server configuration.

    I’ve done tons of migrations, it mostly works if you set things correctly. 

    Yes, I do agree on the Blogger Importer bugs but it’s really out of my hand.

    Yes, bug reports are always favorable. 🙂 Thank you.

  146. Ron says:

     I thought this worked once … but I may not have tested it right. What post meta value is the /?blogger= parameter supposed use?  is ti teh blogger_permalink?  Is there supposed to be  forward slash after the mysite.com?  I started over from scratch on my test site kiwigrower.com (see the test link http://kiwigrower.com/?blogger=http://kiwigrower.blogspot.com/2009/05/natural-magic.html ) to verify that the redirect does not work.  What exactly is the /?blogger= thing for??  very frustrated!!

  147. Ron says:

    I’m using Version 0.4.2 is there a newer one somewhere?

    In your summary “How the migration works:”  There is no “/” before the ? in the redirected url (after .com) .  Is that a typo? (copied here:  meta refresh to http://yourdomain.com?blogger=http://your.blogspot.com/blah-blah.html. rel=”canonical”)

  148. arroway says:

    I am helping someone migrate and all this makes sense but I’m stuck at step 1 😉 Instructions say: ”
    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” – Here’s the situation. My friend has a custom domain name registered with godaddy. If you type in that name (herdomain.com), you are then *redirected* to her blog on blogger (herbloggeraccount.blogspot.com). So, to me that’s not really ‘using a custom domain on Blogger”, yet I still need to ensure setup and install is handled properly because the new hosting account will be on hostgator, not godaddy. So I’m guessing I need to set up new host account at hostgator with herdomain.com, then will I still need to change siterurl to temp url? Import content, redirect, etc., change siteurl back to herdomain.com then change the nameservers? Scratching my head….

  149. arroway says:

    Went through the steps, thought it worked beautifully, but all posts (if typing in original blogspot.com/this-is-a-post.html address) go to the home page on wordpress, not the post 🙁 I noticed several people have commented on this so apparently several of us are doing something wrong. I’ve scratched posts, reimported, redirected, save permalinks 3 times now all with the same result….

  150. arroway says:

    After making myself NUTS, I did this on another host (1and1 instead of hostgator) – WORKS FINE! So…..I have to assume that this will not work, for whatever reason, with hostgator? I prefer hostgator to 1and1 (although I use both)….I wonder what gives?

  151. Gwen says:

    I use HostGator and have had no problems.  

  152.  This plugin is not working for me. I called Hostgator to have them whitelist the HTTP error, but they told me there is no error and it is withing either my wordpress configuration or the plugin. They offered me NO HELP.

    What do I do now? I have been on WP for a while but was using this to combat all of my 404 errors and improve my SEO/Traffic/Bounce Rates.

    I need help, please.

    Also, two questions:

    1) Does my Blogger site have to be set to public for this to work or can I keep it private to avoid duplicate content Google dings?

    2) In the generated template there is no code for no index. Shouldn’t there be so Google doesn’t penalize me?

  153. arroway says:

    I had to have hostgator whitelist mod security rules – works now. However, I’m still trying to figure out how to get *pages* to redirect. Posts all redirect fine now. Pages do not.

  154. arroway says:

    Quick question (sorry to interrupt this thread) but what do you mean ”
    add the “blogger_permalink” custom field with the old permalink value for example “/p/contact.html” – I’m trying to get 6 (very well indexed/bookmarked) pages to redirect.  Thanks!

  155. Arroway says:

    Just an update for anyone reading this – I was finally able to make this work, but two important notes:

    1.) If on Hostgator, be sure and contact them and ask them to whitelist the mod security for your site, otherwise the redirect doesn’t work correctly.**2.) Pages wouldn’t redirect – after pasting the code, all the posts redirected seamlessly to the new blog, but old blogger *pages* would not (instead, a blogger error page saying “that page does not exist” would appear). To get around this, in *addition* to pasting the code in the template, I also had to go into my blogger settings and redirect the old blog address (myaccount.blogspot.com) to my new domain (inside blogger). THEN, the pages would redirect, although a bit differently – posts go straight to new blog, but if you use the old blogger url for a page, then you are first taken to a blogger page that says “this page has moved to a new address, blah blah, click to continue).Now, my question about #2 would simply be – Is this ok for SEO to not only be using the code generated by the plugin but ALSO to have the redirect set up in the blogger settings page? Is this a proper way of handling? Any advice on that is greatly appreciated!Last but certainly not least, bravo for this well written tutorial! It was a lifesaver!! Thanks!!

