Bloggers moving to WordPress

Not the definitive answer, but this is what I did and what worked and didn’t work. I’m sharing what I have learned to hopefully help you out in your blogging needs.

Custom URL: First if you’re going to get a WordPress that’s hosted with your own domain you have to figure out what you want it to be. Like mine is www.crazyforadeal.com – what would you want yours to be? Got that in mind? Don’t buy it just yet, you need to figure out where to host your site and see if they have any free URL registration deals.

Web Hosting: We use and recommend Dreamhost.com for all your hosting needs. They give you ftp access, web interface, unlimited storage, email addresses, and best of all they waive the fee for your url registration if you host with them for 1 domain.

Enter coupon code: crazydeal275 to get your first year at dreamhost.com less than $3.00 a month! After that I think it’s $9.95 a month for the unlimited storage plan.

Another hosting option is Host Gator. I see they have $7.95 a month for hosting with this ad. Click here to order from Host Gator. That’s their unlimited hosting deal, they have cheaper plans, but they’re not unlimited. You can look around their site to see what best fits your needs.

You can also host anywhere else you want, obviously there are many hosting sites around, I just mention these two as those are who I work with.

So after you sign up for your hosting and get your domain all registered next you will need to download wordpress. This will vary depending on who hosts it, but most will give you the how-to info on their site. Again I went through Dreamhost and it was super easy to install wordpress from them.

Moving your old blog info over to the new blog (part 1): You don’t want to delete or point everything over just yet, so for this one you will just do a backup of your old blog (so you have it!) over at blogger.com.

Create your pages at WordPress: Your posts will migrate over swimmingly, but did you have any pages at blogger? If so you will want to go in and copy their HTML into a new page at WordPress and past the HTML into it (in HTML view, not Visual – top right of the posting area). While making pages you can (and should) fill out the order number. This way when you put a list of pages they’re in the order you want. Do it now, it saves time. You can also make them visible or private. It will matter if you have one you don’t want to share for any reason (like still working on it). On the right side of the screen.

Build your menubar: There’s a menubar with layers! LAYERS! Like you can have “About Me” and under it have “interests” “My kids” etc. You will go to Menu and you either make a new page or reference a tag category from what you have already. You do drag and drop for order and for nesting order. Play around with it or google for help.

Add your widgets: This is why it’s good that you didn’t get rid of your old page yet. Go in like you’re going to edit your blogger widget and copy the HTML. Go over to wordpress and add a text widget. Paste your HTML. Put it under the menu you want it to be in. It takes some practice. You’ll get there. I have also added Ad Codes Widget and Ad Squares Widget because they seem to like the javascript much better than the text widget.

Update your RSS Feed: Do you use feedburner? Another RSS feed? Go update it! Make the new site your base site and good thing is anyone that already has your feed through feedburner will not care because the feed you broadcast on there will stay the same. If you didn’t have one, consider getting a feedburner account so any time you ever have to change anything again it will not disrupt your feed or readers. Look at the next bullet for nice RSS feed moving hints.

*If you had twitter, facebook, and your newsletter linked to your RSS feed you will be very happy to see that these things are still intact. If not scroll to the bottom of this post for the how-to link those.

*To link your facebook to your RSS feed via https://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/ or another facebook app of your choice.
For twitter I used Google, but I’m going to move to a WP integration plug-in. You know, keeping google’s hands out of everything, I mean.

If you have a facebook fan page that has a # in it and you’d rather shorten it up to a custom name - this link has the info you need!!!

Start Telling People about your new URL: Be sure to add your new URL into google to speed up the process of them finding you.

Update your affiliates: If you have affiliate accounts go into them and let them know about your new URL. Shouldn’t affect your links, but it’s good for them to know where you went.

After you like your new blog enough to make it official, go double check that there’s nothing you left behind. Get one more backup if you need it and then enjoy the next link which I consider the finale.

Moving your old blog info over to the new blog (part 2): This was the final step I took. This redirects everything from your old blogger blog to the wordpress blog. So if there’s an old link that anyone may have bookmarked, it should move over automatically after this. You can get to some of your old stuff through the dashboard, but you can’t get to your old widgets, so don’t do this step until you’re really ready to move on!

There you have it! There’s a lot about wordpress to learn and maybe I will update this or make a new page once I have explored it but this is a good starting place.

Disclosure: I’m an affiliate for Host Gator and buying through our site helps support us.