WordPress is an awesome content management platform! It’s easy, dynamic, customizable and user-friendly – especially for bloggers most of who aren’t familiar with the nuances of PHP, HTML/CSS, Javascript and other ingredients for web publishing. More and more people are realizing the power of this dynamic content management platform and are yearning to move over from other platforms like Blogger/Typepad/Livejournal et al. But some of them stop in the mid-way, bogged down by technical issues. Even I had the same fears about importing my Blogger blog to wordpress. But once done, I realized that it was just a piece of cake.

But I too had to face my set of problems. Here are a few tips for all of you who badly wanna embrace WordPress. (Remember, I’m talking about the custom content management system available at WordPress.org, not the free blog at WordPress.com)

Here I go!

1) Install your wordpress blog correctly – First, buy your domain and get some good quality hosting space. 100 Megabytes is more than enough for a good wordpress blog. Make sure your hosting package includes a MySQL server, since, only then can you install wordpress. You can find detailed instructions on how to install wordpress here. Edit the sample post and add your stuff

2) Import your wordpress blog - In the ‘Tools’ section of your wordpress dashboard, there’s an option called ‘Import’. Select it and you’ll see a host of options, including ‘Blogger’ on the top. Choose it, and follow the instructions. However, there is a possiblity that you might encounter a problem. In such a case, make a WordPress.com blog and import your blogger blog into it. Then export it into an XML File (Dashboard – Tools – Import) and log back into your domain and import all posts. Voila!

3) Maintaining Permalinks: Now, this is going to be an issue you will face. If you’ve used a domain in your blogger blog, your old users won’t get redirected to your wordpress blog, because the permalink structure is different. But again, you can change it by changing the format of your wordpress permalinks to /%year%/%month%/%postname%.html. This feature is available at the Settings tab of the wordpress dashboard.

All this takes just 10 minutes!

Happy Blogging!

Fresh from taking a blogging seminar depicting all the zillion problems of Blogger, I thought I’d set the example myself.
Thanks to an excellent hosting plan by Wizehost, here I am, in WordPress!! Installation and post-importing was a breeze. With some search, I got a not-so-bad theme, did basic customization and voila. The Red Pill got pressed.

Since duplicate content won’t do good with search engines, I’m deleting my old blogger blog. Yeah, it was a painful action from my part, but it was necessary evil.

Don’t have time for further customizations at the moment. Yeah, series exams looming large! But brace yourself. The best is yet to come.

Thanks a bunch for all your support, readers! Hope you enjoy my posts as you’ve done all the while. Adios!