I recently moved both my blogger blogs to self-hosted WordPress installs. My movie review blog Amodini’s movie reviews which is now at :
used to be at http://hindimoviereviews.blogspot.com.
and this blog used to be at http://reviewroom.blogspot.com.
Now, just so I don’t forget all the steps involved and in the hope that this might help others who are contemplating just such a move, I will list out the thoughts and the actual steps involved in the move.
Rationale : For starters why would you even want to move from an already existing smoothly running blog ? Why move all posts, images, comments ? Sound messy and tedious right ? There are many reasons – the main one being more customization and control. Still moving might not be for everyone. Yes, with a self-hosted blog you do have more control, but if using WordPress, you have also to muck about it way more. Blogger blogs are pretty much hands off; you do not have access to internal files. All you can edit is the template. Still, Blogger is a nice simple, user-friendly interface which works great if all you want to do is write/post – you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes. WordPress allows you to customize, but you do have to get down and dirty in it’s internals.
When starting up a Blog it is hard to imagine how it will grow, or how it will turn out. Will you love writing/posting just as much two years from now, or will it have lost it’s sheen ? Most of us are in this boat – me included. Six years ago when I started out my blogs I was in the present with no thought of ever moving etc. If you do have a clear plan in mind, you’re ahead.
It is important to note her that Blogger is not a self-controlled website – it is a service you use. Just as you use this service to write genuine posts, there are many others who use Blogger to do (illegal) spam marketing. There are many blogs out there which do nothing but scrape feeds from genuine blogs and post them off as their own, their only objective being to sell adspace alongside. And because of the spam blogs (splogs) that have sprung up on Blogger, Blogger makes it very hard for you to just simply redirect your traffic from Blogger to another website. Thus, Blogger does not allow permanent (301) redirects, so if are worried about your page-rank and popularity, moving might mean having to rebuild that popularity almost from scratch. Plus, if you do want to make the transition, make it sooner rather than later – moving hundreds of posts and making sure they all are reachable, and having the aesthetics look just so takes some work.
For starter choose a domain name and a host where you will actually upload your installs. Now that you have the basics, you’re ready to move. Will post actual steps in the next post – watch this space.
