This post will explain how to migrate your FTP based Blogger account to a WordPress based blog. It will keep your Google rankings, keep your permalinks and get it all done with minimum downtime.
EDIT 8th February 2010: Since writing this, WordPress has amended it’s import ability so it is no longer necessary to migrate your Blog from Blogger to a temporary wordpress.com blog before bringing it into your own FTP based site. See the comment(s) from Damian Hospital below the main post.
I found many posts around the net about the best way to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. However, many are out of date or overly complicated and many others didn’t work with FTP which is what I was after (you will use FTP if you use Blogger to post to your own domain e.g. www.benfrain.com/notepad/ rather than www.benfrain.blogspot.com).
1. If you have the ability to back up your site – do it first. You’ll be happy you did if it all goes wrong.
2. Log in to your blogger account. Goto Settings >> Publishing and then choose ‘Switch to: • blogspot.com (Blogger’s free hosting service)’. Enter the word verification and ‘Save Settings’
3. Head over to www.wordpress.com and set up a new online WordPress account. Once you are set up (you’ll have to verify by email etc):
4. From the WordPress interface, browse to Tools > Import and choose ‘Blogger’. Now follow this wizard through, let the blog be authenticated and click import to bring your posts into the WordPress blog. Note: once this is complete you can switch Blogger back to FTP publishing if you wish but it isn’t necessary.
5. Once all the posts and comments are in, from the WordPress interface choose Tools > Export and click the ‘Download Export File’ – save this somewhere safe e.g. to your desktop. You can now close your WordPress.com hosted WordPress blog. WordPress doesn’t let you delete online WordPress accounts you make with them so make sure you delete all the posts you just imported or they may show up in two place through search engines etc. ALl references to the WordPress interface from now on will relate to the one you install on your own domain…
6. Use an FTP client (e.g. Filezilla) and delete the existing blog directory. However DO NOT delete the ‘uploaded images’ directory or you will lose all your pics when you import. Instead, download this folder to the desktop first then delete the direcory e.g. www.benfrain.com/notepad/uploaded images/ got downloaded and then www.benfrain.com/notepad/ got deleted.
7. Install WordPress on your domain. If you have installatron or similar set up by your host it is very easy, if not, you’ll have to download and install the full package. The key however is to set your WordPress blog up in the same directory you used to use for Blogger. Therefore, my new WordPress blog was also www.benfrain.com/notepad/
8. Upload the ‘uploaded images’ to the new ‘notepad’ directory that WordPress made on install. For example, my blog was at www.benfrain.com/notepad/ so I uploaded the ‘uploaded images’ folder from my desktop into that directory using Filezilla – NOTE: do not rename the ‘uploaded images’ directory!
9. Log in to your new FTP installed WordPress blog e.g. www.yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/ and choose Tools >> Import. Choose ‘WordPress’ and browse to the file you saved to your desktop and click ‘Import’. When prompted to import images, do so. You should now see all your posts and images but the permalinks (the actual url’s the postings have) are all different…
10. We now need to correct all the URL’s that WordPress uses for posts so that we retain existing links from Google etc. To do this, head over to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ and search and download ‘Maintain Blogger Permalinks‘ by Justin Watt. Add the Plugin by choosing Plugins >> Add new from the WordPress interface, browse to the downloaded Zip file and install and Activate the plugin.
11. Still in WordPress, choose Settings >> Permalinks and click the Radio Button for ‘Custom Structure’ and enter the following in the box ‘/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html’ (the bit inside the apostrophes) – and click ‘save changes’ this will ensure posts follow the same naming convention as Blogger.
12. Now choose Tools >> Maintain Blogger Permalinks and click the ‘Maintain Blogger Permalinks’ button. This will now rename all your existing posts to be the same format as they were in your Blogger FTP blog, preserving the page rank and links to those posts that already exist.
That’s it! WordPress is a great app and amending the template (if indeed you did amend it) is as simple, if not simpler, than it is in Blogger and the wealth of plugins and ease of use it superb.
I’d love to know how anyone gets on with this, let me know… 
ben! thanks for the good work on this. i set up a new wp domain for our student ministry. we had been using blogger and i didn’t want to loose the old posts. your instructions took what i thought was going to be a painful task and lost memories to making it all work well. thanks! blessings!!!
Great stuff, glad it worked OK. WordPress is a great platform and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Best regards…
Ben, I’m going to try this tomorrow. One question…why not just use the Blogger-import tool from within the WP install on my server?
