Moved from Blogger to WordPress

I’ve completed my move from Blogger to WordPress.

The transition was fairly smooth; I probably should have made the changes a while ago. Here are some of the actions I took to migrate the blog:

• Created a new domain, wp.samgreenfield.com.
• Installed WordPress using Dreamhost’s one-click install.
• Exported my posts from Blogger and saved it to my desktop.
• Used the tool blogger2wordpress to convert my Blogger export file into a file that I could import into WordPress.
  • I used this tool rather than the regular migration strategy in WordPress because I wanted to remember the URLs and email addresses that users would have entered into my blog before. The built-in Blogger import in WordPress just created the users without any additional information.
• Tweaked the export file so that categories were correctly imported.
• Performed the import into WordPress.
• Installed the Suffusion theme, because I think it looked good.
• Linked the domain “http://blog.samgreenfield.com” to wp.samgreenfield.com. My thought is that if I ever want to switch blogging platforms again, it will be easier if I have a single domain that faces the outside world.
• Set up Google Analytics in Suffusion; also installed the Google Analytics Dashboard.
• Configured archive and category pages on WordPress; also made the “permalinks” similar to the old site.
• Set up redirects from my old site at samgreenfield.com/log to blog.samgreenfield.com
• Ran a script to vet the old links to make sure they were redirecting correctly.
  • It turned out that around 20% of the links did not work correctly. Blogger removed words like “a” and “the” from the title; WordPress keeps those words in. Blogger and WordPress also handled title collisions differently. I did a mass database update for most of the posts and then fixed a bunch of them by hand.
  • Some of the category pages also needed to be tweaked by hand to make sure that they were working.
• Installed SSL on blog.samgreenfield.com so that I could use my username and password without getting them stolen.
  • Purchased an IP address from Dreamhost
  • Purchased an SSL certificate from RapidSSL. (Which doesn’t seem to work on Firefox, but I only really care about Chrome.)
• Installed plug-ins to add more functionality to WordPress
  • Jetpack from WordPress which add some cool features, like YouTube integration and
  • Google XML Sitemaps, which allows Google to scrape my site more easily.
  • Redirection, to manage some of the changes in links from the old site.
  • WordPress Mobile Pack, which renders the site in a mobile-friendly format. (Check it out if you have a phone!)
  • WP-reCAPTCHA, to make it a little more difficult for spammers to comment
  • WP Super Cache, to add static cached pages of content
  • WordPress HTTPS, to help secure the site while editing
  • PhotoShelter plug-in, which will allow me to publish more easily from PhotoShelter
  • Extended Comments Option, to help manage comments on the site

It was a fair amount of work, but it was a lot of fun. I’m still looking for the best way to selectively publish photos directly from my Eye-Fi.