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Growth After Moving from Blogger

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The picture itself may not be clear, but the Trend Is…

This graph is of my FeedBurner Subscriptions from October 2005 to Present. On the left, while I was using Blogger, I started getting a decent subscription rate, then it stagnated. Then the Big (maybe not That big) drop was when I changed over to using WordPress with my Own Domain.

I did expect some drop in stats in the move, and took the loss of readership into consideration before making the decision. But the lack of movement and improvement had to take priority if I wanted more exposure for my Blog.

As can be seen on the graph, since the move, there has been steady growth in subscriptions. The same can be said for steady readership from other sources such as referrals and search engine hits.

So, if you are considering waiting to change from a hosted Blogging or Website service to using a Domain Name of your own, why wait? The Benefits far Outweigh the losses.

I can’t guarantee that your results will be the same, but I will tell you that continuing to use a free hosted service will not provide the same opportunity for growth as having your Own Domain.

August 10th, 2006 at 01:17pm | Posted by Joe | Blogger, Blogging, FeedBurner, Stastics, WordPress | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

5 Things to Remember: Moving from Blogger to WordPress

When I made the move from Blogger to WordPress, the process of moving posts was fairly simple. I had no problems importing posts, and overall the move was painless for the most part. I wrote about Some of the Differences Between WordPress and Blogger in the beginning of August.

There are a few things that I found that are not really differences as much as things to consider in the move. Especially if you have a lot of posts (I had over 300).

1. If you have links within posts, they will be imported with the old links. I did a Lot of Intra-linking to reference other posts I had written on various subjects. They ALL still reference the Old URL’s. That being the case, I will have to leave the Blogger URL intact so that anyone clicking on a link will have something to see. I AM NOT going to change that many links to the new site URL’s.

2. You may have noticed on a lot of the postings prior to the move have the little block with the (x) instead of a picture. That is because when they were uploaded they were put in a Blogger.com file. They will not transfer when you do an import of the Blogger posts. Although I have all the jpg files on my hard drive, I AM NOT going to upload that many pics just to make old postings look the way they did when they were first written.

3. For whatever reason, I’m not sure if Blogger just didn’t like references or links, At Least One of my posts was Edited (censored) by Blogger in the transfer. I did rant about that, but at this point it doesn’t really matter since I have both the old and new posts for that battle.

4. I did mention in the Differences Between post that since Categories were non-existent on Blogger, everything imported needs to be put in it’s proper categoy or it will default to Uncategorized. So, you will spend a lot of time putting things where they belong, just as I did.

5. Any additions or add-ons such as AdSense, Chitika, FeedBurner, Technorati or BlogTopSites will not transfer or be imported. You will have to re-do All of the Links for those type of ads and links, not to mention any Stastics Program you had running. I haven’t found any JavaScript links that did transfer.

I am sure there are other considerations that need to be addressed, I just haven’t come across them yet. Rest assured, when I do, they will show up here…

Have any of you noticed anything similar in your move from Blogger to WordPress (or any other platform)?

August 8th, 2006 at 02:39pm | Posted by Joe | Blogger, Reviews, WordPress | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

Some Differences Between WordPress and Blogger

                                                                                                 

Moving from Blogger to WordPress is a fairly easy transition, but there are a few minor details that you should bear in mind in making a decision.

~~ If you have been using Blogger for some time, you will have to import your old posts into WordPress.  This is done by simply going into the Import page in WP and following instructions.  Something to keep in mind is there are No Categories in Blogger, so when you import the posts, everything goes into the Default Category, even if you had it set up manually and broken into categories on your old Blog.

I had well over 300 posts on Blogger when I made the move, so I spent quite a bit of time re-categorizing all past posts.  I am also using General instead of Uncategorized, I think it doesn’t look like you just didn’t know where to put something (personal choice).

~~  Everything is broken down into separate Templates in WP.  Pages, Sidebars, Header, Footer and other sections need to be dealt with individually.  If you were used to being able to go into the one template and making changes for everything at once, it won’t happen in WordPress.  One advantage of this setup is you can use different links, ads etc on various pages.  ie. You can have something for AdSense on the Home Page and Yahoo on Individual pages, because they are separate and won’t show one set of ads on the other page.

But, if you want something to show up on every page, you must remember to add it to the various template sections.  This is a little more time consuming, but with the advantage of flexibility, it is worth a little extra time.

~~  Plug-ins are one of the best advantages of WordPress over Blogger.  If you want to add something to your Blog, there is more than likely a Plug-in for it.  I added the Akismet, Social Bookmarking and Follow Comments Plug-ins to name a few.  Most come with detailed instructions for installation and use.  These type of additions are not available for Blogger.

~~  Link management is fairly simple on WordPress, whereas there is no real management at all on Blogger.  With WP you can categorize and separate links (depending on the Theme).  On Blogger, everything has to be done manually for any links you want to add.

 

Not all of the options mentioned above are available on Wordpress.com, but are if using WordPress in conjunction with your own Domain.

Whether you are using WordPress or Blogger, be sure to determine which Theme you want to use Before you start adding or changing anything.  In most cases, the changes will be lost if you move to a different Theme.

 

Is there anything you have found that should be added to the list?  Is there something you think could be made easier in the transition?

August 2nd, 2006 at 01:59pm | Posted by Joe | Basics, Blogger, Blogging, Plug-ins, Reviews, WordPress | 6 reader remarks | Print This Post