Bye bye Blogger, hello WordPress!

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As you have read in my last posts, I had to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. I am using Blogger as a blog-engine since I have started to blog in March 2004. Since then, I have my own domain (didierbeck.com) and my blog and its content is hosted at OVH. It was and still is important for me to have a full control on the content and data I am publishing. That’s the reason why I am not interested in a full blog-engine+hosting solution.

The reason why I had to migrate

I have received an email from the Blogger team on February 2, 2010, saying that:

We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz

Actually Blogger will not support FTP anymore from May 1, 2010.

Reasons:

FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Wow, I’m in the “.5%” of the Blogger’s users… Something must be wrong, not by Blogger, by me ;-). I don’t want to be in the “.5%”… I am just wondering what was this % in 2004, when I have started to blog. Anyway, for me and as explained above, I need a separate blog-engine that I can host by myself.

Which tools to chose?

Mainly, I had two possibilities, as the blog-engine needs to be “AMP compatible” (Apache, MySql, PHP). I also don’t want to use a CMS (Content Management System) supporting blogging features, but a fully focused solution. And mainstream!

So, I had a look at dotclear and WordPress. I have tested both (quickly) and found WordPress more convenient. On top, OVH is offering an automated installation module for WordPress.

Some of the criteria that were important for me:

  • publishing with Windows Live Writer
  • widely used, open source, strong community
  • technology proven, based on standards
  • widgets, themes, plugins
  • static pages
  • wysiwyg editor
  • user and profile admin
  • trackback and pingback supported
  • comment moderation

WorPress is supporting these criteria and its prerequisites are very reasonable (v2.9.2):

  • PHP version 4.3 or greater
  • MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
  • The mod_rewrite Apache module

Migration from Blogger to WordPress

… was simpler than I have thought! Still some steps to be done.

Export/import former posts

1’170 posts in my blog… As I have used a special comment-system in Blogger, it was clear from the beginning that I will not be able to transfer them.

I couldn’t use the import function of WordPress, as this function is only working if you have a Google account and an upgraded (New, was Beta) blog hosted on blogspot.com or a custom domain (not FTP). Which is not my case. I could solve this issue with the following procedure:

  1. Export the content from Blogger in XML: dashboard – chose your blog – settings – basic – blog tools – export blog.
  2. Then, convert the Blogger XML export-file to WordPress WXR which is suitable for importing into WordPress. Use the following online tool:  http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/
  3. In WordPress, use the importing function for native WordPress files (Tools – Import – WordPress – Upload your WXR file – Assign Authors (map old to new ones)

Done!

Preparation before activation

Again, different steps:

  • Define the users you need
  • Change the settings (SEO, base URLs, formats, comment moderation, permalinks, etc.)
  • Check if your posts were correctly migrated
  • Define the appearance, chose a theme. For me: Pyrmont V2 2.0.7 by motta. Be careful with the size of your visual elements on your posts, these could not match your new appearance.
  • Define the blogroll
  • Update the static pages:
    • Who I am
    • Recommendations
    • Publications
    • Disclaimer
  • Install and configure the plugins you want to use

Activation

So the last two steps for me were to:

  • backup and deactivate the former blog files and directories structure
  • change the .htaccess and index.php, according to the WordPress installation I have chosen (WordPress not installed in the root, which makes everything clearer but a bit more complicated). In the .htaccess, I have integrated some “redirect 301”, for example for the RSS feed.

Now, I am entering the fine-tuning and debugging phase. If you observe something strange or not working, thanks in advance for contacting me!

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