For last couple of weeks I was preparing to move my blog to WordPress powered blog. At the very beginning I thought It would be not possible to move my actual content, but it became easier than I have imagined. The first thing to notice is that my original blog was hosted by Google (at their blogspot service). And moving blog content from blogspot (blogger) was the hardest part. First of all, you should be aware, that WordPress as a platform supports import and export. It is able to import content from different sources (as shown in the picture).
The export is available as .xml file (that could be later easily imported to another WordPress blog). Back to migration… The first thing to do is to log in to your google/blogspot account. Then, choose import (blogger) and you will get redirected to your google/blogger account with information that there was a demand to authenticate. You should agree, and all your posts, comments (categories too!) are being transferred into your WordPress blog. But… that’s not exactly the case I had to go through :) The hosting I am currently using does not support SSL, and Google does not allow authenticating if request is not made over SSL. But there is another way to go. You may simply create a ‘temporary’ blog on WordPress.com. They support SSL, so there is no problem in getting all your blogger account content. The next thing is to export imported content, and import it in any WordPress blog (it may actually take a while, and there’s been some problems with huge blogs – containing 2000+ notes – but in this case, the solution is to divide xml file into a few smaller ones). The whole process is quite simple, and it didn’t take me more than half an hour to go through it. Nice thing worth notice is that you will be asked if you want to have an account created (account with the name that all posts in blogger was signed by), so after the import you should be ready to post :) ah… another thing, as you may expect, categories are being imported without problem, and they are being automatically assigned to posts during import. Worried about drafts? They get imported too (as drafts, of course :)
Great piece of software, great features, great blog engine. Nothing more to add.
Tags: Blogger, Blogspot, WordPress
A few weeks ago I started searching for some place to have a WordPress powered blog hosted. I didn’t want to buy a hosting. First hosting service I have tested was WordPress.com. Although it allows to create a blog for free there are way too many limitations (limited amount of skins you may use, no FTP access – so uploading binary files is not convenient). Then I tested Blogsome, Blogetery, and a few others similar services that gives WordPress powered blogs for free, but none was the one I was looking for. I realized, that it would be the best for me to have a free hosting that would allow me to install WordPress and manage it by myself instead of having a blog hosted on some site that specializes in hosting blogs for free. I didn’t believe it could be possible, but after a couple of hours (very, very exhausting) searching through the Web I have found the best (and FREE) hosting service – http://www.000webhost.com/. Yup, it is REALLY free. For free you get: 350MB of disk space, 100GB of transfer (per year I think), PHP, MySQL and mod_rewrite Apache module (this on is not a must, but I am sure you’ll want to use it). Setting your own blog is not very hard. It just takes a couple of minutes – after unpacking and copying WordPress source files, you have to configure it, create a database… and you’re ready to blog! What is mod_rewrite for? Well… it just makes all blog permalinks looks much better than default http://yourblog/?p=456 and allows them to look more ‘human’: http://yourblog/2008/11/03/just-a-test.
But what is the biggest advantage of having WordPress blog set up by yourself instead of using WordPress.com or Blogger.com that deal with all the hassle by themselves? Well… let’s suppose that you would like to have something more than ‘just a blog’. Let’s suppose, that you would like to have a blog looking more like a personalized homepage, that main part is blog. What to do? Blogger.com does not allow to create additional pages – you may of course use Google Sites, but I gave up after a couple of hours trying to create the site the way I wanted. WordPress is much more flexible. You may create a lot of additional pages, the may even be organized in a hierarchy – anything you want. The second thing is that hosting additional files on Blogger is not possible – you got to put files somewhere else… convenient? Don’t think so. The last thing (maybe not the most important) is ability to change the look of your blog. WordPress.com gives you a bunch of skins to choose from, the same is on Blogger – having your blog hosted on hosting service like http://www.000webhost.com/ gives you total freedom to apply new themes, manage them, upload binary files, install additional plugins to WordPress… you are the person who decides what you need. And for me, there is another advantage of WordPress – it works well with Windows Live Writer (I am not a keen on built in blog editors).
There are of course other blog engines, but from those I have tested WordPress seems to be the most flexible and the cheapest :) I am planning to move my blog to a WordPress powered one in a couple of weeks. And if you ever wondered if there is a possibility to have your own blog/site hosted for free – do not hesitate and try what http://www.000webhost.com/ has to offer. If you’re interested in setting up your blog in http://www.000webhost.com – I think some info on configuring WordPress may be useful (just pay attention that ‘localhost’ is not a proper value for ‘DB_HOST’ in config file – but you’ll find information what should be there on hosting service’s information pages; the same is with enabling mod_rewrite – everything you need to know you will find on http://www.000webhost.com information pages).
Happy blogging! :)
Tags: Blogger, Blogspot, WordPress
