Moving from Blogger to WordPress

March 8th, 2006 · 8 Comments · Uncategorized

As I was saying, here are the details. Boring if you are here to read about crochet, exciting if you want to make the move to WordPress.

Why I’m Leaving Blogger

No matter how I word this part, it sounds like I’m complaining. I swear, truly I’m not. I’m actually glad my Blogger woes forced me to jump ship and swim on over to WordPress. Luckily WP has a nice little rescue boat. Anyway…

I’ve been with Blogger since February of 2004. It served me well for a long time, but three months ago (the beginning of December 2005) it was suddenly and inexplicably impossible to publish to my site from Blogger. Publishing kept hanging, usually at zero percent, but sometimes 20%, 66% or some such point, and eventually I received the dreaded error, 001 java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out. Long story short: there was nothing I nor my web host could do about it and it’s impossible to get in touch with Blogger even if you have a real problem that can only be solved on the Blogger end of things.

I’d say I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for a fix, but I was. Until I was blue. I published a few posts through excruciating workarounds and one by pure luck. I could say it was the last straw that I missed posting on both my blogiversary (Feb 20th) and Crochetville‘s birthday (Feb 16th), but that’s not really true. I’ve been so busy with the baby that they passed and I didn’t even notice.

Installing WordPress

This was one of the things I’d been dreading, but turned out to be extremely easy. I downloaded WP 2.0.1 and did the Famous 5-Minute Install. Although it took me a little longer than that, I was shocked that it was over so quickly. Who knew?

WordPress Themes

Theme, template, design, layout, whatever you want to call it, this was another thing I was dreading. It was easy enough for me to whip up a simple template for my Blogger blog but a WP theme is much more involved. I was able to find a theme I like well enough and tweak it (thanks for the push, Julie!) for my needs. It still doesn’t quite feel like me in here, but I’m adjusting.

Importing Blogger Posts

Again, very easy. You do this through the WordPress control panel, and pretty much all the work is done for you. Do back up your Blogger template and print out your Blogger settings (as instructed), just in case. I believe this also imports Blogger comments if you are using them, but I was using Haloscan comments, so I can’t speak from personal experience.

Importing Haloscan Comments

This was the difficult part. WordPress itself does not yet have a utility to import comments from Haloscan. Justin wrote two php scripts to import haloscan comments into WordPress, but they were for WP 1.5.x and it don’t entirely work in WP 2.0.x. The first script, insert-blogger-post-ids.php doesn’t work because the Blogger import process is entirely different in WP 2.0.x than in WP 1.5.x. However, if you can find a way to insert the Blogger post IDs (say, manually) into each of the posts you imported through WordPress, the second script, import-haloscan.php, does work. The only glitch is that your posts will display “0 comments” even though the comments are there. This is rectified the next time someone comments on that post; then the correct number of comments will be displayed. It’s like the database needs a little kick to wake up and see that there are comments there.

That’s All, Folks!

Yay! Now my little blog is proudly powered by WordPress and I was able to bring all my stuff with me. After all, I am a pack rat.

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 julie // Mar 8, 2006 at 6:45 pm

    I know you’re glad to have made the move now that it’s over. Congratulations!!

  • 2 Sheena // Mar 8, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    I’m surprised you had such trouble contacting the people at Blogger. Once, I accidentally deleted my entire blog – I had intended to delete a different one I no longer used. I immediately contacted Blogger and someone promptly got back to me and thankfully recovered all my lost entries from the past few years.

    Anyway, glad you are liking your new home better. And congrats on the baby. :)

  • 3 Rachel // Mar 9, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    Thanks for the WordPress info, but what we really want to know is what the super secret homepage is going to be! (grin) (I know, I know, it’s a secret; I just get a little over anxious.)

  • 4 Katie // Mar 9, 2006 at 7:09 pm

    All looking very smart! I should really jump on this WordPress bandwagon – I suffer from serious blog envy with all these good looking sites everywhere.

  • 5 sue // Mar 11, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    Thanks for keeping us up to date, Donna. The info is really useful. Oh and, your new blog looks terrific. :)

  • 6 Latoya // Mar 11, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    Congrats on moving on. Can’t wait to hear more about your projects!

  • 7 Justine // Mar 13, 2006 at 2:26 am

    I really really like the new graphic. Your crochet header is gorgeaus. Love your blog, the pics you post and everything. Great job! :-)

  • 8 Stacie // Mar 13, 2006 at 11:45 pm

    Have you seen this pattern?
    http://www.monstercrochet.com/TomatoPattern.html
    I thought it would interest you :)

Leave a Comment