Hi Dave, if i understand you correctly, that is indeed part of the process. However, doing it the way specified (with the additional steps) above retains all the Google ranking etc and the actual address of your posts as they were on Blogger. If you only do the import to WordPress the posts will come in but will have a different web address when published and so people finding your posts on Google (other search engines are available) will be clicking null links.
Ben,
I can understand the pluggin for the archived pages, but I can’t get my head round how to make the wordpress blog have the same website address as I have at the moment. Will that happen when I import the blog automatically?
Sue
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the instructions. With Google’s March Mandate, I am trying to Migrate to WP. All of your steps work fine until I hit a problem with #10. And now I’m almost in panic mode.
I had to go to Justin’s site to get the zip file. And unfortunately when I try and Maintain Blogger Permalinks I get “Sorry I couldn’t find any blogger_permalink custom fields, did you run the Blogger importer yet?”. So all of my links were “too long” and didn’t match my original Blogger FTP HTML names.
So I deleted my posts and just imported directly from Blogspot to my WP domain name, instead of using a WordPress.com dummy blog, and it appears that my links are matching now, although I am still skeptical that something is amiss.
So my question is: is Step #9 needed for image URLs or something else?
Any theories on why I couldn’t follow the steps and why Justin’s program was looking for Blogger import and didn’t convert my WordPress.com dummy blog XML correctly?
Thanks,
Damian
Hi Sue,
The key point for you is step5. Think of it conceptually like three glasses (services) and one drink of water (your content).
Glass One is the Blogger service, which currently holds you glass of water and each time you add a post it immediately pours the contents into Glass Two:
Glass Two – this is your own FTP based website e.g. http://www.sue.com/blog
Glass Three – this is the WordPress.com service.
You want to temporarily pour your blog from Glass One (Blogger) into Glass Three (WordPress.com) so that you can empty Glass Two (your FTP site) of the existing posts (which have up until now been poured there by Blogger) and then fill your own FTP site (Glass Two) from the contents of Glass Three (WordPress) instead.
Therefore, at Step 6 you are deleting the contents of your blog directory apart from the images folder to make way for the content that the FTP based WordPress is going to bring in. So, your blog directory will still be http://www.sue.com/blog for example but it will be empty of posts until you import the WordPress file into your FTP version of WordPress.
Hope that helped rather than confused matters. Just make sure you back everything up just in case.
Hi Damian,
I’m not sure. Perhaps WordPress has improved it’s import facility since I used it to maintain the url’s etc. I’d say as long as your WP url’s match the old Blogger based url’s everything is fine.
Cheers – Ben
Thanks for the quick reply, Ben. After speaking with Justin, I ran a final rest. For anyone else out there looking to migrate from FTP blogger to WordPress, there is no longer a need to to have a temp. WordPress.com blog. You can go straight from blogspot to your WP custom domain!
The images make it as long as they copy and uploaded the uploaded_images dir.
Thanks,
Damian
Hi Damian,
Thanks for the info. I did not get that last line. I there any way to move the images to wordpress too? I moved my ftp published blogger to wordpress but the images point to and are still on the old ftp/domain. I think your last line tried to explain that…
Joe,
Have you installed WordPress on your own FTP site yet?
If so, and you followed the steps above you should still you have the ‘uploaded_images’ directory (that Blogger made) on your FTP server – you should leave it there (e.g. http://www.joe.com/blog/uploaded_images/)! The imported version of your blog (FTP hosted WordPress) will still reference ‘uploaded_images’ so all your posts and the relation of your images to them should stay in tact. If you have downloaded that images directory, on your new FTP based WordPress blog, the ‘uploaded images’ folder needs to go back in the same place so upload it back to http://www.joe.com/blog/uploaded_images/ (when using ftp software, it should be uploaded next to the WordPress folders wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes.
I have 2 doubts, would be grateful if you could answer them, marking a copy to my email ID:
Doubt1
======
I am not sure I understand the simplification which Damian Hospital is talking about, so just reconfirming:
Basically we still have to do Step 1 and 2 – i.e. move the blog to non-FTP classic blogger template.
Then jump to step 6 which is delete the files (original blog posts etc) on the FTP server. Go through step 7 and 8.
Now on step 9, we use the Import from Blogger option than import from WordPress.
Now do we still need to do steps 10-12?
Doubt 2
======
If we convert the blog (even if temporarily) to blogspot.com hosted blog in step 2, won’t blogger convert all image URL’s to its own servers than keep pointing to the “uploaded_images” folder? My guess is that the images will now be on a Picasa album. So how would reuploading the “uploaded_images” folder again after import, reset this?