  156. Gwen says:

    Suhas, 

    I just wanted to say thank you so much for your SEO Blogger to WordPress Plugin.  I tried two others and neither worked.  As soon as I installed and used the code from yours, everything worked seamlessly!  I could kiss your feet!  

  157. suhastech says:

    I’d say host your Blogger blog at myaccount.blogspot.com, that should remove the this page has moved to a new address warning.

  158. Dylan says:

    I’m also not seeing anything happen when it gets to the wordpress side.  It isn’t reading the blogger= bit and finding the right page.  What is the trigger for doing that ?  I’m using the PureType theme with 0.4.6.

    Thanks.

  159. Dylan says:

    If I trim the xxx.blogspot.com bit from the blogger= parameter it works, so it seems to be something in the suhas_blogspot function ?

  160. Dylan says:

    thatdidn’thelp

  161. This still doesn’t work right though. Now every single post/page goes to blogger first, then gets the “this page has moved to a new address” info, then user has to click through again. What good is that?

    Surely someone else has this problem. Does no one else have any *pages* in their blog?????

    Again, if I do NOT set up custom domain in blogger settings page, then posts redirect fine, but pages don’t.

    If I DO set up a custom domain name in blogger settings, then every single link has to go through an intermediary step before resolving. It’s a pain.

  162. Colleen says:

    I just used this plug in to download the images from a blogger blog to wordpress and now they are all broken and it said there was an internal server error! Please help.

  163. Heather says:

    Thank you so much. Great job! I will definitely recommend this to fellow designers.

  164. Sea Mama says:

    Oh my goodness! This worked like a CHARM! Thank you thank you thank you! I was so nervous about doing this but your plugin and tutorial made it a snap. I’m astonished.

  165. Sara @ My Merry Messy Life says:

    Hi! I’m very excited about your plug in and have uploaded the folder to my plugins folder. The images from Picassa are now transferring over. My website is still hosted at blogger (with a .com address) and the WordPress website is on a temporary URL until I get everything transferred and done. So, how do I know all the URL’s are transferred? Is it not until I point it to the new nameservers?

  166. Tracy says:

    I did the “delete blogger posts” button so I could start over, reimported and now only have 1 post. It says it skips over ones already imported but where are they? How do I get them back? Help!

  167. There is a problem with the generated template. I tried an Escape HTML tool and yet it doesn’t work. Please help, I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere!

  168. suhastech says:

    “Classic Template” should fix it.

  169. sandCat says:

    Hi, I have used your plugin to import my pictures and am trying to use it for the redirect – but I am still getting the HTTP Forbidden error. Hostgator have whitelisted the rule for me, but it still fails.

    Is there anyway to modify the variable being passed to WordPress to remove part of the permalink and only have the /yyyy/mm/title.html part be sent after the “blogger=” in the string / address.

    So what I mean is

    old blog: http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com
    new blog: http://catinthedunes.com

    if I enter “http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com/2011/08/art-of-giving.html” in my address bar (an actual post) and hit enter I get a 403 error. The address bar shows the “redirected” address trying to be reached as “http://www.catinthedunes.com/?blogger=http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com/2011/08/art-of-giving.html”

    If I take out the “http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com” part of this string it works fine (i.e. gets redirected to the post on the new site) – “http://www.catinthedunes.com/?blogger=/2011/08/art-of-giving.html”

    Is there anyway to change the code on the blogger template side to use only this part of the permalink?

  170. Thank you so much for responding quickly to my email and helping me find the “revert to classic template” link on Blogger. Your plug in is working and I think my Blogger to WP migration is complete! Yay. Thanks!

  171. Ashish says:

    getting this error when trying to put the generated xml to blogger template code box.

    Error parsing XML, line 1, column 182: The value of attribute “dir” associated with an element type “null” must not contain the ‘<' character.

