After moved to Wordpress a lot of people asked how i moved from Blogger to Wordpress via e-mail . I experienced a lot of things while moving to Wordpress , it take 5-6 hours of me to move , but i was stupid i did not want help , i tried to everything thing on my own and i understood that try-and-fail method sometimes make you lose your time. But it was good for me to experience these things. I learnt a lot and now its time to share my experiences with you guys who are planning to move to Wordpress which has tons of plugings , professional layouts and dashboard…

Taking Decision

If you are hesitant about moving to Wordpress think again. If you present useful and unique stuff  to your visitors and have a promising blog which takes +1000 visitors daily , i think you better move to Wordpress , but if you compile others’ work on your blog , you dont need to move to Wordpress.

Preparing Your Blog

Let your visitors know that you’re moving to Wordpress not to make think them you close your blog or give up blogging because while moving to Wordpress your Blogger will be closed till you move completely.

Another thing you must do is take a back-up file of your blog posts and comments , to go this , go to Settings from your Blogger and click Export Blog , to save a back-up file to your computer.We do not need a back-up file but we may need it so we better back our posts and comments up.

Choosing The Right Hosting Plan

I chosed Godaddy’s Linux Economy Plan to host gosublogger.com which takes 1.5k visitors daily and its enough for me , if your blog takes +5k visitors you should chose deluxe plan. If you ask me about Godaddy , im satisfied with it . Its said that DreamHost is also good but i think its expensive. Godaddy installs Wordpress for you it takes 5 minutes for Godaddy to install it.

Installing Templates and Plugins to Wordpress

After Wordpress installed , download FileZilla to log in your FTP account with your hosting login name and password.Now install the template to following directory /wp-content/themes and install wordpress plugins to this directory /wp-content/plugins . To activate go to your Wordpress Admin panel and then click design now you will see the wordpress themes you installed. For Plugins clicking plugins section from your admin panel is enough to see all the Wordpress plugins you installed now you can activate or deactive the plugins from there.

Importing Posts and Comments to Wordpress

You cannot import posts and comments to Wordpress if your Wordpress is hosted anywhere except Wordpress.com so we will not be able to import posts and comments but do not worry there is solution to do this. Now go to wordpress.com and create a free blog , log in to your admin panel and click Manage and then click Import now chose Blogger or other free blog services your blog is hosted and start importing. After importing is completed now export blog posts and comments to your computer and delete the blog hosted by wordpress.com. Now go to your Wordpress admin panel and again click Manage and then Import now click Wordpress at the bottom and upload the file exported to your computer by free wordpress blog.Thats all.

10 Wordpress Plugins you need to install

Here the list of Wordpress Plugins that must be installed to your new Wordpress.

1. Adsense Injection : Inserts Adsense ads to your posts depending on the place you chose , you can show ads in the middle of posts too.
2. Akismet : At first you will not need this but later i’m sure you will need it , its a SPAM detectors , filters SPAM comments.
3. All in One SEO Pack : For a better search engine optimization you need this wordpress plugin.
4. Different Posts Per Page : With the help of this wordpress plugin you will be able show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page.
5. Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress : I will try to make this plugin usable for Blogger too.  This plugin lets you highlight code snippets within WordPress simple. Supports C++, C#, CSS, Delphi, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, VB, XML, and HTML.
6. Google XML Sitemaps : XML sitemap for your Wordpress , after installing this wordpress plugin you better add new sitemap to Google Webmaster Central.
7. Recently Updated Posts : Returns a list of the most recently updated posts.
8. Similar Posts : Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags.
9. Sociable : Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites.
10. Top Commentators Widget : Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site.

Permalinks Problem

As your permalinks will be changed you may loose visitors , but there are solutions to lower loose of visitors  , first solution is that after you install Google XML Sitemaps plugin to your Wordpress , you must add your new sitemap link to Google Webmaster Central , and then post 2-3 articles and Digg them to get indexed by Google quickly. Second ; go to your admin panel and click settings and then click permalinks now choose the 3rd one ( month and name) which looks like Blogger’s permalink style and save it , now the difference between your old URL and New URL is the “.html” tag at the end of your url. Now when people click your old url on google search they will be directed to your custom 404 error page. Thinking this we will edit our custom 404 error page , clicking design and then theme editor from your Wordpress dashboard , now look for “404.php” page on the right and click it and edit the 404 message over there , and type something like “try to enter this page deleting “.html” tag at the end” now your visitors will do this and enter the page they are looking for.

Thats all you need while moving to Wordpress. Hope you find it useful . Thanks for reading!