I’m about to publish a post explaining why I’ve re-built and re-launched my blog anew, but first I’d like to post about how I created a smooth transition from my Blogger.com-driven blog to a personal WordPress install, fully under my control.
I’d like to put this out there in case it helps others who would like to do the same thing. So here’s what I did:
- Created a fresh WordPress install
- I installed WordPress 2.9.2 using my Dreamhost account’s one-click install (via “advanced”-mode)
- Installed the Thesis theme, following the instructions at: http://diythemes.com/thesis/downloads/
- Thesis is a professional theme for WordPress, which currently (version 1.6) sells for $87. That may seem like a lot, but thesis is *very* highly regarded and makes customizing WordPress a joy
- Note: the optional step, about preparing for the auto-crop feature, was easy and and it helps with using “header images” with your posts — a very good pattern to follow
- Used WordPress’ native Blogger import function (under “Tools” menu) to get my posts and comments from my old blog, The Designer’s Scroll, which was hosted on Blogger.com
- Used this Blogger to WordPress plugin, which handled the permalink redirection
- Got my new Google Analytics code, since I was moving my blog to a new domain
- If your domain isn’t changing, then just copy/paste the GA code from your existing blog
- Setup my Feedburner account for the blog, since I didn’t have one before (bad Darren!)
- I wanted to offer email subscription, so to set it up I followed Google’s directions here: (Note: the menu item is called Appearance->Widgets now, not Presentation->Widgets)
To see how my friend Darius did his (similar) transition from Blogger to stand-alone WordPress, which inspired me to finally take the plunge, read his post about it here.