How to Migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress?

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Blogspot to Wordpress

Are you planning to move your xyz.blogpost.com blog hosted on BlogSpot to WordPress.org as a self-hosted site? No doubt Blogger or Blogspot is a great tool for beginners to start blogging quickly, but to have a full control of your site or blog you would require a better space.

To start your self-hosted WordPress.org site, without losing your current SERP and existing feed subscribers, WordPress provides you with a one-click solution to import your reader comments and blog posts from Blogger.

You just need to authorise WordPress to access your Google account, and you will be able to see the list of blogs connected with a blogger account. All you must do is select the blog you want to import and click “Import”.

This import will not make any changes to your blogger hosted blog.

However, there is no way you can use filters on the blogger posts as everything gets imported in one click. Therefore, you may lose all your current Google rankings in one go.

Transferring your blog posts from Blogger to WordPress has more into it than just moving your content. When you switch from Blogger to WordPress, you may lose your site’s organic search traffic, permalinks (URLs), existing reader subscription and much more.

Here is your step by step guide on how to migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress without losing your search traffic and Google rankings:

How to Move Site from Blogspot to WordPress

Step 1. Get Ready Before You Start

Before you start migrating your Blogger site to WordPress, you would require your domain name and a good WordPress site hosting company. One of the officially recommended hosting providers of WordPress is Bluehost.

However, it is not necessary to get your hosting plan from Bluehost. You can also select any other hosting provider as per your preference. Once you are done with hosting provider selection, sign up for their WordPress hosting plan and set up your new domain name. Then install WordPress to your hosting account and start moving your Blogger content to WordPress.

Step 2. Start Exporting Your BlogSpot blog

To export your blog content from BlogSpot, you need to log into your BlogSpot dashboard and navigate to Settings. Select “Other” page and under the section “Import & back up”, click “Back up Content” button.

You will then see a pop-up window where you will have to click on the “Save to your computer” button. This will help you download your Blogger’s blog content to your computer as an XML file.

Once you are done with the download, you need to start importing the content to your WordPress site.

Step 3. Start Importing to WordPress

To start with, you would require your WordPress admin details. Login to your WordPress admin account, go to Tools and choose Import. On the “Import” page, you will see many options; here you need to click on “Blogger” option.

You will be redirected to a popup window asking you to install BlogSpot (blogger) to WordPress importer. Here you need to click the “Install” button.

As you click on the “Install” button, WordPress will automatically download the Blogger importer plugin and install it for you. After the installation is done, you need to click on “Activate Plugin and Run Importer” to continue.

You will be then navigated to the “Import Blogger” screen. Click on the “Choose File” button and upload the XML file, you downloaded in the previous step by clicking on the “Upload file” and “Import” button.

In case you get “File size is the too large” error, you will have to increase your upload limit, you can either do it by increasing your hosting plan with the service provider or manually with some coding.

Add the below-mentioned code to your theme function file to increase the upload space:

 @ini_set( ‘upload_max_size’ , ’64M’ );

@ini_set( ‘post_max_size’, ’64M’);

@ini_set( ‘max_execution_time’, ‘300’ );

If you are on a shared hosting, you will see a php.ini file in your WordPress theme directory. If there is no php.ini file in your WordPress directory, create one and upload it to the root folder. Add the following code to your php.ini file:

upload_max_filesize = 64M

post_max_size = 64M

max_execution_time = 300

You can also increase the maximum upload size in WordPress by modifying the .htaccess file in your root directory. Open the root folder and create the .htaccess file. Add the following code to the new .htaccess file:

php_value upload_max_filesize 64M

php_value post_max_size 64M

php_value max_execution_time 300

php_value max_input_time 300

If you do not find any error at the time of upload, you can continue with rest of the upload process. Once you are done with XML upload, WordPress will automatically import all your Blogger posts. You will be then asked to assign author for your imported posts. Assign your Blogger posts either to an existing author or create a new author account in WordPress admin dashboard.

All your BlogSpot data is now imported to WordPress, but you would still require ensuring the stability of your search engine rankings and permalinks for your new WordPress site.

