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Advice for Transitioning off of Blogger

UserPost

4:17 am
January 13, 2012


Penny Pinching Professional

Member

posts 69

My blog is currently on blogger, complete with .blogspot.com url.  My fiance got me my own domain as part of my Christmas present, and I'd like to move everything over to there.  Does anyone have any advice for making that transition?  (I know that sooner is better because it will reset my rankings.)  The way I see my options are this:

 

- Move the domain this weekend, but continue to use blogger for the back end.

- Move the domain this weekend and simultaneously switch to wordpress or something else.

- Move the domain this weekend and continue using blogger for the back end for now, but switch to something else once I'm sure everything is working properly.

 

I was originally leaning toward the third option, but I'm not really sure.  For one thing, one of the reasons I wanted to get off of blogger and onto wordpress was because of the lack of nested comments and the ability to subscribe to comments, but blogger just rolled that out this week.  Also, I'm wondering if having more changes every couple of weeks would be irritating to my readers.  I just added a new header and changed from two columns to three last month, so if I change the domain now and then have a new layout in a few weeks that might be too much.  On the other hand, I'm pretty sure blogger can handle the work for me if I want to transfer the domain but not the back end, so doing both at once might be annoying.  So now I'm just confused.

 

Also, if anyone has any tips on getting through the domain transition (Do I need to change my RSS feeds?  What's the best way to inform my readers?) that would be helpful.

4:37 am
January 13, 2012


Watson Inc

Member

posts 371

Hello,

I did option one. It was relatively straight forward.  There's no problem with the RSS feed. If you are using Feedburner, leave the feed address the same. I also left the "original feed the same (even though it says change it if you move your original feed to a new domain). What I did change was in Blogger settings, you edit the blog address (to your new domain) AND you redirect from your old domain XXX.blogspot.com. You also have to do a DNS redirect from you old domain to your new domain with whoever you purchased your domain from (ie GoDaddy). If you are using GoDaddy, the hold process is very straight forward. Also, if you don't like Blogger commenting system, you can use Intense Debate. I think you can use Discus too, so you can add a 3rd-party commenting system without incident.

I hope this helps. Overall, I think the process (changing the feed details in Feedburner, doing the DNS redirect, and changing Blogger settings) might have taken 1.5 hours. I was very unfamiliar with the process.

Visit Me: Watson Inc

Follow Me On Twitter: @roshawnwatson

 

4:43 am
January 13, 2012


Matt76Allen

Member

posts 78

Count me as one who is still on Blogger.  I have my Blogger blog redirected to my own custom domain.  It is very easy to do, simply go into your Settings tab and click the Publishing link.  It will walk you through how to do it.  The good news is, people who still try to access your blog through your blogspot address will still be able to do so.  It will automatically redirect them to your custom domain.  Keep in mind, there is some technical (backroom type) stuff you have to do at the site you purchased your domain from to let it know to accept your blog from Google.  Something about DNS… I can't remember exactly, but Help screens got me through it all.

 

I also have been hesitant to move to Wordpress simply because I am comfortable in Blogger and don't want to deal with the hassle of learning the new platform and getting everything moved over at this time.

 

Easy way to inform your readers… maybe put up a temporary note on the top of one of your sidebars saying, "Hey… I moved my site to THIS custom domain."  Something like that.

 

Do you use Feedburner for your RSS feeds?  Pretty much EVERYBODY does!  If not, check it out.  I think it will work with either your blogspot address, or your new one.

 

As far as your commenting issues… you can use 3rd party commenting platforms within Blogger.  The 3 major ones that I've seen are Intense Debate, Disqus and Livefyre.  I use Disqus on my Blogger blog.  Simply go to Disqus.com, set up an account and it has instructions that walk you through how to put it on your Blogger blog.  You can also import all of your existing blog comments into your Disqus account.

 

Hope this was helpful

-Matt

Rambling on about money and other issues @ RamblingFever Money

Follow me on Twitter @Matt76Allen

4:56 am
January 13, 2012


Watson Inc

Member

posts 371

In the future, I will likely switch to Wordpress. If you ultimately do this, then contact Money Beagle. He just went through this transition. I believe he said that he used Jesse to do the whole thing for him, and it was totally uneventful. I hope this helps.

Visit Me: Watson Inc

Follow Me On Twitter: @roshawnwatson

 

4:58 am
January 13, 2012


money cactus

Australia

Member

posts 33

Get everything over onto Wordpress as soon as you can. I've done the Blogger thing and while it works, it has nothing on Wordpress.  Dedicate a weekend to it and you should be up and running, but do it sooner rather than later, particularly as you will be changing to a custom URL as well.

