Wednesday 23 March 2016

Friday 18 March 2016

How to Switch from Blogger to WordPress







How to switch from Blogger to WordPress without losing Google Rankings is teasing question for newbie. Here we shall describe details of this process so that newbie can’t face any problem and do it easily. Before start this process you should have some knowledge about Blogger and WordPress. So we shall start with this.


Blogger is one of the biggest platforms for newbie to start blogging without paying a penny. Anyone from this planet can start blogging here and make his/her carrier in blogging. There is also other platform providing free blogging but all free platforms have some limitation like Blogger.


Blogger providing all kind of facility to its user even monetize blog but won’t give ownership, that is why after getting success, most of bloggers want to switch to self hosted wordpress.org. If you are blogging from Blogger then you don’t have full control on you blog and whenever blogger want, can remove your blog or any post. This is why bloggers want to switch self hosted wordpress.org blog.






It is suppose that WordPress is one of the best open platforms for blogging and people can become owner of his/ her own bog. Whenever, one can’t be owner of blogger’s bog. Blogger provides free blogging but keep all right reserved and provide only admin and author’s right. This is the key point to any user to switch to WordPress. But they don’t know how to switch from Blogger to WordPress. They have to take service of some expert who charges  a handsome amount.  


Here, in this tutorial you’ll learn how to switch from Blogger to WordPress without loosing Google Rankings and without paying any money. Yes, its true. You can do it yourself. Once you learnt this, you can help other or earn money through this.



Step 1:- To get started with WordPress, there is need of a good WordPress hosting company and a good domain name. There are lots of webhosting companies but we like to suggest you either Bluehost or Siteground. They provide free domain with some discount plan, especially for WordPress Beginner user. Bluehost is an officially recommended webhosting service provider of WordPress world. Both Bluehost and Siteground offer same special offer plan for Beginner user of WrodPress world.







Now, come to the point, your first job is to select your webhosting company and sign up and set up your favorite domain if available otherwise choose other close to your old domain. After this, your next step is to install WordPress on your hosting account. Once you completed installation WordPress, you need to transfer your content from Blogger to WordPress.




Step 2:- In this step, you need to export your blogger’s blog content. For this, log in your blogger dashboard and move towards Setting >> Other page. In this section move to, “under the blog tools”, click on the export Blog link.






When you click on export, a popup menu will appear, click on Download Blog button. Download your Blogger blog’s content to your computer in a XML file. Once it completed, your next job is to import it into your WordPress site.




Step 3:- In this step you need to import your Blogger into WordPress. For this, you need to move to your WordPress admin and visit Tools >> Import. Here, on the Import page, you will see many options, search Blogger and click it.





A popup menu will appear which ask you to install the Blogger to WordPress importer. Click it to start installation on install button. Now, WordPress will start download and Blogger importer plugin for you. Once this process is completed, you would need to click on the Activate Plugin and Run importer link to continue.




Further, you will see on the Import Blogger screen, WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file. This is the file that you downloaded in first steps. Now, you have to do a simple job, simply click on the choose file button and start upload the XML file.


Now, if you hadn’t selected one of our recommended hosts or your website is indeed too large, you could face some problem, you may get an error that your file size is too large. In this case you need to increase your maximum file upload limit. If your file is small, then you won’t face any problem.



                               How to increase the maximum file upload size in WordPress 


Now, WordPress will start import your blogger posts one by one, when it completed, you’ll be asked to assign an author to the imported posts. You can assign your blogger posts to an existing author, who is not other than you, or if hired some authors then create a new authors account.


Wow! Congrats! You got through to transfer your blogger account into WordPress. Though you have successfully completed this process, however, you still need to make sure whether you don’t loose any search rankings and that visitors from your old blog can easily land to the same content on your new WordPress Website.



Step 4:- Setting Up Permalinks:- Permalinks refers to the term use for URL configuration of specific pages. World Press embedded a feature that allows you to set up SEO friendly URL configuration. Since you are shifting content from Blogger, you need to keep your URL configuration that approaches to your URL configuration of Blogger as much as it is possible.


To set permalinks, you should go to Setting >> Permalinks screen as choose Month and Name as your permalink configuration.







Step 5:- Setting Up Redirection:- It is most important factor for your website to retain your regular readers because they are very important for you; when they could not find your website on old URL they can think that website has been either deleted or shifted somewhere else. So it is important for you to escape your readers from getting confuse. To avoid such situation there is a feature in WordPress that will redirect your old URL to new URL.


For this you have to redirect users to land on exactly the same page on the new website which they are trying to access on the old site. Along with this, it is also important to notified search engines and informs that your old site has been shifted to a new location.

 
Redirection process will complete in two steps. First, you should redirect Blogger to you new WordPress blog. Second, when users reached you new WordPress site, you can redirect them to the exact post they are looking for to read.



