Don’t get your blog deleted, then only you start ranting or cursing under your breath and out in the open in the Blogger Help forum. If you’re serious about making money from home with Internet, then it’s high time you quickly move your established Blogger blog over to self-hosted WordPress, before you ended just like many so-called unfortunate Bloggers, including me. It is one of those life lessons which I learned it the hard way.
You can move your existing free Blogger site to WordPress without losing traffic, PageRank, images, posts, subscribers and without having “You are About to be Redirected” warning message.
When people click on your existing indexed pages from search engines, they will go DIRECTLY to your newly- setup site with WordPress.
Some of the tutorials on moving Blogger to WordPress you might come across in the Internet, they are outdated. Now we have more new plugins which make migrating Blogger to WordPress less daunting .
I have read lots of different tutorials, tips and advice from the Internet, and they all offer different ways of doing it. I know it is confusing and nerve-racking. I did encountered many a problem along the way.
Anyway, here is how I moved my other “unharmed” Blogger blogs to WordPress:
STEP ONE: Domain Name And Hosting
1. Open an account with GoDaddy to get my own domain name. Here is a detailed tutorial on how to purchase domain name with GoDaddy.
2. Next I signed up with web hosting company Bluehost where I hosted my domain name. On the page, I clicked “Sign Up Now”.
3. I selected “I Have a Domain Name”. Fill up the domain name which I bought from GoDaddy. Clicked Next.
4. Filled up my details in “Account Information”, “Package Information”, “Billing Information”. You can choose from 1 year to three years. When you signed up with Bluehost, you will get another one FREE domain name of your choice.
5. Then I received a welcome mail from Bluehost with lots of information: Choose a password, how to transfer my domain, create Email, Name Servers, etc.
6. Next I need to transfer my Domain from GoDaddy to Bluehost. To do that, I got to obtain an Authorization Code aka EPP Code to transfer my Domain Name to Bluehost.
An authorization code is usually a six to 16 character code assigned by the registrar (mine is GoDaddy). Authorization codes are a password for the domain serving as an extra security measure.
7. To get the EPP Code, I went over to GoDaddy, I logged into my Account Manager. In the “My Products” section, I clicked “Domain Manager”. Next I clicked my domain name in the Domain Information section. Then I clicked “Send by Email on the Authorization Code” line. Finally I clicked OK twice.
8. GoDaddy sent the code to me via e-mail. It said: We have received a request that the status be changed to:
Locked
for the following name(s):
XXXXX.COM
9. I went over to the GoDaddy.com home page and logged in. Then from the “In the MY ACCOUNT section, I clicked “Domain Monitoring / Backordering.”
10. Then received another Domain Status Notification Email from GoDaddy which read:
The authorization information you requested is as follows:
Domain Name: XXXXXXXX.COM
Authorization Info: #############
11. Then, I went over to Go Daddy again to change my nameservers.
12. To do that, I logged in to GoDaddy. Click “My Account” top right hand corner. From “MY PRODUCTS” section, I selected Domain Manager. I ticked the box in front of my domain name.
13. Immediately the row of icons or symbols above “lighted up”. Among the icons, you can see Nameservers which is the eighth one in the row. Put your cursor over it and it drops a menu showing: Set Nameservers and Manage DS Records. Click on the “Set Nameservers”.
14. It will show you a page called Set Nameservers. Fill up the first box with: NS1.Bluehost.COM and the second box with: NS2.Bluehost.COM. Then click OK.
Note: You have to wait after 24 hours, then only your domain name would correctly point to your new Hosting Account.
11. Next I transfered my domain name to Bluehost. I logged in to my Bluehost account. Scrolled down to the list under Domains. Clicked on the third icon which is called “Transfer Domain”.
12. Entered my domain name in the empty box and clicked “Continue” button.
13. Entered my EPP Code which I had requested from GoDaddy as explained in #6 to #8 above. After filling up the EPP Code, I clicked the “Continue” button.
14. Immediately, I received an email from Bluehost with WHOIS database and confirmation code (different from your EPP Code). This is to prevent domain theft.
15. I entered the confirmation code in the Admin Contact Verification code box. And clicked “Continue” button.
16. The next page will show Transfer: Unlocked. For Nameservers details, make sure you select the first one, which is Use our nameservers: ns1.bluehost.com, ns2.bluehost.com
For Autorenew details: You can either pick the first or the second one. If you pick the first which is auto-renewal, you need to pay an additional fees. I picked the second one which is to be reminded before the hosting duration expires.
For Contact Information details, I picked the first one which is Use Profile Information.
Domain Privacy, I selected Use Privacy.
Term of Service, you have to tick to verify that it is your domain and agree to the registration with Bluehost.
