I have a blog with hundreds of posts. It's run though Blogger, posting to my site, and serves it's purpose. However blogger is lacking in features such as built in trackbacks, categories and it just seems like an OK blogging service. I believe that Blogger will upgrade it's services soon, however it's unsure when that'll be. I also use WordPress on other blogs and I'm pretty happy with that. It auto pings, has categories, easy to edit the template w/o having to republish and seems to be more advanced. My issues is that if I were to convert over to WordPress, my URLs would all be dead. That's a big SEO issue. So, my question, is it worth the hassle (search engine wise and URL wise) to switch? Will my site benefit? Or is it to much trouble for to little gain? Thanks!!
How do I make them look the same? Blogger URLs cut off after so many characters while WordPress URLs are as long as the post title.
I don't know anything about wordpress, but you could dig into their code (templates etc) and probably cut off the URLs after a certain # of chars.
How many of your posts have actually been shortened? Is it a managable number? That way you could just do 301's... Changing the URL strilng in WP is easy... You basically choose how you want it layed out, then it does it all for you (So long as you have the .htaccess file set to writable).
I agree with SE, about doing a 301. Wordpress is so much more powerful, than blogger, and you have much more control IMO.
What you need to do is transfer your weblog over to Wordpress into the URL format that you like and would like to keep. Before you do that do a spidering of your entire site (use something like Xena) to generate a list of all the URLs. Alternatively just do site:name.com search in google. Next create an .htaccess file into which you will generate a list All of the pages that are in google must have a 301 redirect to the new page in the Wordpress format. You may be able to figure out a way to generate this list semi-automatically but there is still a fair amount of time and tedious manual work involved. But it will get the job done without having the old pages disappear from the net. Alternatively make the old site a static archive within the new site. Use sitesucker or some such program to download the whole Blogger site and then drop it into a directory on the new site. Everything will work. For the URL's then you only need to do a domain-wide redirect using the new domain plus directory name.
I have been playing with the new version of WordPad all day and it is pretty awesome. I am trying to figure out how I am going to get all of my blogger blogs ported over now too.
Chachi- WordPress has an import script built in to import blogger posts. Everyone else, thanks for the feedback. I'm still unsure of what I'm doing, but ronsard gave me some good ideas!
Thanks SEBasic! I'll keep you in mind. Still.... my main question is... Would it be benificial to switch to WordPress? Or wait for Blogger to update it's features?
In terms of what? In terms of a better admin interface, user experience and long-term SEO benefit, I'd say it was worth the port every time.
SEO & Visibility in the blogging community. I'm just trying to convince myself that it's worth the time and possible headaches. ha ha. However this thread has got me thinking of easier/better ways of doing it!
Well, I think I am going to embark on the porting Blogger to WP project next week. Should be a hoot. Oliver - Is this really as easy as you are making it sound?
Here is my current thinkings. Fist off, if anyone is porting blogger to wordpress it's really easy. I'm trying to save URLs so that makes it more difficult. Anyways, is there a way I can keep all my old files and just leave them in the directory, then install WP in that directory too? The issue I see is that when I have WP create a .htaccess file, I'm worried it'll try and take an old, blogger URL and change it into something new. Did that make sense?
Yeah, it really is (Although I know that importing comments can be a bit of a bitch)... Could you repeat that please I've read it 2 or 3 times now and still don't get what you're asking
Ok lets say my old url is http://www.site.com/blog/2005/06/this-is-a-post.html I want to keep that URL no matter what. However I'm installing WordPress into the same directory. When I install WordPress I go the permalink area and create the links how I want and it creates a .htaccess file for me. Now will the .htaccess file interfere with the old urls? I want the .htaccess to ignore the old urls but work with the new URLs. New WP URL : http://www.site.com/blog/2005/06/this-is-a-new-post Old Blogger URL : http://www.site.com/blog/2005/06/this-is-a-post.html Did that help? Oh the links above represent two different posts. Not the same post converted over, but rather two completely different posts. One from the old system, one from the new.
Yeah, I get you now. I'm not sure, but I think it will continue to show the old page. I learnt about this the other day but didn't ask about this kind of situation. Why don't you just remove the old pages once you know that the new ones look good?