If you are like me and have decided to move your blog from blogspot.com to wordpress.com (the shared WordPress hosting site), you are asking yourself three questions:
- How to redirect visitors to the old blog automatically to the new pages.
- How to transfer the PageRank of your old blog to the new one.
- How to prevent being penalized by Google for duplicate content.
Is it possible ? Read on.
First of all, let me give credit where credit is due – there are some instructions already published
- Tom Sherman has a nice manual for moving from the old Blogger to self-hosted WordPress.
- TechCounter similar to the one above but contains erroneous information about preserving PageRank.
- Webbleyou is a tutorial for migrating from Blogger Beta, but I find it unnecessarily complicated.
Bottomline: None of those tutorials work for moving to the shared hosting on WordPress.com!
Solution
- Redirect your visitors using JavaScript and meta tag redirects. Read below.
- Bad news, this is not possible. Tom Sherman correctly states
This would require a 301 Permanent Redirect and access to the server, not provided by Blogger.
- To avoid penalties to your Google Page Rank for duplicate content, have Google remove the old blog from its cache and instruct the crawler to ignore the old site from now on. Read below below.
Set up redirects
I’m assuming that at this point you have imported your posts to the new blog at WordPress.com (if not, go to “Manage/Import”, select the obvious choice and do what you’re said).
Log into your Blogger account and click your way through the awkward navigation menu until you are at the “Template/Edit HTML” page. To redirect visitors from the main page, insert the following between the <head> and </head> tags:
<meta content='6;url=http://yournewblog.wordpress.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>
“6″ stands for six seconds. This is the redirection timeout. Replace the url with your own.
The tricky part comes now. We want to redirect users from individual post pages to the corresponding post pages on the new blog. To that end, we need a piece of JavaScript spiced with Blogger proprietary tags. Insert the following right after “<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>” in the template:
<b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var new_page='yournewblog.wordpress.com/';
var permalink = '<data:post.url/>';
var timestamp = '<data:post.timestamp/>';
timestamp = timestamp.split('/');timestamp = timestamp[2]+'/'+timestamp[0]+'/'+timestamp[1];
new_page = permalink.replace(/youroldblog\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/[0-9]{2}/,new_page+timestamp);
new_page = new_page.replace(/\.html$/,'');
document.location.href = new_page;
</script>
</b:loop>
</b:if></b:includable></b:widget>
Don’t forget to enter your new blog’s URL at var new_page = .
Important note! For this script to work, all your posts should have been imported to WordPress.com using their Manage/Import function. The creation dates of all posts must match, because they are part of the permalinks.
Remove duplicate content
Insert the following between the <head> and </head> tags:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"/>
This line should instruct search engines to remove your old blog from their cache. The old content will cease to be as long as they are concerned. Therefore they are not going to penalize your new blog for duplicate content.
Optionally, display a message
This is not required, but a good idea anyway. Let your readers know you have moved on and that they are about to be redirected. Right after the <body> tag, insert this:
<div style='position: absolute; top: 30px; left: 30px; border: solid 2px #333; color: #000; background-color: yellow; padding: 5px; width: 400px; z-index: 5; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;'> <p><strong>My blog has moved!</strong></p> <p>You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit<br/> <a href='http://yournewblog.wordpress.com/'> <strong>http://yournewblog.wordpress.com</strong></a> <br/> and update your bookmarks.</p> </div>
Well, now we are all set.
No related posts.
Tags: blogging
Hi there,
I came across this in a search for how to move my blog to wordpress.
When i followed the instructions you laid out, I tried to submit but got this message:
“Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
The new widget id “Redirector” is invalid for type: Blog”
Do you know why this is?
Thanks!
The Redirector widget has probably been removed from the Blogger API. It’s been a while since I wrote this howto – some things may have changed.
If you take out the b: it will work — see below.
var new_page='yournewblog.wordpress.com/';
var permalink = '';
var timestamp = '';
timestamp = timestamp.split('/');timestamp = timestamp[2]+'/'+timestamp[0]+'/'+timestamp[1];
new_page = permalink.replace(/youroldblog\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/[0-9]{2}/,new_page+timestamp);
new_page = new_page.replace(/\.html$/,'');
document.location.href = new_page;
Ah, whoops, repasting that didn’t work… just go through that one added section and take out b: wherever you find one.
Thanks for this. It worked great after following @Becky’s advice to take out the b:
I used the codes and took out the “b:” as Becky said but my individual posts don’t seem to be redirecting to their corresponding post on my new site but the homepage instead. I imported my blogger posts with the WordPress Input function so not sure what’s going on. Can anyone help?
[...] are hosting your own wordpress. Eventually, being who I am, I decided to crack it myself. I used an old post from laffer.net, that and was no longer relevant, but provided big help in setting a [...]
This post helped me a lot in setting a direction, when I had to create a redirect from blogger to wp yesterday. The suggest code does not work anymore, but I used the same method to create an updated code that works (currently).
Here: http://etairaz.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/redirecting-visitors-in-an-old-blogger-blog-to-new-location-on-wordpress-com/
This was great! Thank you so much… blogger wouldn’t let me use the redirect widget, but everything else worked, which achieved my goal!
it worked:D super tutorial, very comprehensive, many thanks:D
hi, thanks for the wonderful help.
i was able to redirect the blog but with a little modification…
..in this line blogger is finding the widget id=’Redirector’ invalid..so just change the Redirect part with the blog2 and i was able to redirect my blog
thecarbook.wordpress.com
it still does not work, blog2 is incorrect
I got the exact same message, so it won’t work.
Regarding individual post redirects: do I need to go to EACH post and paste the code? or am I making one NEW post with that code? Thanks for the help.
[...] Redirect Visitors from Blogger to Your WordPress Site [...]
I have a new redesigned website using CakePHP to take the place of my blogger blog. Will I be able to redirect individual posts from to corresponding pages at our new site? For example, I want to redirect: http://www.utahhikinginfo.com/2010/10/mt.html to http://trails360.com/hikes/view/1 .
Thanks!
Be sure you change the REDIRECTOR word to Blog2. Everything else stays the same. I got the same message when I tried to change mine, but it worked after making the change. Thanks udsingh!!!!! And thanks to the author!!!!!!
FYI – When I did this, it didn’t work in the Javascript. It created a 2nd “Blog” and my post links wouldn’t work since they are supposed to be .html and they didn’t show up that way.
However, without the java part, it still works to automatically redirect.
all wordpress templates…
How to redirect Blogger Beta to WordPress.com | laffers.net…
Me too. The new widget id “Redirector” is invalid for type: Blog
It worked! I did what Becky said. Copy and paste her script without the B: and remember enter your blogs name. Thank you
http://www.ahomeincollegehill.wordpress.com
Hi there!
Thank you for the codes! The redirection code worked well, although I couldn´t get the others to work properly.
it works
Thanks for the great tips. Actually I was looking for how to redirect a blogger to wordpress and your article solve my query.
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blog…
[...]How to redirect Blogger Beta to WordPress.com | laffers.net[...]…
man i think i will try this
cause all the plugins not redirect will
i got problems , i think it’s because httacces maybe
so i will try this
great job
so bad
i got this message man
………….
We were unable to save your template
Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
The new widget id “Redirector” is invalid for type: Blog………………
what do u think i can do about it ?
Learn how to compost…
[...]How to redirect Blogger Beta to WordPress.com | laffers.net[...]…
I have finally able to made it. Thanks, for sharing such a beautiful thing with us.
great way to transport my blogger blog to wordpress. thanks
[...] was originally a post at Laffers.net, but I’m getting constant timeouts to that site, so I’m going to repost it here, just in case [...]