Hi Nikhil,
I haven’t re-run the steps that Damian has mentioned to document any differences in the procedure. The full way I originally documented should still work fine. However, later today I plan to re-do a blogger migration and see if there is an easier way to do it now and retain all url’s etc. I will add a new post on the subject and post a link here when done.
However, if you read what Damian has written, you need to change to blogspot based Blogger hosting, then install WordPress on your FTP site (retain your uploaded_images folder in the same location as I have documented in the comments above) and use the built in import facility within WordPress (current WordPress version is 2.9.1) to import from your Blogspot based Blogger blog.
Thanks for the quick response ben.
What about my Doubt #2 – I am afraid that moving my blog temporarily to blogspot based would convert the image URL’s to blogger / picasa URL’s or do they not? Actually I post my images to 3 different directories based on their type, its not just uploaded_images folder but 2 other folders as well. Any thoughts?
Would be on the lookout for your followup post anyways!
Hi Nikhil,
No, it didn’t for mine! I used this exact procedure for this blog when I migrated last April. My advice would be to simply ensure that your images directory retain their place in the FTP heirachy in WordPress as they did with Blogger so if they were like this:
http://www.nikhil.com/blog/uploaded_images1
http://www.nikhil.com/blog/uploaded_images2
http://www.nikhil.com/blog/uploaded_images3 before, simply ensure that they stay this way with WordPress and then the relative links to the images in your posts will find the images in the same place.
Great! Let me give it a shot …
In case anyone is interested, I have just blogged about Pros n Cons of Custom Domain vs. WordPress here: http://the-complete-man.blogspot.com/2010/02/blogger-ftp-shutting-down.html
(That’s not the impacted site though
)
Hey, Ben – I migrated my blog late last week, and your instructions were quite helpful. I had a bad case of the nerves and rushed through without doing the part to keep the permalinks the same, but that was entirely my fault. So thanks.
I have one remaining problem, and I’m wondering if you’ll know the answer. My RSS feeds aren’t working for readers who were set up before I migrated the blog. The current RSS files must be named differently than the ones Blogger was making. I tried explaining the problem and asking for help here – http://wordpress.org/support/topic/361156?replies=6#post-1385979 – but haven’t gotten anything useful yet.
I was a computer programmer in a previous life, but not a web programmer, and not since I had kids six years ago. I need rudimentary explanations. If you have the answers, I will – well, I will really appreciate it. Thanks! Shelly
Hi Shelly, just had my first child a few months back and my head’s already mashed – I feel your pain!
Have you tried changing this:
In wordpress, go to Settings > Permalinks and change to the ‘Custom Structure’ and then enter: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
I think that matches the Blogger style structure so could well sort the RSS feed. Let me know how you get on.
Hey, Ben – thanks for responding to me so quickly and so kindly. I did go and try what you suggested. So far, it didn’t work, but since you seem actually willing to help me figure this out, I’ll share the following additional details.
When I go to Google Reader and look at the properties of the feed I had set up before the migration, it’s says it’s looking for this address: http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shellykang.com%2Fatom.xml
When I go to the folder on my computer where I backed up all the data that was in shellykang.com before the switchover, there is a file named atom.xml right there in the main folder, which I think must be what Google and the other readers are tapping. Similarly, there is a file named rss.xml in the same spot.
When I go to the main folder on my server now, there are no files by the same names, but there are wp-atom.php and wp-feed.php and wp-rss.php, etc.
So what I need is to figure out how to get WordPress to write the feed files by the old file names. Am I totally out of luck? I’m going to go cross-post this on the WordPress forums and see if I can get any non-smartie-pants answers over there.
Thanks again!
Shelly
Hi Shelly, I think maybe I misunderstood. The RSS feed address with WordPress is definately different. Blogger uses atom.xml feeds and WordPress doesn’t (if memory serves it uses the RSS2 format but don’t quote me on that)
So, while the actual feed address will be different, the links to the old posts within the feed should match those in the new feed. That make any sense or am talking at cross purposes?
I’m afraid people will need to re-subscribe to your new WordPress feed.
Ben, sad news, but at least I have an authoritative answer.
I do appreciate your help, and actually, I’m glad that you straightened me out on the permalinks.
Thanks again!
Shelly
Hi Ben,
Quick question. I am thinking about redesigning my website and blog to freshen it up a bit.
After importing my blogger blog into WordPress, can I apply an new WordPress template to the old blog data?
