Moving from Blogger to WordPress . . . Well Hello WordPress

For those of you finding this through a search engine search

So . . . you are thinking about moving your Blogger-hosted blog to WordPress?  Here is my advice — Don’t do it!

OK, you can do it . . . but know why you are doing it, what you are leaving, and what you are about to get yourself into.

Say for example you are like me, and you believe that what you have previously posted deserves to come with; you want to move your archives. Say you have limited resources; you are one person blogging part-time for very little or maybe no payout.   Say you blog for yourself, or maybe only on the side for your business.  Don’t do it.  I mean it.  Seriously consider starting fresh.  Make it a clean break . . . that is – if you have already decided for certain to wave bye-bye to Blogger.

I say this now, looking at it from the rear view mirror. The whole process, the journey I embarked on – if anything, gave me a new found respect for Blogger.  Sure, it was some of quirkiness with the text editing tool and the limits in Blogger‘s design capabilities that drove me away.

But with Blogger, remember: there it is — your blog, totally and one hundred percent free.  There is no confusion for anyone that may find you. The simple stream – center-aligned columns of information provided by . . . you.  A Blogger-styled blog is easy to read and in many ways is perfect for content serving.  It is a great format for reaching out and for sharing what you have to share with the world.

Now, with those things said — Was it worth it . . . for me?  You bet ya!  . . . And all I can say of WordPress is . . . Wow!

You may stop reading here, unless of course you really want to hear what I was doing with myself while I grew this beard. –>

Let me make this very clear

There are two flavors of WordPress.  Just like Blogger, you can create a domain at http://www.wordpress.com and simply start hacking.  This is a good solution for many.  But . . . there is a second option with WordPress, their original – a downloadable package of files that can later be uploaded to a web host, and configured there.

So . . . for me – I had to make this decision.  And it consequently dictates most of the experiences that I am about to detail.  In making the decision to go with the second option, “self-hosted,” as they call it, I ceased being only a blogger. I now have another hat to wear (like I needed more).  Today, I can proudly say, I am a blog administrator, a webmaster if you will.

Why go self-hosted?

Well, for the freedom.  This morning, in looking, there are exactly 1,151 free themes (themes are the site’s template – known in Blogger as . . . well – the Template).  To these you can add almost any one of another 8,807 plugins, ready-made bits of code that can Extend your site.

With the self-hosted solution, too, you have full access to all of the site’s associated php, css and javascript files as well as to the site’s core, the database.  For me, and with a little experience on the back side of websites, it was simply too good to pass up.  I just tacked the new blog onto the buildingmoxie.com domain.  Practically speaking – and if you already own domains and host, it is actually less expensive to host a customized WordPress blog yourself.

With great freedom, comes great responsibility

But your time may be better served working on craft.  Content, Content, Content, they say.

And that’s the first thing I did; I migrated my content.  WordPress offers an import tool that allows you to bring over any pre-existing content.  So I ran it.  It took only a few minutes and it worked very well.  It imported all text and media, maintaining all links and style elements . . . without a single change.

But . . . in that, it in fact ended up creating the biggest problem of this entire process.  It pulled in all of the useless style elements that I may have inadvertently injected into my original posts (you know, as I was getting the ropes).  Now, I am not blaming this one on Blogger; I can’t say that I have ever used an embedded html editor that was able to read my mind.

Later, as the site’s design began to take form, it became apparent that a change to the blog’s core font would be needed to synch it with its new home. And I will tell you, <span style=font-size:100%; font-family: trebuchet MS> . . . </span> — If I see this block of html one more time, I may actually have to quit blogging all together.

It had been my intention all along to use the thumbnail option, too, that is built into WordPress. While all the links were maintained, yes, and I could see the images on the site, I could not set any as thumbnails. These files existed still on another server: the Blogger image server, and WordPress does not allow for setting remote thumbnails.

So I then performed the long arduous task of re-uploading all of these pics from file.  I probably could have done this a little more judiciously – had a better plan, but in this case I said, What the heck.

I estimate that I spent about 3 ½ weeks total, in three separate passes, cleaning code, adding new post elements and ads, redoing pics, setting thumbnails and adding some SEO-targeted descriptive language.  It encapsulates a time in my life I now refer to as the Blue Monkey period.  It was by far the most time consuming and painful portion of my endeavor.

Picking a theme

theme Fusion; my first pick

What will the site look like?  Well – short of having a sketch, I knew I wanted light and fluffy, a tab-oriented look with thumbnails and excerpts for the landing page.

I did not take this step lightly and this process, too, took about three weeks.  To do this, I scanned available themes and came up with a list of 85.  Of the 85, I made another pass and dwindled it down to about 15.

By this point, I had a pretty solid wish list of features.  Ultimately, I chose the theme Mystique (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/mystique).  This theme is coincidentally still actively being developed, but provided many of the features I was looking for.

I am very pleased with it.  It provides a high level of flexibility and customability right from the control panel.  It is fairly intuitive and easy to use.

Getting to know Plugins

In picking a theme, I knew, it in no way signified the end of site design. With WordPress, and for what the theme did not supply, I hoped to handle using their vast Plugins library.

In searching plugins, and in the end installing many more then I am currently using, I found that many were not quite all that they were advertised to be. Documentation, as is common in the open source arena — at times is limited.  Most of the plugins I have settled on including took several rounds of testing to figure just how they work in relation to the theme.

The loose ends

In the midst of the blog redesign – while juggling form and function, decisions on editorial purpose, I decided that it would be a good time to address some of the administrative-type stuff I had been putting off on my website.  So . . . that said, I really can’t blame all of my three-month down time on the blog redesign.

I invested some time in light research of Ad Networks and SEO. (Some techniques mined here I am now employing on the site.)  I invested time further in developing a few widgets that I am using both on my website and on my blog.  For this, I did spend a few days troubleshooting the RSS feed from the blog – the feed that in turn drives these widgets.

Blogging Again

And that’s what I have been doing with myself for the last three months, the beard now gone.  I figure too that if you decide to burden yourself with the task of moving a Blogger-blog to the WordPress self-hosted platform, you would encounter a similarly scaled set of obstacles and related ramp up requirements.

The move may in your case be mitigated if you set yourself to making a less dramatic shift in design, while working to keep plugin utilization to a minimum.

Of course, I will not mention either of the two, yes, not one but two, complete meltdowns that I experienced in the process of building this thing. The second required me to completely disassemble my settings and then put them back together one by one . . . (Can you say blog administrator).

Even with a nightly back up of data provided by my web host – GoDaddy, this occurred less then a week before I was to publish new content. It had me down for almost a day and half.  And why it all happened – I am still not certain.

You could argue that moving the pre-existing content helped with visualization.  Sure, I spent many late nights strung together, up often with a Miller Lite in hand (@ajwdesignco would be proud).  And . . . I did steal time from everyone that I could possibly steal time from, but in the end – I hope it is all worth it.  I hope you like the new look and feel.  Please come, read and comment repeatedly.

Thanks and BMoxieBMore!