  172. suhastech says:

    Classic Template

  173. I’m having a terrible time… my photos in the test site won’t load. Ive re-done it multiple times… what am i missing?

  174. RevConcept says:

    Great plugin! One question: after I have this setup and working, does the plugin need to remain activated in my WP to keep the 301 redirection working? Thanks!

  175. Even I will go for wordpress. It is one of the popular CMS and you can use it for handling complex content driven website. It now being use for the original purpose.

  176. Chris Kuzak says:

    There is a bug in the image import. The image importer is escaping urls (so “+” turns into an escaped code) and saving the image locally with the escaped characters. This path is then entered as the attachment path in wordpress database. However, the escaped characters are not escaped themselves. So you end up with myriad of broken links that aren’t escaped properly.

    TestFilename+something.jpg ends up being saved on the host as TestFilename%2Bsomething.jpg. The url location saved to wordpress db should be TestFilename%252Bsomething.jpg

  177. saintvitts says:

    Suhas, Great thanks from Russia! Just install it . now waiting to understand how it’ll work))

  178. suhastech says:

    Thanks for the bug report. I’ll look into it ASAP.

  179. Hi, this doesn’t work. I got this message when I pasted the code into the blogger template Error parsing XML, line 2, column 182: The value of attribute “dir” associated with an element type “null” must not contain the ‘<' character.

  180. Elisa says:

    I found this tutorial, after I have done my import. I installed the plugins, but it doesnt seem as if the photo have been imported (i.e. it is still drawing from blogger). Is that right? Is there anything else I need to do?

  181. Katie says:

    I just switched my cousins blogspot blog over to wordpress using your plugin which was FABULOUS but I have one minor problem, I lost all the post images after doing the picasas albums transfer. Please help! 🙂

  182. suhastech says:

    The bug has been fixed in version 0.4.8

    Thanks.

  183. suhastech says:

    The bug has been fixed in version 0.4.8

    Thanks you.

  184. suhastech says:

    The bug has been fixed in version 0.4.8

    Thanks a lot for your help.

  185. Katie says:

    Thank you but how do I correct it? I tried deleting imported posts from blogger and starting over but then it said it had nothing to import from blogger. 🙁 Help! 🙂

  186. suhastech says:

    Fresh install would be the easiest way to go about, if that’s feasible. Truncate the tables and WordPress will take care of it.

  187. Katie says:

    I thought I tried a fresh install but it was only able to find on post to import…(out of 247 posts). I have no idea was truncate the tables means. How much do you charge?! 🙂

  188. Chrissy Boerman says:

    I am still having just a few problems. i can not seem to get my old blogger links to direct to the correct WP post. i tried redirect and it is still not working. any suggestions?

  189. Omer Korner says:

    I have a question regarding the Permalinks.
    You say that permalinks must be changed for this plugin to work. But does it matter to what? I mean, can I use any permalinks structure I want, as long as it’s been changed? Or do I have to follow ther permalinks structure you recommended?

    Thanks!

  190. Ricardo says:

    Hi want to know if it is possible and how to do the following

    I will pass all the blog content from blogguer to wp

    But I want to individualize each redirect as in:

    On Blogger:
    site.blogspot.com/2010/08/bad-nameee.html

    And I want it to redirect to wordpress:
    site.com/good-name.html

    I’ve been trying to find out how to do this but have no clew so far

    Can anyone help? Please?

  191. DH says:

    Hi Suhas,

    First let me thank you for this awesome and free plug-in you have created. I just finished my migration and everything has gone smoothly. The only area where I haven’t had success is with the picasa image transfer portion. When I try and run it, it “waits”(waitng for http://www.blah) to connect to my site for 2 mins and then I get an “Internal Server Error.” What am I doing wrong? The site is hosted through GoDaddy(not my choice). Is the problem with the hosting server? Any help is appreciated. Thanks so much!

  192. Sebastien Ross says:

    please I need help. Mi blog is on blogger, but with a .com domain… ¿Is this plugin good for a 301 in mi case?