So, first set up redirection on the Blogger blog. For this, log on your Blogger account and move to Blog’s settings and click on Template. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Revert to Classic Templet link.






After accessing to classic template, you will see “Edit Template HTML” textarea. Here, you need to replace everything in this text area with the following code. Make sure that you replace http://www.xyz.com with your own domain name.





01|
<html>
02|
 <head>

03|
  <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
04|


05|
   <script>
06|
    <MainOrArchivePage>

07|
    window.location.href="http://example.com/"
08|
    </MainOrArchivePage>

09|
    <Blogger>
10|
     <ItemPage>

11|
     window.location.href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
12|
     </ItemPage>





13|
    </Blogger>
14|
   </script>

15|

16|
   <MainPage>

17|
   <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/" />
18|
   </MainPage>

19|

20|
   <Blogger>

21|
    <ItemPage>
22|
    <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" />

23|
    </ItemPage>
24|
   </Blogger>

25|
 </head>
26|


27|
 <body>
28|
  <MainOrArchivePage>

29|
   <h1><a href="http://example.com/"><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>
30|
  </MainOrArchivePage>

31|
  <Blogger>
32|
   <ItemPage>

33|
    <h1><a href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></h1>
34|
    <$BlogItemBody$>





35|
   </ItemPage>
36|
  </Blogger>

37|
 </body>
38|
</html>





Save your template, and now look, you redirection is successfully completed on your Blogger blog but you still need to complete some steps to setup redirection on your WordPress site so that users can redirected to the proper posts.
For this you need to copy and paste the following code in your WordPress theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.




01
function blogger_query_vars_filter( $vars ) {
02
  $vars[] = "blogger";

03
  return $vars;
04
}

05
  
06
add_filter('query_vars', 'blogger_query_vars_filter');

07
  
08
function blogger_template_redirect() {

09
  global $wp_query;
10
  $blogger = $wp_query->query_vars['blogger'];

11
  if ( isset ( $blogger ) ) {
12
    wp_redirect( get_wordpress_url ( $blogger ) , 301 );

13
    exit;
14
  }

15
}
16
  

17
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'blogger_template_redirect' );
18
  

19
function get_wordpress_url($blogger) {
20
  if ( preg_match('@^(?:https?://)?([^/]+)(.*)@i', $blogger, $url_parts) ) {

21
    $query = new WP_Query (
22
      array ( "meta_key" => "blogger_permalink", "meta_value" => $url_parts[2] ) );

23
    if ($query->have_posts()) {
24
      $query->the_post();

25
      $url = get_permalink();
26
    }

27
    wp_reset_postdata();
28
  }

29
  return $url ? $url : home_url();
30
}



The code above mentioned, creates a blogger to WordPress 301 redirect that is what you need to ensure best SEO. When you have pasted this code, that’s all you need to do for setting up redirection.
Now any visitors can access to a post on your old Blogger blog will be redirected to the same post on your new WordPress site.



Step 6:- Redirect Feeds:- Your RSS subscribers on the old Bogger site will not access your new site because he does not have information. So you need to redirect your Blogger feed to your new WordPress site’s feed.


You can short out this problem by logging in to your Blogger account which is already open, now move to Setting >> other page under your blog dashboard. Under the Feed section, you need to click on Add link next to Post Feed Redirect URL. Here you have to enter your new WordPress site’s feed address.




Usually it http://your-outstanding-site.com/feed / ( don’t forget to replace your –awesome-site with your own domain name).
Step 7:- Import Image From Blogger to WordPress Media Library





When switching from Blogger to WordPress happens, the WordPress importer download images from your blogger posts into the WordPress media library. However, it can fail to download some images. This doesn’t happens usually, but it can transpire. there is possibility. But no need to take tension, still you can find it and import these images into WordPress. WordPress. Follow the instructions in our how to import external images in WordPress tutorial.





Importing External Images in WordPress: For this we shall use a plugin called Import External Images, This plugin makes work very easy and let local copies of all the linked images in a post and add them according to gallery attachments for the specific post. But first we need to install this plugin and activate it.


After doing it, move to Media >> Import Images. The plugin will look for and display external images in your posts. All you need to do is click on Import Images now button to import all these images.  Import External Images plugin imports only 50 images at a time to run smoothly.


However if you encounter the memory exhausted error, then you can increase your PHP memory limit. Once it has processed 50 images the plugin will show out the remaining images, click on Import Images now button again to continue. It will also show you linked images in the post editor in case you want to import images selectively. All you have to do is go the edit screen of the specific post and impost the images that you want.





In this way, you will import all images from your blogger into your Word Press Media Library. Once the images reached in your WordPress media library, you can easily create image galleries and more.

I hope, this tutorial helped you to switch from Blogger to WordPress without losing Google rankings. Here you are welcomed in the WordPress community.



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