Marketing Defined

Moving from Blogger to WordPress v2.02

After much procrastination, the Marketing Defined Blog is now settling into its new WordPress v.2.02 home.

The catalyst for making the final move from Blogger to WordPress, was the “easy” user-friendly transfer, now available to any user directly via a few clicks on the Import tab in the Admin dashboard of a shiny new WP v2.02 installation. (I must stress the new “import” tab is only available in the Admin panel of the latest Wordpress upgrade - version 2.02 and is not available in any of the earlier versions of WordPress)

I settled on the Semiologic 3 column CMS (content management system) Theme after “falling” for the clean lines and appealing colours in the “Strawberries and Cream” Semiologic skin designed by Antonella Pavese… The extra features in Semiologic’s content management system was the added push for me to select this excellent theme.

If you have no previous experience with “php”, it might pay to settle on another “user-friendly: theme, and perhaps migrate to the Semiologic CMS theme only when fully conversant with editing the main pages of a Wordpress theme.

Selecting from the huge selection of available WordPress plug-ins will be a joy!

Even without adding such plug-ins, it makes life so much simpler to automatically have the “keyword” optimized title of each post, appear at the top of the browser, immediately preceding the actual title of the Blog itself, as it correctly should to maximize your SEO efforts… and help with those coveted high rankings.

I’ve said it before; mastering the application of white hat Search Engine Optimization techniques to improve your search engine rankings is not rocket science.

It is agreed that to retain high search engine rankings in competitive topic areas, does require a good deal of knowledge and expertise and search engine optimization experts are often needed, but most web sites aren’t in very competitive areas.

So, if you have been putting off the move to the superior Blogging tool, Word Press, with all the hundreds of “free” search engine friendly, plug-ins available only to WordPress users, that will automatically make your Blog search engine friendly, you have just run out of excuses….

Even a complete novice to Blogging and/or software installations, will easily follow the instructions available directly via few clicks in the “Import” tab of the WP v2.02 Admin. panel.

A few moments after the initial 2 - 3 clicks in the appropriate places of the “Import” tab, your blogger (or other blog software) posts/comments will be residing in your chosen Theme for WordPress.

To get started, it is recommend you first install WP v2.02 and configure all your Admin settings. Then after choosing and uploading a theme from the hundreds available you may go ahead, and via the Admin panel of Wordpress, choose from any of the following list of Blogging systems to import your posts and comments directly into your new WP installation.

Please note that your sidebar and other settings are not imported. However, the Admin Panel has a number of other tabs that for example, will allow an import of all your existing links. Ah! I hope you enjoy playing with your new toy, as I have.

Doing a backup of your Blogger template, prior to the “import” is recommended by the folks at WordPress. Here is a list of blogging tools that allow the one click import of posts and comments into Wordpress 2.02

• MovableType
• RSS
• Live Journal
• Dot Clear
• TextPattern
• Blogger

For those who are not too tech. savy, and to avoid having to write a number of new re-direct rules for the URLs of your pre-existing blog poste in your .htaccess file, it would be best to adopt the same permalink structure employed by your current Blogging tool.

By default WordPress uses web URIs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URI structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links. A number of Permalink tag examples are available here.

To clearly explain the above; If the URL of a Post in your Blogger based blog appears as…

http://yourdomain.com/blog/2006/02/your-post-name.html

…you are able to keep this same URI structure, and retain the “html” extension, in WordPress… simply by specifying the output of your WP permalinks in the “Options”/”Permalink” tab of the Admin. panel.

An “open” mind will soon prove the small learning curve for mastering the effective day-to-day use of WordPress is no rocket science. If the WordPress forum or Help section does not answer your concerns, you are more than welcome to contact us for instant help if you get stuck installing and/or configuring a new install of WordPress.

During the next few weeks, as soon as I have tidied up this Blog and finished the header graphic, I will update this post with an “easy to follow” synopsis of the transfer, to allow new WordPress users to achieve a succesful import from the outset, and safely transfer your posts and comments into Wordpress v2.02 from Blogger.

I will also include a list of “must have” Themes and Plug-Ins, including Spam prevention, Feedburner, Adsense De Luxe, Amazon and Chitika Plug-Ins (to allow for example, a one click inclusion of advertising sources in a Post, rather than having to write a block of code each time)

If you have always yearned to use the excellent Wordpress as your blog tool and have been looking for a simple way to transfer your Posts and Comments from Blogger (or other Blogging tool from the above list) to Wordpress - the new import tab in WordPress v2.02 has now simplified the move for you.