  193. Hi,

    Some images on picasa doesn’t have extension (.jpg) and the importer give me a security error. I try to modifiy function.php of thème to add :

    add_filter(‘upload_mimes’, ‘Extend_Upload_Mimes’);

    /*

    * Fonction Extend_Upload_Mimes :

    * Prend en argument le tableau associatif des types mimes

    * supportés le modifie et le retourne modifié.

    */

    function Extend_Upload_Mimes ( $CurrentMimes=array() ) {

    // Ajout de nouveaux types :

    $CurrentMimes[”] = ‘application/octet-stream’;

    // Suppression de types non souhaités :

    return $CurrentMimes;

    }

    But it doesn’t work … Any tip ?
    Thank you.

  194. Very clear instructions! BUT, I made the mistake of installing ANOTHER importer first. Even though I un-installed it when I click on the “import” tag and then blogger I get the interface for THAT OTHER plug-in. Any idea how to REALLY get rid of that and use yours? Yours appears to have installed correctly because under tools I have “SEO Blogger to WordPress” menu item. I’m running WordPress 3.5.1

  195. RonStrilaeff says:

    The first thing to try is to press the “Delete” link under the bad plugin name on your WordPress admin plugins page. Then deactivate and reactivate the good one. If it still doesn’t go away (it should be gone at this point though) then make sure they are gone by using filezilla (ftp) to remove that whole bad plugin sub directory (should be similar to the name of the plugin).

    It is impossible for it to execute when it does not exist anymore, but then again, I’ve seen some pretty creative gremlins.

  196. It’s acting like the default importer of Wrodpress. Even if disabled, and checked for deletion, when I click: Tools, then Import, then Blogger it begs me to install IT instead of showing me YOURS.

    Here is a pic (you can see yours is installed on the left):
    http://draft.hippressurecooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/oops.png

    Ciao,

    L

  197. Ari Nahmani says:

    Great plugin – thanks for your hard work on creating and updating it. Just from an SEO theoretical discussion – I have a question:
    Given that googlebot will come along an old Blogger URL and actually resolve a ‘200’ response code, there is no directive to actually pass the equity along and de-index the old URL. Yes – granted there is a cross-domain canonical, but A) this is only a suggestion and B) even with Google acknowledging this canonical – both URLs could remain indexed.
    I understand we’re dealing with an imperfect system and this is probably as best we’re going to get. However your comment that this is a ‘pure 301 redirect’ isn’t actually correct. Google will still receive a ‘200’ from the old blogger URL – on which it will find a cross-domain canonical tag which allows it to *discover* the new URL and *maybe* assign the link equity from the previous URL.
    My only workaround here would be to fill out the domain moving form in Webmaster Tools, and as such, the entire blogspot sub-domain would be removed from the index. Perhaps after a couple weeks so that all of the cross-domain canonicals can be read and ‘processed’.

    Thoughts?

  198. suhastech says:

    “However your comment that this is a ‘pure 301 redirect’ isn’t actually correct”

    I actually never said that. Please read the “How the migration works” part of the blog post. Only custom domain migration is pure 301.

    I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, and it mostly works. The old blogspot blog takes a couple weeks to get deindexed.

  199. suhastech says:

    My plugin doesn’t replace the “Blogger Importer”, it’s kind of like a companion to it.

    It sits in Tools –> SEO Blogger to WordPress

  200. suhastech says:

    Yes. (Sorry for the late reply)

  201. I have a question about image paths. I’m developing the website on http://draft.hippressurecooking.com. When I imported the images, I noticed all the paths were changed to:

    htttp://DRAFT.hippressurecooking.com/wp-content/image.gif

    What is going to happen when I make the site go live and change the wordpress installation to http://WWW.hippressurecooking.com? Will all of the images break?

    Thanks,

    L

  202. Delete the posts in the trash… or “empty trash”.

    Ciao,

    L

  203. Professor Broadhead says:

    Blogger Importer is not working with the latest WordPress version. Each time I use it I get these errors:

    Warning: array_fill() [function.array-fill]: Number of elements must be positive in /home/content/09/10693309/html/carolscaribbeancorner/wp-content/plugins/blogger-importer/blogger-importer.php on line 854

    Warning: array_map() [function.array-map]: Argument #3 should be an array in /home/content/09/10693309/html/carolscaribbeancorner/wp-content/plugins/blogger-importer/blogger-importer.php on line 854

    Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/content/09/10693309/html/carolscaribbeancorner/wp-content/plugins/blogger-importer/blogger-importer.php on line 867

    Anyone have a solution?

