Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

3/20/2006


Blogger to WordPress: No Sunday Drive

As I have mentioned before, while Newsome.Org is hosted on my server, I use Blogger to publish and manage content. While not perfect, there are a lot of advantages to doing that. One, it was easy to set up when I first started using a blogging platform. Two, it allows me to easily publish from the road when I travel- even if I am using a borrowed computer.

But it is not perfect. On those infrequent, but regular, days when blogger is down, I can't post. Plus, there are a lot of features I need (categories, built-in trackbacks, etc.) that blogger doesn't have.

So I looked around, consulted Eric Scalf, my blog platform guru, and decided to try to move my content to WordPress. I talked some about this project before.

Eric recreated my blog template perfectly, and everything looked like a go.

Then we hit a roadblock.

It seems there is no easy way to move my prior posts to WordPress without changing the URL of the post pages, which would break my inbound links. Sure, I could leave two versions of the old post pages up, but that sort of defeats the point, at least in my mind.

There is a work-around, but that work-around requires technical chops that neither I nor 99.9% of the world's bloggers have. The last thing I'm going to do is push a button and rely on technology I don't understand to gently and accurately handle a year or two's worth of content. If it doesn't work, then I don't know how to fix it. That would be, to quote Jim Rome, "below average."

So, here's the thing.

First of all, this has got to be a serious obstacle to any established blogger who wants to move his or her blog over to WordPress. I'd move today if not for this problem. Granted, it may be a problem created by Blogger's crackhead URL handling, but Blogger is not going to fix it. In fact, Blogger probably loves it because it operates as user glue. So if established bloggers are going to move to WordPress, WordPress is going to have to fix it.

Second, and of more use to readers, Eric has published a very detailed and helpful post outlining how to move from Blogger to WordPress and describing the hurdles we experienced.

I can vouch for Eric's expertise at template transfers, so if you are thinking of hiring him to work on your template, consider this a reference. Don't ask him to do it for free, because it is a lot of hard work.

What even Eric can't do, however, is fix the URL naming convention problems that stopped me in my tracks.

I'd love to move to WordPress, but at the moment that looks to be nearly impossible. I wonder how many other bloggers have considered moving only to turn back in the face of this hurdle?

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Posted by Kent @ 3/20/2006 09:23:00 AM | Permalink

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4 Comment(s):

I'm in the same boat! Only it sounds like I have even less technical "chops" than you.

When I ask people about options, it seems that all I get as a response is that I shouldn't have used Blogger in the first place. Definitely not a helpful response.

I'd love to know if you find any options.

By Blogger Fly Girl, at 3/20/2006 10:27 AM  
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Kent,

Currently, the only non-technical methods I've found for moving people over to your WordPress blog, are the following:

1) Leave your blogger posts/pages precisely where they are, but add a meta refresh tag, that automatically send people to your new blog.

THE PROBLEM: You will not be able to refresh to the post, itsself, unless you edit each and every blogger post page, by hand, and insert the appropriate URL. The meta refresh is mainly to move people to your main URL. This option is best for people switching from a .blogspot.com domain, to their own.

2) Re-do your blogger template, and republish. The template should remove everything but the post, itsself (no sidebars, etc..), and across the very top of the page a notice like "ATTENTION: This blog has moved to WordPress. After reading the post, please click HERE to continue to the new system" or similar. Also, remove comment links and place a notice asking people to move to the new system, to comment.

THE PROBLEM: Well, it looks strange, and it may not make a difference.

The best solution I've come up with is the following:
1) Leave your blogger pages in place.
2) Set up WordPress, and install the Google SiteMaps plugin, and sign up for the program.
3) Wait three to six months, and ALL of your posts will be indexed by Google, on your WordPress URLs. You may then start to delete your blogger pages.

3.5) Technically, you can delete your blogger pages the instant you see your WordPress URLs start to place in the search engine rankings, as the entries in your WordPress blog (even the ones imported from Google), would still be considered "newer" content, and would - therefore - rank higher in the SERPs than the blogger ones. In reality, it would take only about a month or so, with the Google Sitemaps program.

3.6) This is only viable for Google. heh.

I'll look into the technical method info at some point, and see if can't figure out an easier way of doing it.

By Anonymous Eric, at 3/20/2006 1:41 PM  
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Hi, you can actually do a 301 re-direct for each individual post, which will tell the engines that the page has changed URLs, and you shouldn't lose your spot in the rankings. I've blogged about the steps for moving from Typepad to Wordpress here:
http://shig.odani.com/2006/02/25/typepad-to-wordpress/

By Anonymous Shig Odani, at 4/18/2006 10:55 PM  
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Kent, try this:
http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2006/05/move-blogger-to-wordpress

Just came across it and it seems to solve the concerns you had.

By Blogger TD, at 9/29/2007 8:32 AM  
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Newsome.Org, Kent's blog and the related pages and content are solely the thoughts and opinions of Kent Newsome in his personal capacity and are not associated with any other person or entity, including, without limitation, any partnership or other business entity Kent may now or hereafter be associated with.