17. When you have filled up everything as required, click “Add to shoppingcart”.
You can also learn this process of transferring of your domain to Bluehost from this video tutorial: http://tutorials.bluehost.com/transfer/
STEP TWO: Setting Up WordPress
1. Now it is time to install or setup WordPress. Log in to Bluehost and it will open up the cPanel or control panel page. Scroll all the way down to the second last section under Software/Services. Click on “WordPress”.
2. Then it says Redirecting to SimpleScripts. Wait for a few seconds and it opens a page called Install WordPress. Click “Install” green button.
3. Fill in the forms as provided.
(i). Installation Preferences: Pick the latest version which is 3.03 (Stable). Here you can decide whether you want to use the www or without www.
(ii) Advance Options, you need to click on the phrase “Click here to display:” It will show you:
The first one is optional. It is filled up for you as My Blog. You can leave it or change to another name.
For the second one, is creating username and password. You can create your own or you can ask WordPress to generate them for you by ticking the box provided.
(iii) The third box, I ticked it so that they will automatically create a new database.
4. Then tick “I have read the terms and conditions of the GPLv2 licence agreement. And click the green “Complete” button.
STEP THREE: Importing Blogger To WordPress:
1. Now it is time to import all your post, images, and comments from Blogger to WordPress. First, backup your blogger blog. Go Blogger Dashboard>> Settings>>Basic and select “Export blog”. This is for safety purpose. Click “DOWNLOAD BLOG” orange button.
2. Go to Settings >> Publishing. Click on “Custom Domain”.
3. Next click: “Switch to advanced Settings”. Fill in your domain name in the box. Use a missing file host, leave it “No”. Type in the word verification and click “SAVE SETTINGS” button.
4. Now let’s import blogger to WordPress. Log into WordPress dashboard>>Tools >> Import and select “Blogger” from importing options.
5. Now you are on “Import Blogger” page. You can see the “Authorize” button. Click on it and it will direct you to a page on Blogger.com; Click “Grant access”.
6. Once you have granted access, it will direct to WordPress page called Blogger Blog. If you have more that more than one blog on your Blogger account, you will see all them listed there. Now click on Import” button next to the blog you are supposed to migrate to WordPress.
7. Once you click “Import”, all posts and comments from Blogger.com blog starts importing into WordPress. When it has finished importing, the button-text will change to “Set Authors”.
STEP FOUR: Structure The Permalinks
Go to WordPress>>Settings>>Permalinks. Set the custom structure as : /%postname%/
STEP FIVE: Modify htacess in Bluehost.
WARNING: Do this at your own risk. Read this carefully. Writing the file is easy, you just need to enter some code into a text editor like notepad, but it is a very sensitive area. You may run into problems with saving the file. You need to handle with utmost care. This tip I got it from blogbloke.com
Firstly prepare the code on the Notepad.
RedirectMatch permanent ^/[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/([a-z0-9]+) http://nameofyourblog.com/$1
How to find .htacess in Bluehost?
Log in to Bluehost account. Click File Manager. A box called “File Manager Directory Selection” pops up. Select “Documented Root for: XXXXX.com (name of your blog). Click “Go” button.
Then it will open a page with a list of file names. Select .htaccess. Right click and then click “Edit”.
Copy the code from your Notepad and paste the code into your .htaccess file before the line:
# BEGIN WordPress
Click “Save Changes”. That’s all.
STEP SIX: Stop Search Engine From Indexing Your Blogger Site
In your Blogger Dashboard>> Settings>>Basic. Scroll down to where you see: “Let search engines find your blog?” Choose “No”.
STEP SEVEN: Feedburner Newsfeed
Go to Feedburner dashboard. Replace your old Blogger feed with the new WordPress feed.
Also go Blogger dashboard>> Settings>> Site Feed. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter your new FeedBurner address. This will redirect the existing subscribers.
STEP EIGHT: Permalink Finder Plugin
I installed “Permalink Finder” plugin. It helps to redirect any of incoming links to index.html, index,htm, or index.shtml to your blog’s main page and not show a 404 page not found.
To set this plugin, download it and activate the plugin. Then go to Settings>>Permalink Finder and enter your preferred setting.
STEP NINE: Broken Link Checker Plugin
As its name says it all. Check for any broken links in your new WordPress site. To set up this plugin. Download it and activate the “Broken Link Checker” Plugin. Next set your preferred settings.
STEP TEN: Site Visibility
This is just to make sure your spanking new WordPress Blog can be searched. Though most WordPress Themes have already set for you. No harm checking out.
How to do it? Go to Settings>>Privacy. Make sure it is selected at: I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archives. Then click “Save Changes”.
That’s how I moved my Blogger to self-hosted WordPress. I believe in sharing with others.
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha
