Are you planning to transfer your personal blog from one platform to another, specifically from Blogger to WordPress? Then continue reading this post as we will discuss how to actually perform the migration.
The WordPress Development Services provide comparatively more features than Blogger and that’s why people are thinking of migration to this platform. Though Blogger is a clean tool for the novice people to begin blogging, it too has its limitations so it is wise to switch over to WordPress.
The WordPress development company provides a lot of new features and tools that one can use to make the website look different from the traditional ones. The themes and plugins that WordPress provides to us are really awesome and they help us to give a professional and beautiful look to the website.
If you are worried about losing the Google rankings then stop worrying as we will provide you the complete description on how to switch over properly without getting the rankings down.
Why one should switch to WordPress from Blogger?
Blogger is a free, popular platform for blogging from Google that any new user can try using with their Google account. But very soon, the users start understanding the limitations of this platform.
On the other side, the Custom WordPress Development provides you a much-added advantage so that you can easily add new features to your blog and make it grow. Full ownership of the website is provided by the WordPress development services to you.
First of all, the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com must be clearly understood. WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform and WordPress.com is the hosted platform. Here, we are talking about the powerful WordPress.org platform that has nearly 30% of the websites hosted on it.
The first and the foremost step now is to get the web hosting and domain name for your website. The next step once you get your domain name and web hosting account is to install WordPress on that account. Now, as the installation process completes, you can start moving the content from Blogger to WordPress.
1. You have to Export the Content from Blogger
For exporting the content, you have to first log in to the dashboard of Blogger and then move to Settings-> Other pages. There will be a button called ‘Back Up Content’ in the “Import and back up” section, press it.
A popup will arise in which you have to click the button named ‘Save to your computer’. The content of the blog will be saved in an XML file format on the computer. Now, you have to import that content.
2. You have to Import the Content to WordPress
For the import process, you have to log in to the WordPress account and move to the Tools->Import section in the admin area. Press the link named ‘Install Now’ that is under Blogger. The Blogger Importer plugin will be downloaded and installed for you. As the installation gets completed, now you have to click the link named ‘Run Importer’.
Now, you will be asked to upload the file of the XML format that was downloaded on your computer. If the file is having a large size, then there will be an error appearing on the screen and for solving that error, you have to increase the file upload limit.
Now, it is time to assign posts to the author. In case, you are having too many authors on the Blogger platform, then better make a separate user account for every author. Once you have made the selection, press the submit button to go ahead. Now, all the content will be imported from the Blogger platform to your Custom WordPress Development site. Posts-> All Posts page will show you the content.
3. Now it is time to set up the Permalinks
Image source: Kinsta
The URL structure of the individual pages is referred to as the permalinks. There is a feature in WordPress that will provide you the method for setting an SEO-friendly URL structure for your site. The URL structure of your new site should be nearly similar to the URL structure of Blogger as you are importing the data from it.
For setting up the permalinks, you have to move to the screen showing Settings-> Permalinks on the dashboard of WordPress. Select the option named custom structure and add below-given text in it.
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
The URL of the blog posts will be made similar to that of the older blog URL structure. Sometimes, it may happen that the blog post URL that is also termed as “slug” may not match the slugs of the Blogger platform.
For fixing this problem, you have to run a small code in the functions.php file in the theme of WordPress.
add_action( ‘init’, ‘wpb_update_slug’ );
function wpb_update_slug() {
global $wpdb;
$result = $wpdb->get_results(“SELECT post_id, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = ‘blogger_permalink’ “);
$wpdb->print_error();
foreach ($result as $row){
$slug = explode(“/”,$row->meta_value);
$slug = explode(“.”,$slug[3]);
$wpdb->query(“UPDATE $wpdb->posts SET post_name =’$slug[0]’ WHERE ID = ‘$row->post_id’ “);
}
echo “DONE”;
}
Save the code and see any page on the site for triggering the script. You have to delete the script after it has run because it should be run only once.
4. Proper Redirection of the Setup from Blogger to WordPress will be done here
The crucial step of the whole process is the proper redirection set up. We have to ensure that the traffic doesn’t get lost neither the rankings of SEO gets down. The users must land to the correct new page.
There is a plugin called the Blogger to WordPress Redirection which will help you do the redirection. For activating the plugin, you have to go to Tools-> Blogger to WordPress Redirection page and press the ‘Start Configuration’ button.
Now, press the ‘Get Code’ button as the plugin has detected the URL of the older blog. A code will be generated that will help you to redirect the users from the old blog to your new blog.
5. Transfer the Remaining Content
Now, it is time to transfer the remaining content from the old platform to the new one. Here, we will see the transfer of the pages, RSS feeds, and the widgets from Blogger to WordPress.
1. Move the pages
For moving the pages, edit the pages in the Blogger blog and then copy it. Make a page in WordPress and paste that content.
2. Move the Widgets
Move to Appearance-> Widgets page on the dashboard and drag/drop them into sidebars
3 Move the RSS Feeds’
Move to Settings » Other page in your older account. Click on the button named ‘Add link’ and simply add the feed of WordPress. The feed URL of WordPress will look like this: http://yoursite.com/feed
Now, the migration process has been fully completed and all the content has been migrated from Blogger to WordPress successfully. We hope that after going through all the steps, now you are pretty confident that you can complete the migration process yourself.
So now, the migration process from Blogger to the platform of WordPress Development Services can be easily done and you don’t have to even worry for the rankings of the search engines, they won’t get affected!