A couple of people have already asked me regarding the import of my blog from Blogger to WordPress and how easy or difficult it was. Therefore I thought it would be helpful for you guys if I outlined the steps I took.

I recently purchased my own domain and received a WordPress blog with my hosting package. When I tried to find out how I could import my Blogger posts there, this is the information I received from WordPress:

“Users of WordPress 2.2 and above can import from Blogger. Earlier versions cannot import from Blogger because “New Blogger” was released by Google, invalidating all the old importers. Only WordPress 2.2 and later has support for “New Blogger”.

If you haven’t already, you must be using New Blogger and a Google Account on Blogger. If you are still using Old Blogger, the importer will not work.

To start the importer, go to Manage → Import → Blogger and follow the directions.”

I did have the New Blogger, yet it was an older version of WordPress that I received with my package (of course! I got the 2.1.0 version), and therefore I couldn’t just automatically import my Blogger posts there.

Therefore what I did was, I opened a “dummy” account on wordpress.com (which of course had to be the most recent version) and imported my posts from Blogger to that dummy account.  The only problem I experienced in the import was that all the videos didn’t transfer. I had to add them all back manually. Also I had to add a 5 pixels margin left and bottom to all my pics which now appeared almost on top of the text in the posts.

Then I exported all the posts from the “dummy” WordPress account to my real WordPress account by going to: Manage → Export → Download Export File. I then logged in to my real account and clicked Manage → Import → WordPress. There you’ll need to upload the export file. The only problem I experienced in this process was that the names of those who commented did not transfer for some reason. I needed to dig into the code and fix that. I also needed to categorize all my posts now because they were not categorized in Blogger.

I then redirected my old site to my new site. In order to do that, follow these directions.

All in all the process was not as easy as it could be, I think. I am not sure if the problems I experienced were only specific to my case or that they happen quite frequently, but I think that both companies could try to work harder at making the whole transition a lot smoother. There is no reason for me to go and have to manually change stuff myself.

I must add one thing before I finish. I did enjoy my time on Blogger and probably would not have left it if it wasn’t necessary. Even though I have heard some people complain about it, I found its platform very user friendly and intuitive.

I hope this post was helpful and will make your import a bit smoother than what I experienced.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Blog, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.