HOW TO MOVE YOUR BLOG FROM WORDPRESS.ORG TO BLOGGER

Pic from Heidi - and I've lost the link to her blog! Waaaah!

 Well, you would hardly believe it... but I've just moved 1stFloorFlat back with Blogger again!

I really have tried - over several months in fact - but just cannot get along with WordPress.org, the self-hosted form Word Press (and as I found out, very very different from wordpress.com). The .com one was difficult enough... but wp.org is a whole new ballgame. I had to download everything - even a spam checker! All the standard stuff is built in with Blogger, TypePad, Tumblr and WordPress. com, so it was rather a shock. And difficult enough to even get the blog installed - I had to have help from my hosting service because it was totally beyond me!

WordPress is very different in feel and approach, and I seriously think is more for computer buffs rather than someone who just wants to write a few posts and share some art work, like we do. So it's a big relief to be back on Blogger - I feel more comfortable already.

So... how do you go back to Blogger? There is not much help out there - I Googled over a period of weeks, off and on, before I found the essential links.

Step 1: Export your WordPress.org blog

This is the ONLY LINK out there that works - thank you David Haimes, from the bottom of my heart! (Read his full post - carefully!)

This isn't even as simple as you would think - if you also have pages, and possibly a landing page, don't even attempt to click the Download All button when you try to export your blog. This is because you can't import your blog in one step - and if it's too large, the process will fail immediately.

Choose the Posts option only, and set the dates of the posts you want to transfer.

The conversion process (see Step 2) can only handle a maximum of 1MB - so you may need to split your downloads into smaller chunks (say a year's worth of posts at a time. If that's still too large, try 6 months' worth of posts).

Now save the xml file to your desktop.


Step 2: Convert your WordPress.org files 

Wordpress2Blogger conversion tool

This is the ONLY LINK that will convert your files into a format Blogger will recognise. You absolutely cannot skip this step!

• Click on the link and then Browse for that xml file you just placed on your desktop.
• Press the Convert button and wait... and wait... and wait....
•  Dowload the converted 'Blogger-export' file to your desktop.

Step 3: Go to Blogger and import your new file

You now have a 'Blogger-Export' file on your desktop, and this is the one you will import into Blogger.

Go to your Dashboard, then Settings. You'll find this link in 'Basic' - the very first tab.

Go to your Dashboard > Settings and the very first item you will see, under the very first tab, is the link to click to import your blog.

Browse for that 'Blogger-Export' file, fill in the two word verification prompts, hit the Import button and wait (fingers and toes crossed). You have the option to click 'Publish' immediately, or let your posts save to Draft. I'd say to take the second option as your picture sizes may be all over the place (mine were all enormous - stretching over and beyond the sidebar) and any captions may need editing - with mine, the computer code showed. So that was a lot of cut&pasting, to have them show at the correct size and underneath my images. You may also have to put in labels.

My own blog was pretty big (I've been blogging since 2008) and I decided not to upload the earliest stuff as most of it isn't relevant any more, as Blogger has changed so much.

Even so, I still had to download from WordPress in several separate sections, then convert that section, import it into Blogger, then go and do the same for the next section. Not difficult, as I now had the correct links - but very time consuming. And nerve wracking... my web server reset itself, right in the middle, and I had to start over again. Anyway, job done! Whew!

Tomorrow, I'm sorting out self-hosting (being as I paid for the domain name and the hosting already).

Note: I've archived this post onto Computery as well.