  204. Appdunia says:

    Your plugin is very good. Before moving to wordpress from blogger I was afraid that I will lose my readers but now everything is fine.

  205. DaveN says:

    Thanks a lot for this tut!
    But is it imerative to use Blogger importer? What do you say about this tool: http://www.cms2cms.com/supported-cms/blogger-com-to-wordpress-migration? It looks like an easier way (I don’t think I’ll be able to follow all the steps of your guide corectly).

  206. 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.

    My question: Can you explain exactly where to place the generated text to the code area? Or does the generated code replace the current code entirely?

  207. 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.

    My question: Can you explain exactly where to place the generated
    text to the code area? Or does the generated code replace the current
    code entirely?

  208. Jhoveleen David says:

    Hi,

    I migrated my blogger custom domain blog. Everything went fine except the problem that my archive in blogger is NOT FOUND in my WordPress blog. I have done the Permalink, 301 Redirect but still no luck. It’s already cracking my head. I need your help. My blog is http://www.travelersfootsteps.com. Please help me. Thank you very much in advance.

  209. Rachel says:

    This worked for my site, however it is not redirecting from my old mobile site. I’m a bit confused because in the classic template on blogger I don’t even have a mobile option?

  210. roshan says:

    Suhas, again having same problem after updating wordpress to 3.6… plz check

  211. Kroshan says:

    Hi Suhas,

    I am still using your plugin and was really helpfull to retain the page rank and redirect completely. However after upgrading wordpress to 3.6 its not redirecting properly and showing error on the page. Same issue was observed earlier but you fixed it.

    Could you please fix the below issue in your plugin.

    Warning: parse_url(/?blogger=http://techieinspire.blogspot.com/2008/05/basic-usefull-tricks-for-nokia-n91.html): Unable to parse URL in /home4/kroshan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/404-redirected/includes/frontend.php on line 61

  212. suhastech says:

    Another plugin called 404-redirected is probably conflicting with the plugin.

  213. Kroshan says:

    Thanks Suhas for your quick reply..
    I disabled the 404 redirect plugin but still when i can access my old url its redirecting improperly..
    OLD URL: http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2011/07/keyboard-turns-into-disco-light.html

    getting this.. http://www.techieinspire.com/?blogger=http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2011/07/keyboard-turns-into-disco-light.html

  214. Kroshan says:

    Suhas any luck?

    please help us on this issue as this is also coming in webmaster as access denied url.

    request you to kindly provide fix for the same..

    below are some old blogspot url… might help you investigate on the same.
    -http://techieinspire.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-fix-task-manager-disabled-by.html

    -http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2010/01/how-to-format-usb-penflash-drive-to.html

    -http://techieinspire.blogspot.in/2008/02/gprs-manual-setting-for-ur-phone.html

  215. Sherri says:

    Trying to use this plugin to import y pictures from Blogge to WordPress after getting all my posts imported… But when I click the “Download” button, it begins to run for just a couple of minutes and then goes to this screen that says, “We’ve happen on a bit of a problem… 500 Internal Server Error” but it actally importing a few pictures. If I go back, press “Download” again, it’ll import a few more… This can’t be the intended way though… What might be wrong???

  216. Anurag M says:

    It really sorted out my current problem while migrating blogger to wordpress. But some 404 error are still coming. I need to sort out.

  217. Kroshan says:

    Hi Suhas,

    After a doing RCA, I came to know that the server had been migrated to another which modified my rule of white list that caused the redirect issue..

    However, the issue is solved. Thanks a lot for the support and building a nice plugin.. Still rockss

  218. Isa says:

    Hi, it doesnt work for me. The redirected” address is like:

    http://www.entrenasalud.es/?blogger=http://entrenasaludable.blogspot.com.es/2012/06/rutinas-hipertrofia-elige-la-tuya.html

    And I get a 403.

    But if I remove the http://entrenasaludable.blogspot.com.es it works:

    http://www.entrenasalud.es/?blogger=/2012/06/rutinas-hipertrofia-elige-la-tuya.html

    Why?