Shaun @ Money Cactus

Blog: http://moneycactus.com

Twitter: @moneycactus

Email: shaun@moneycactus.com

5:17 am
January 13, 2012


MoneyBeagle

Member

posts 1466

I just did the migration last month.  I did most of it myself.  I consulted Eric @ Narrow Bridge a few times and he was more than helpful.

While you might be comfortable on Blogger, here are a few things to consider:

1) Unless something has changed, when you click the comment tab, that takes you to a Blogger.com page.  Anything you do at that point is done on the Blogger.com domain.  What does that mean?  Blogger gets the Alexa juice for anybody that has the toolbar installed.  When you go to Wordpress, your commenting platform is self-hosted, so you get the clicks.  It might be a small thing but I believe it adds up.

2) If you're using Feedburner to publish your feed, Wordpress has a couple easy plugins you can use (I use FeedSmith I think) where you just put your Feedburner address, and your RSS readers should be none the wiser.

3) I spent a lot of time working with a Blogger theme that was, as far as I could tell, pretty cutting edge compared to most Blogger themes.  Yet after I converted to Wordpress, I realized that the Blogger theme was still kind of clunky. 

4) You will have to start over on your Alexa rankings, so really the sooner the better.  Do you have to do everything weekend in terms of transitioning your domain?  No.  But at the very least you want to get your real domain active and start notifying your users to use that one. The nice thing about Blogger is that it will handle the redirects from your .blogspot address to your new one.

5) Blogger URLs and WordPress URLs are different, even if you modify your Wordpress 'standard' to match the closest that Blogger can do.  Long story short, when you have a blog title containing the words 'A', 'The', and I believe 'And', Blogger doesn't include those in the title, where Wordpress does.  Thus, when you do an import, Wordpress will have different titles for any of those posts, and I believe Blogger truncates the URL for longer post titles, so you could have some truncation as well.  There are WordPress plugins that will 'redirect' the page, but I'm not trustworthy of such things, so I actually went article by article and modified the imported URLs.  I had 500 articles and probably 20% were affected, so it took some time.  Point being, the longer you wait, the more bulky your transition will be.

My recommendation would be to get the new URL activated on Blogger.  I probably wouldn't start the WordPress transition just yet but would start planning on doing so and getting familiar with it, and plan on transitioning off Blogger in the next 4-6 weeks.

Let me know if I can help further.

Member Site: Money Beagle

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5:18 am
January 13, 2012


Watson Inc

Member

posts 371

One more thing, there are a bunch of people who made the transition from Blogger to WP. Check out the follow threads too for contact info, hiccups, and pertinent details regarding the transition.

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

Visit Me: Watson Inc

Follow Me On Twitter: @roshawnwatson

 

5:23 am
January 13, 2012


MoneyBeagle

Member

posts 1466

Watson Inc said:

I think you can use Discus too, so you can add a 3rd-party commenting system without incident.

Hmmm…I never had luck trying to install an outside commenting platform on Blogger, but that could negate the issue from the first item above. I still think WordPress is the way to go. 

If for no other reason than with Blogger, Google technically controls your content and can shut you down.  I can't remember the bloggers name, but a year or two ago a rather popular blog that was hosted on Blogger was shut down with no warning.  Unfortunately, he wasn't backing his stuff up, and Google wouldn't re-instate him nor would they give him his content, so he was effectively finished.  Yes, had he backed his stuff up he could have re-launched with minimal damage, but that's still one heck of a scary proposition.

Member Site: Money Beagle

Visit Money Beagle    -    Email    -    Twitter    -   Facebook    -  Google+

7:30 am
January 13, 2012


Watson Inc

Member

posts 371

Thanks Beagle! I do have ID, and it is 10x better than the default commenting.

Visit Me: Watson Inc

Follow Me On Twitter: @roshawnwatson

 

1:44 pm
January 13, 2012


Penny Pinching Professional

Member

posts 69

Thanks for all of the advice.  As far as the commenting goes, the updates they added this week fix all of the problems I had with the old system, and I haven't noticed any new issues yet.

 

Watson Inc said:

One more thing, there are a bunch of people who made the transition from Blogger to WP. Check out the follow threads too for contact info, hiccups, and pertinent details regarding the transition.

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..38;ret=all

Thanks.  I had tried searching before I posted this, but apparently I was either being too specific or not specific enough.  I just kept coming up with threads comparing the two.

 

MoneyBeagle said:

1) Unless something has changed, when you click the comment tab, that takes you to a Blogger.com page.  Anything you do at that point is done on the Blogger.com domain.  What does that mean?  Blogger gets the Alexa juice for anybody that has the toolbar installed.  When you go to Wordpress, your commenting platform is self-hosted, so you get the clicks.  It might be a small thing but I believe it adds up.

