Top 3 Problems on Importing Blogger To Wordpress
Here are the top 3 problems or difficulties I had when I imported Blogger posts to Wordpress. You may also encounter these troubles when you import Blogger to Wordpress:
Problem# 1: Wordpress blog post URL differs from Blogger blog posts.
When you use the post title for your Blogger blog post URL, there will be problem when you import Blogger to Wordpress. Unlike Wordpress, Blogger does not use the full title of the post as URL. It cuts the title to limit the characters and it also removes the articles “the”, “a”, and “an”. If your Blogger posts have already earned a good PageRank and you don’t want to lose it, then you have to preserve the original post URLs in Blogger.Since my old Blogger blog posts were already indexed and some of them were given a PageRank, I decided to retain their original Blogger URL. I tried to find an easy solution to this problem and the best remedy I found was to edit the Mysql database. I used my backup file to change the URL of the posts in the Wordpress Mysql with the original URLs. It was no sweat as I have less than 50 blog posts that time. This gonna be a big trouble for those blogs with huge number of posts. But, you may opt to change only those with good PageRank, though.
Problem# 2: Subdirectory blog homepage URL can’t be accessed without trailing slash.
My blog is under a subdirectory. In Blogger, my blog could be accessed without the trailing slash. I used RewriteRule in main .htaccess, as follows:RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^moneymakingblog moneymakingblog/index.php [L]
With the above, I could access my blog without the trailing slash and without .htaccess file in the blog directory. But in Wordpress, I have to place the following in main .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^moneymakingblog$ moneymakingblog/index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^moneymakingblog/. moneymakingblog/index.html [L]
I had spent so much time discovering the above entries in my main .htaccess. Before this, I had so much trouble accessing my site without trailing slash and my admin page. There were cases when I could access my admin page but not my homepage without trailing slash and when I could access my blog homepage without trailing slash but not the subpages or blog posts.
Fortunately after so much research and so many trials and errors, I finally discovered the solution. It worked smoothly. So, I retained my PageRank.
Now, let me explain the functions of the above .htaccess entries. The .htaccess rules are being read by the browsers line by line from top to bottom:
RewriteEngine On = This initializes the URL Rewriting
^ = This the start of the string.
$ = This is the end of the string.
[L] = This is the Last rule flag. Use this flag to prevent the currently rewritten URL from being rewritten further by following rules.
RewriteRule ^moneymakingblog$ moneymakingblog/index.html [L] = This rule means that when freetipsandwits.com/moneymakingblog is accessed, it will be redirected to freetipsandwits.com/moneymakingblog/index.html. This rule must precede the conditions. Otherwise, it will be redirected the blog homepage URL with trailing slash.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f = This is the condition that if there’s no file of the same URL, go to the next rule. Otherwise, it will be redirected to that file.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d = This is the condition that if there’s no directory of the same URL, go to the next rule. Otherwise, it will be redirected to the directory.
RewriteRule ^moneymakingblog/. moneymakingblog/index.html [L] = This rule means that all blog URLs after the preceding conditions must be redirected to moneymakingblog/index.html.
Problem# 3: Comment URLs are missing after importing to Wordpress.
This was also a big problem for me. The URLs of the commentators were not imported, they were all missing. I tried to find an easy solution to this. The best solution I found for my case was to edit comments in Wordpress Admin page by copying and pasting the URL of the comment authors. I copied the URLs from my backup Blogger posts and search for the comment author in Wordpress comments and pasted the URLs to the corresponding comments. One by one, I painstakingly copied and pasted the URL to the comments. It was really tedious but I finished it in about an hour as my blog has only less than 200 comments that time.
That’s how I preserved the Blogger permalinks of my blog posts, which have earned some good PageRank and the Blogger comments URLs. Hope this will help you in moving or converting your blog from Blogger to Wordpress.
Here are the additional resources that could help you fix the problems you may encounter when moving, converting, or migrating blog from Blogger or other blog platform to Wordpress:
Importing Content from Blogger and other blog platforms to Wordpress
Maintain permalinks moving from new Blogger to WordPress 2.0
Importing Haloscan comments into WordPress from Blogger
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