    Is there anyway to modify the variable being passed to WordPress to
    remove part of the permalink and only have the /yyyy/mm/title.html part
    be sent after the “blogger=” in the string / address.

  219. Isa says:

    It doesnt work for my blog

  220. Basit says:

    Hi It does not work well, My Post pages haven’t got redirected ,

    If a user follows a post page he goes to home page

    Please help me out with this regards

  221. Guest says:

    This is what I get, while editing blogger template:

    “The value of attribute “dir” associated with an element type “html” must not contain the ‘<' character."

  222. Juliusz Fedyk says:

    I get the same thing – most likely blogger changed some policies on this

  223. Magesh FPS says:

    Your post helped me to learn a lot. Thanks for the awesome Post!! Check Out my website at http://www.firstpageseoservice.com

  224. Lucia says:

    Hello!

    First off all: Thank you very much for developing this plugin and your instructions. I think I followed every step in your directions. There are 321 posts and 791 comments on my blog which have been mostly imported. As I do have a blogspot domain I suppose I don’t need to do the nameserver change, do I? When I change to the classic template, users are redirected to the new blog http://www.kardiomuffelchen.com, but there’s just a blank page. When I try to change the theme or work on it I do not see any preview.

    Many thanks in advance.
    Lucia

  225. disqus_SIMlHUg4JU says:

    301 forwarding not working. Example: this link: http://www.islaythedragon.com/2014/01/its-just-business-review-of-nothing.html

    should be going to here: http://islaythedragon.com/featured/its-just-business-a-review-of-nothing-personal-2/

    but obviously its not working if you try the link, I get a 404 error.

  226. Nitasha says:

    Goodness article! I see your points as existence binding and I apprise the way you spoken yourself in this real. This is real excellent aggregation. Impart you so much

  227. marie says:

    Hi there, first of all, thank your for this plugin.
    But as i try to follow my old posts on blogger, the redirection always goe to the home page of my new blog/new wordpress url.
    Could you pleas help? Thanks and kind regards!

  228. waqar says:

    This is not my plug in 🙂

  229. waqar says:

    Hi your Plug in is not working on new version of wordpress please update

  230. marie says:

    waqur: i know 🙂
    i just wanted to comment your question, as it is simmilar to my problem 😉

  231. AoVoKo says:

    Hi, when I try to paste the code in the blogger template (I put it at the very to) it tells me “html” must not contain the ‘<' character. what can I do?

  232. FreeTipss says:

    My old blogger Old Url: http://tipstwist.blogspot.com
    My new URL is: http://freetipss.com/

    Hey. I recently transferred my blog from blogger to WordPress! I had a blog http://tipstwist.blogspot.com
    I then transferred it into WordPress by following some plugins!
    Now its showing plagiarism after my transfer!
    They are my contents! And i wrote them. Tell me how can i remove this error ? 🙁 Someone help me please!

  233. iAm Melissa says:

    I pay just to make sure that i’m using the best keyword research tools now I don’t want it be useless if my SEO will be affected during transfer. Glad to read this post.

  234. Hi.
    thanks for this plugin.
    i installed on ultimodetentoredelladea.blogspot.com and redirect works to ultimodetentoredelladea.altervista.org but the http redirect is a 302 “moved temporary” and not a 301 moved permanenly.

    google wants 301 redirection, not 302.

    what i’m wrong?

    thanks.

  235. Style Me Sunday says:

    How can I check that it’s worked? and does it take a while before you can check that it’s worked?

  236. htcampbell says:

    I know it’s been 2 years since the plugin got any dev support, but I’ve used it several times recently and it continues to work with WP 4.1+ .

    For people having issues with their server returning 403 errors, I suggest they ask their hosting provider whether mod_security is set to block URLs that have a query string parameter that is itself, a URL. This behaviour can be whitelisted.

  237. htcampbell says:

    this sounds like mod_security is blocking a query string param this is a URL. ala http://forums.hostgator.com/mod-security-and-403-errors-t71394.html

  238. Ruby Ngo says:

    Don’t waste your money on any seo tool, get all 400+ seo tools just for $5.
    http://goo.gl/UqNmvM

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