Step 4. Permalinks Set Up

URL structure for individual pages is also known as Permalinks. WordPress has an inbuilt feature, which helps you to set up an SEO friendly URL structure. If you do not want to lose your organic search traffic, while importing content from Blogger you would require keeping your new URL structure close to your Blogger URL structure.

To start with, Go to Settings >> Permalinks >> Choose Month and Name as your New permalink or URL structure.

Step 5. Redirection Setup

It is vital to set up a proper redirection to your newly migrated site so that when your existing users look for your BlogSpot blog, they can be easily redirected to the new site. Redirection is important because you want your current users to land on the same page when they try to access your old site. Also, this will notify search engines that you have moved your site to a new address.

To setup redirection, you will have to go through two levels. Firstly, you will have to redirect your existing BlogSpot visitors to the new WordPress blog, and then you need to redirect them to the exact post from the old site they are trying to reach.

To start with, log onto your Blogger account and navigate to the Blog’s settings.

Here Click “Template” and on the template page scroll down to the bottom and click “Revert to Classic Template” link.

You will now see the “Edit Template HTML” text area. Here you will have to replace anything, and everything in the text is with the below-mentioned code:

 

<html>

<head>

  <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>

 

   <script>

    <MainOrArchivePage>

    window.location.href=”http://example.com/”

    </MainOrArchivePage>

    <Blogger>

     <ItemPage>

     window.location.href=”http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>”

     </ItemPage>

    </Blogger>

   </script>

 

   <MainPage>

   <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/” />

   </MainPage>

 

   <Blogger>

    <ItemPage>

    <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>” />

    </ItemPage>

   </Blogger>

 </head>

 

 <body>

  <MainOrArchivePage>

   <h1><a href=”http://example.com/”><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>

  </MainOrArchivePage>

  <Blogger>

   <ItemPage>

    <h1><a href=”http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>”><$BlogItemTitle$></a></h1>

    <$BlogItemBody$>

   </ItemPage>

  </Blogger>

 </body>

</html>

Do not forget to remove the “http://www.example.com” with your current domain name. Save the template and you are done with the successful implementation of redirection on your BlogSpot blog.

Now move to level two, where you need to setup redirection on a WordPress site.

Copy and paste the below-mentioned code in your WordPress Theme’s “function.php” file.

function blogger_query_vars_filter( $vars ) {

  $vars[] = “blogger”;

  return $vars;

}

 

add_filter(‘query_vars’, ‘blogger_query_vars_filter’);

 

function blogger_template_redirect() {

  global $wp_query;

  $blogger = $wp_query->query_vars[‘blogger’];

  if ( isset ( $blogger ) ) {

    wp_redirect( get_wordpress_url ( $blogger ) , 301 );

    exit;

  }

}

 

add_action( ‘template_redirect’, ‘blogger_template_redirect’ );

 

function get_wordpress_url($blogger) {

  if ( preg_match(‘@^(?:https?://)?([^/]+)(.*)@i’, $blogger, $url_parts) ) {

    $query = new WP_Query (

      array ( “meta_key” => “blogger_permalink”, “meta_value” => $url_parts[2] ) );

    if ($query->have_posts()) {

      $query->the_post();

      $url = get_permalink();

    }

    wp_reset_postdata();

  }

  return $url ? $url : home_url();

}

 This code will generate a blogger to WordPress 301 redirect. Once you have pasted this code to function.php file, you are done with the redirection process.

Step 6. Feeds Redirection

It is essential to redirect your RSS subscribers to your new site. To do so, redirect your Blogger feed to the new WordPress site feed. You can start this with logging into Blogger account and go to Blog dashboard >> Settings >> another page.

Here under the “Site feed” section, click “Add link” with the “Post Feed Redirect URL” option and enter your new WordPress site’s feed address. Generally, it is mentioned as http://your-awesome-site.com/feed/.

Step 7. Import Images

While transferring your Blogger’s blog to WordPress, the WordPress importer will automatically download all your images from the old posts to the new WordPress media library. In case it fails to download some images, you can search for the images and import the same to your WordPress. This way you can import all the Blogger images to WordPress Media Library.

If you rightly follow the method mentioned above to migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress, you will have a new self-hosted site without losing your Google rankings and search engine traffic.

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