Blogging

Complete guide to migrate blogger to WP with zero downtime

To some people, migrating from a Blogger blog to WP is not an issue. Meanwhile, some people would see this as a difficult task. Whatever, here is a complete guide to migrate from Blogger to WordPress without experiencing any downtime or lose SEO rankings.

A lot of people start off their blogging carrier with Blogger. Probably because it offers free hosting service and you do not need to be an expert in SEO; this is because Google automatically optimizes Blogger websites. Well, in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to move a blogger site to WordPress without experiencing any downtime.

There are many limitations to running a successful/professional website with Google Blogger and therefore you need to come over to WP. WordPress, on the other hand, is a free open source CMS that give you full right and control over your website files and data. It works mainly with plugins, unlike blogger that works solely with codes (HTML and CSS).

Obviously, you may have read other tutorials about this and yet you’re still not clear about the whole thing. I will try to make this one straight and simple for everyone to comprehend.

Moving Blogger to WordPress

There are some prerequisites that must be in place before you start planning on how to migrate blogger to WordPress. WordPress.org currently powers over 31% of the whole websites on the internet today.

Get a custom domain

First, you need to buy and register a custom domain name for the website. A custom domain name is simply a unique identity that signifies your website out of the millions of other websites on the internet. Examples of custom domains are – dopitech.com, test.com, tutor.ng, etc.

Companies like GoDaddy offer up to 99% off for registering a new domain name. You can buy from them and continue with the next step to migrate your blogger site to WP.

Buy a WordPress hosting plan

After you have got a domain name, now, go on to signup with a reliable WordPress hosting company. There are lots of them anyway, but we recommend BlueHost, A2 Hosting, Whogohost, Namecheap, and GoDaddy. Also, you may want to read these 7 essential tips for buying a new hosting plan for WordPress.

Once you have registered a domain name and bought a WordPress hosting package. The next is to install WordPress on the new host; it is actually easy to do this. Follow our guide to install WordPress on a new host.

Method One: Migrating blogger to WordPress

Backup and export the blogger website contents

At this point, your migration starts. Visit your blogger website dashboard and navigate to settings >>>other>>>Importt & Backup. Here, under the import and backup options, you’ll see “backup content”.

blogger to wp migration

Click on the “backup content”. A pop-up will appear, urging you to save the backup file to your computer; click on on “save to your computer”. The file will download and save on your local storage.

Migrate blogger to WordPress

Migrate blogger to WP

Login to the admin panel of the WordPress you installed on the new host. Click on Tools >>> import >>> install the blogger tool. The blogger import tool will download and install by itself.

Now click on “Run Importer” to transfer all your blogger files to the new WordPress installation which will not be the new website platform. Click on this “run importer” link and continue.

On the next screen, WordPress will request you upload an XML file; Blogger exports are usually saved as XML files. So, you have to locate the one you just saved on your computer during the blogger backup and upload it here.

WordPress will verify the import file and download its content. If the XML file is too large, you may see an error message which means the file did not upload. In this case, you’d have to increase your maximum file upload limit before re-uploading the XML file. But if your file is small, everything will go smoothly without any error message popping up.

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Assign author

The next action is to assign the posts from Blogger to an author. If there are more than one authors running the blogger website, you’d have to create different author profiles on the new WordPress site. However, you could just assign the whole posts to the new WordPress website admin and move on.

Click on the submit button after assigning the posts to an author. WordPress will now transfer all posts from the Blogger export file to the selected author(s) on your new WordPress site. To access these posts visit here posts >>> all posts from the WordPress dashboard.

Redirect and set up permalinks

Permalinks

permalinks

It is very important that you setup the permalinks URL structure so that your previous visitors can still access and read your articles without being bounced with a 404 error page.  Permalink is a term used for URL structure of a site’s individual pages. WordPress made it easier to setup permalinks with the help of its SEO friendly URL structure. Since your posts/pages were previously on blogger, the URL structure will be different from that of WordPress. However, you can customize WordPress to have the link structure as Blogger; your WordPress URL structure should be close to your former Blogger URL structure.

To set these permalinks, go to Settings » Permalinks from your WordPress dashboard and select the custom structure option. Now, set the URL to fit your Blogger URL; usually, blogger URLs include the year, month, and numbers before the initial post/page name. But, however, the case may be, use the available tags to make the URLs match with each other.

Redirection

Among the various steps we have discussed so far, this is the most important. You need to setup an effective, proper redirection so as not to lose your current SEO rankings and traffic.

Blogger to WordPress plugin

From your WP dashboard, go to Plugins >>> Add New, then search for “Blogger to WordPress“. Install any of the two we pointed out in the image above.

Proper redirection will cause your previous users to land on exactly the same page on the new site even when they click on the old URL. Also, it defines to search engines that your Blogger website is now on WordPress.

Install and activate the “Blogger to WordPress” plugin, then, configure the redirects. Either of these redirection plugins you use will detect the Blogger URL and provide you with an option to get redirection code. This redirection code is meant to be pasted on the former Blogger code section.

Next, return to your Blogger dashboard, get to the Theme row, click on it, further click on “Edit HTML“.

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Edit blogger html

Now, clear the whole codes here by pressing CTRL-A + backspace/delete.

Note: you may have to save a backup of these present blogger codes, just in case there be a need sometimes in the future.

After you have cleared the codes, paste the new one generated by the “Blogger to WordPress” plugin and click on save theme (screenshot below).

save theme

Mobile Redirect

Simply click on the “gear” icon below the mobile preview version of your previous blogger theme and select “no, show desktop theme on mobile device“.

Method Two

Here is a simpler method to move all your posts, comments, images, and pages from blogger to WordPress.

Install Blogger to WordPress Extended Plugin

Navigate to the “Plugins” menu from your WP dashboard and click on “Add New”. Now, search for Blogger to WordPress Extended, install the plugin, and further, activate it. However, you can alternatively download it from Here and upload the zip file on to your plugins.

 

Run the plugin

Once you have activated the plugin, go ahead to run the plugin; you’ll have to sign in to your google account, then, select the blogger blog/profile. Click on the “import” button below the blogger blog and it will immediately start to transfer your files. Here’s how it will look;

import blogger to wordpress

Do the needful

When the importing is completed, assign authors to the posts. That’s the final step.

Remember to setup redirection and configure your Permalink for swift redirection.

What More?

Yeah, something is remaining; there is something else you need to do. Sometimes, depending on the plugin you used for the migration, your post images, pages may not include in the migration. But when you use our recommend plugin, everything comes on board! However, you can use this redirection plugin to fix redirection issues like this;

Permanently redirecting http://tutorial.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html to your new WP URL http://tutorial.com/about-us

Setting up widgets on WordPress

Widgets allow you to place certain stuff in different spaces on your WordPress website. Go to Appearance >>> Widgets, then drag and drop any widget of your choice to your sidebar header section, or footer section. It is very easy with WORDPRESS!

Conclusion

You can request our assistance to migrate Blogger to WordPress; our team of experts will be glad to help you do this. Also, if need any help on WordPress settings, we can help out too!

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Originally posted on October 17, 2018 @ 1:56 pm

Samuel Odamah

We wake up to new tech innovations. All I'm doing is trying to get acquainted with cutting-edge innovations, write about them, as well as deploy them in solving my everyday problems. Follow me on Twitter @fwesh_finnest for my daily updates on Tech, Bitcoin, marketing, etc.

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