Thanks…
Hi Nolan,
Yes, content and design are entirely separate so no problem changing the look. The content will stay in tact.
Hi Ben,
I was going just fine with your great HowTo until the permalinks bit. Seems WordPress is having trouble converting the post name to be identical to the originals.
For example, take the post with URL http://landscapemodelling.net/blog/2008/08/mind-the-gap-manuscript.html
The link to this post is correct from post name in the archive page for that month (http://landscapemodelling.net/blog/2008/08)
But from links within other posts (e.g. first link in the post at http://landscapemodelling.net/blog/2010/02/mind-the-gap-paper-in-press.html) the postname section of the URL is incorrect (post name in the URL becomes mind-gap-manuscript.html whereas it should be mind-the-gap-manuscript.html)
I’m confused. One problem might be that after changing the Permalink Settings in WordPress to Custom Structure the Maintain Blogger Permalinks plugin fails (returns error: Sorry I couldn’t find any blogger_permalink custom fields, did you run the Blogger importer yet?) Note that I followed your instructions to the letter to this point…
Any ideas? Thanks for any suggestions.
Cheers,
James
Hi James, have you seen the post above in reply to Shelly? If not, have you tried changing this:
In wordpress, go to Settings > Permalinks and change to the ‘Custom Structure’ and then enter: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
I have sucessfuly imported all my blogs to WP. However, the categories (the blogger labels) are not showing on my website.
The categories have been imported properly because I can see them in my WordPress as well as on my site. But when I click the link to any category (www.arbitmba.com/categories/ I get a page not found error.
Has anyone else faced this problem? ANy idea how to resolve it?
Hi, that’s a great tip – thanks! This is my first site based on WordPress but it’s kind of overwhelming – there’s almost TOO many themes, plugins, and options to figure out! But you can totally see the power. I guess it shouldn’t take this long to setup next time either. Anyhow, nice blog – I’m subscribed to your feed now so I’ll be checking in regularly!
Hi!
This was really helpfull! Thanks a lot.
We have build a webshop a while ago with a blogger ftp blog but now we had to switch because blogger is closing down ftp blogs. We choose to use wordpress now!
We almost managed to get everything solved but only one thing isn’t working yet. The permalinks of our blogposts are still referring to our old ftp blog. We did find out it’s possible to change the permalinks of every blogpost to make it refer to the wordpress blogpost but it we rather not change the permalinks because of google ranking. Could you tell us how to make all blogposts refer to the blogpost with the wordpress environment and not on the old blogger environment.
Thanks a lot!
Leonie Mizee
Hi!
I hope you have read my question above?
Maybe you can help me with this problem asap. I would be very thankful!
This week is the deadline for the transfer from blogger to wordpress because blogger is removing ftp blogs.
And I hoped to fix this before.
I don’t know what will happen when blogger is shutting down all the services. I hope we won’t loos posts etc.
Thanks in advance!
Leonie
Leonie, have you read the response to Shelly and James above?
In wordpress, go to Settings > Permalinks and change to the ‘Custom Structure’ and then enter: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
Have you already done that?
Hi
I’m trying to convert my blogger which was originally published via ftp to wordpress. First, I had blogger convert it to cheechandchongfan.blogspot.com. Then, I tried to use the import tool within wordpress admin. I click import, it says “importing” for 1 second and then has a continue button. Clicking “continue” does nothing and none of 1400 posts imported. Any idea what I’m doing wrong? Thank you.
Oh dear I am getting myself in such a pickle.. at bus pass age this is becoming difficult for me to work out.
I have managed to get my site up and running on wordpress on a NEW domain to the domain I had when I was on blogger. I have done a 301 redirect like this… Redirect 301 /blog/noproblem.html http://noproblem.org.uk/ The old blogger was at http://www.choiceforum.co.uk/blog/noproblem.html
OK so now you can see the two sites that I am having difficulties with.
What I can’t get my head round is how to get all the folders like 2010,2009 that reside in the choiceforum/blog folder to move to noproblem/blog. I know I can just move the folders as they are because then clicking on the archives in the new blog will show an error.
Do I need to do another 301 redirect? If so what do I need?
I’ve got myself in a pickle haven’t I?
Well with some help from a good friend I have now solved all my problems.. thanks
[...] a great sense of relief at the moment having gotten this far. Ben Frain’s instructions on Migrating from Blogger FTP to WordPress were excellent. I hope to be back to regular posting [...]
Thanks, this was really helpful!