My bleg to other bloggers:
I’m pondering a shift from Blogger to WordPress, in part to have more flexibility, more integration with my (upcoming) Yale course blogs, and to have all of my work under a single url. WordPress even has a new Blogger import function.
Here’s my question: Have you undertaken this before, and was it an unmitigated disaster?
I don’t fear losing my Technorati score, or even the Google search links. I do fear chaos and meltdown.
9 Responses
I have registered my own domain, and run a backup blog on WordPress, which allows me to import my posts easily.
If Blogger would cease in any way, or block my blog, I can switch over, without loosing page rank, technorati rank etc…
But for the time being, I see no reason to switch… Blogger gives me all I need. Except support.
My only complaint about WordPress-powered blogs, and this is really just an idiosyncrasy of mine, is that I had *too* much control, so much that I focused on style at the cost of substance. Anyways, while I guess paternalistic self-governance is for me, you will probably feel somewhat liberated (at least from the long-arm of Google) by making the move to WordPress-powered.
By the way, it's really easy to set up blog.chrisblattman.org with Blogger, it's just Dashboard->Manage Settings->Publishing->Switch to Custom Domains, then type in what you want. Then follow these instructions to add a CNAME record.
Hi Chris
I prefer WordPress to Blogger, and I had no difficulty migrating my Dad’s site from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site.
But you don’t really say why you want to move. What’s broke that needs fixing.
One reason to move of which you might not be aware is that blogger sites are blocked here in Ethiopia, whereas a self-hosted site would not be.
Warm regards from Addis
Owen
I moved my blog from omodudu.com on blogger to mootbox.com a wordpress powered self hosted blog. It was pain free and it was completed in min. I think you should move your blog. I used blogger for four years and wordpress for about 2 years side by side. Now I am done with blogger. I like the control you get from using wordpress.
Well, I just imported my content from Blogger to WordPress.com and it took about 3 minutes, of which 2.5 were spent signing up on WordPress.com.
The actual import itself had no impact on my Blogger content.
I am sure that the import function will work equally as well with WordPress-powered blogs. That said, finding a good and inexpensive web hosting provider might be a pain, unless you already have one in mind. I’ve performed the installation before, and it was pretty simple, but I had a friend, who is familiar with PHP, set up the database for me. Some hosting services might do all of this for you.
I don’t know what sort of implementability a WordPress-powered blog would have over WordPress.com blog (certainly, there is less control with the latter, as you have virtually complete control in WordPress-powered), but if you want to have all your work under a single URL (for example, blog.chrisblattman.com, cv.christblattman.com), you can set that up with Blogger and whatever company you choose to buy a domain from (I use and recommend GoDaddy).
Hope this helps.
wordpress-powered
WordPress.com or WordPress-powered?
The tool wordpress provides for importing a blogger site worked well in my experience. Elia is right about the sharper look, more functionality, etc. I think it’s well worth the move.
I don’t have the personal experience of moving a blogs from Blogger to WordPress, but I some of my favourite bloggers and as a reader I was happy they did. WordPress is much more professional and it allows a lot more features, it has tons of plugins, etc.
Just do it.