5) Blogger URLs and WordPress URLs are different, even if you modify your Wordpress 'standard' to match the closest that Blogger can do.  Long story short, when you have a blog title containing the words 'A', 'The', and I believe 'And', Blogger doesn't include those in the title, where Wordpress does.  Thus, when you do an import, Wordpress will have different titles for any of those posts, and I believe Blogger truncates the URL for longer post titles, so you could have some truncation as well.  There are WordPress plugins that will 'redirect' the page, but I'm not trustworthy of such things, so I actually went article by article and modified the imported URLs.  I had 500 articles and probably 20% were affected, so it took some time.  Point being, the longer you wait, the more bulky your transition will be.

What do you mean by the comment tab?  The comments are on the same page as the post, aren't they?  Are the individual posts on a blogger domain?  As far as the URLs, that hadn't occurred to me.  I'll have to take a look at my posts and see how many will be affected.  Though, if I have links within my posts they'll need to be updated regardless of whether I move to wordpress or not, right? 

 

Do comments move with the posts when you go from blogger to wordpress?

 

Right now I'm thinking of just doing the domain transfer this weekend.  I think I have a lot more research and work to do figuring out blogger before I try to move that over.  (If I decide to go through with that.  Still undecided.)

6:56 pm
January 13, 2012


Glen Craig

Member

posts 1087

Do the domain transfer.  When you are ready move to self-hosted wordpress.  I wish I jumped sooner (and this was a few years ago).

If you aren't sure about the move, I think BlogCrafted does blogger to wordpress moves.

I did my move myself.  I believe I was up until 4 in the morning.  Doesn't mean your situation will be like that at all and don't let that scare you.  Just make sure you are prepared to put some time in.

In the meantime, check out sites you like and find out what themes they are using and see if they fit your needs.  Many used premium, paid for, themes, but there are plenty of good free themes out there.

8:52 pm
January 13, 2012


Matt76Allen

Member

posts 78

Glen Craig – Free From Broke said:

In the meantime, check out sites you like and find out what themes they are using and see if they fit your needs.  Many used premium, paid for, themes, but there are plenty of good free themes out there.

Here is another site that has some great Blogger templates (themes).  Many of them look very similar to some Wordpress templates.  http://btemplates.com/

Rambling on about money and other issues @ RamblingFever Money

Follow me on Twitter @Matt76Allen

9:11 pm
January 13, 2012


Watson Inc

Member

posts 371

Thanks Matt. I probably should update my theme at some point, especially if I don't pull the trigger soon on my Wordpress migration.

Visit Me: Watson Inc

Follow Me On Twitter: @roshawnwatson

 

6:32 am
January 14, 2012


Penny Pinching Professional

Member

posts 69

Matt76Allen said:

Glen Craig – Free From Broke said:

In the meantime, check out sites you like and find out what themes they are using and see if they fit your needs.  Many used premium, paid for, themes, but there are plenty of good free themes out there.

Here is another site that has some great Blogger templates (themes).  Many of them look very similar to some Wordpress templates.  http://btemplates.com/

Thanks.  I'll look through those.  It seems like there are a lot more options than just using blogger.

5:24 am
January 15, 2012


Matt76Allen

Member

posts 78

Penny Pinching Professional said:

Thanks.  I'll look through those.  It seems like there are a lot more options than just using blogger.

Yeah, Blogger is actually more customizeable than you might think.  I've spent hours tinkering with different layouts and 3rd party add-ons to get things the way I like.  It is a never-ending process.  In the end, I didn't use one of those fancy templates found on that link I shared.  I stuck with a Simple Blogger template and just slightly customized it myself.

Rambling on about money and other issues @ RamblingFever Money

Follow me on Twitter @Matt76Allen

12:53 pm
January 15, 2012


Eric – PersonalProfitability.com

Portland, OR

Member

posts 2120

I have moved from Blogger to Wordpress three times for all of my sites (a long time ago now). I highly suggest moving to Wordpress as soon as possible if you are looking for long term blogging success.

4:30 am
January 16, 2012


MoneyBeagle

Member

posts 1466

Sorry for missing the earlier note.

Anyways, the comments tab that I referenced earlier should have really said comments link.  When my blog was on Blogger, clicking 'Leave A Comment' or whatever the text happened to be, opened a new sub-window that, if you looked at the URL, was http://www.blogger.com/lotsofm…..bojumbo.  I used the out of the box comment system, though, so it sounds like there is opportunity for other systems that I hadn't put in..

Member Site: Money Beagle

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