087 – Move Your Blogger Site to WordPress

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Tools / Plugins

Kristi
Desktop Server is a great way to easily create .dev sites locally.

Listener Feedback

Brian
How do I change the number of posts appearing on Archives / Category pages?

First go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Reading’ and modify the ‘Blog pages show at most’ to a larger number.

This also will effect the number of posts on the home page.

So add this code to your customs_functions.php file in your thesis theme and change the ‘showpost=1’ to whatever number you’d like to be displayed on the home page.

function limit_front_page() {
global $query_string;
if (is_home()) {
query_posts($query_string.'showposts=1'); //Number of posts you want to show.}
}

add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_content’, ‘limit_front_page’);

Move Your Blogger Site to WordPress

Gary asks: How to move a website from Blogger to WordPress?

Congrats! You are finally ready to have control over your website!

Okay, all joking aside, it is very easy to move your website from Blogger to WordPress.

Step 1: Register a new web domain and purchase hosting

Step 2: Install WordPress on your new hosting account.

Step 3: Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard -> Tools -> Import and select the Blogger option. Authorize WordPress to access your Google Account.

Step 4: Copy this file into your WordPress themes directory into a file named: blogger.php. This is done by using FTP to access your WordPress themes directory located on the web server. For credentials and other details, check your cPanel.

Paste the following into blogger.php:

/*
  Template Name: blogger
 */
 global $wpdb;
 $old_url = $_GET['q'];
 if ($old_url != "") {
   $permalink = explode("blogspot.com", $old_url);
   $q = "SELECT guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ".
        "ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id) WHERE ".
        "$wpdb->postmeta.meta_key='blogger_permalink' AND ".
        "$wpdb->postmeta.meta_value='$permalink[1]'";
  $new_url = $wpdb->get_var($q)? $wpdb->get_var($q) : "/";
  header ("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  header("Location: $new_url");
 }

Step 5: Open your WordPress dashboard and go to Pages -> Add New Page. Name the page blogger and select “blogger” from the Template drop-down. Save. There’s no need to add any content to this page.

Step 6: Open the template generator, type the full address of your new WordPress blog (including http:// and the trailing slash) and this tool will create a new classic template for your blogspot blog that will look something like this.

Step 7: Open your Blogger Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML and choose “Revert to Classic Blog”. Copy-paste the template generated in Step 5 in the “Edit Template” area and click “Save Template Changes”.

If you need to install a plugin to move the image files, use Blogger Image Import

Your are done. Open any page on your old Blogger blog and it should redirect you to the corresponding WordPress page. On the WordPress side, since we are using a permanent 301 redirect with the redirection URLs, all the Google Juice will probably pass to your new WordPress pages with time.