Import Blogger Posts & Comments to Wordpress Easily
March 18th, 2006After my recent Wordpress move, many users emailed me to ask me how simple (or difficult) it was to move posts and comments from Blogger to Wordpress…
It was as simple as possible I would say. I understand you have already installed the latest Wordpress version 2 in the directory or root where you want it. See these official installation instructions. I installed the latest version Wordpress 2.0.2 as a fresh install (In fact my Dreamhost webhosting did a one click Wordpress install with MySQL database creation in a few minutes).
I tried their wiki instructions, but they were not correct. Other resources explained tips for importing into Wordpress 1.5, where the blogger import script was not present and there were different tricks for importing posts and comments.
Settings in Blogger
I just ensured that some settings were inspired from different feedbacks I read elsewhere. Before doing anything, back up your Blogger blog first.
Click Formatting and change the Timestamp Format to be mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM (the first choice in the dropdown menu).
Click Archiving and set Archive Frequency to ‘monthly’
These settings are already set in Blogger by default. I already had these settings in my blog anyway, so effectively I made no change my Blogger settings.
Settings in Wordpress
Login into Wordpress. Go to Import. Click on Blogger – “Import posts and comments from a Blogger account”. Fill in your blogger username and password.
It will list all your blogger blogs as you see on the Blogger dashboard. Click on the blog you want to move to Wordpress. And the Import will start automatically. Time taken will depend on how large your blog is. It took me a 2-3 minutes for a 1000 posts.
Remember, do not stop, reload or restart while the process is going on. It seems at times that the importing process is stuck, but it is continuing in the background. After all is done, it will tell you it is done and you can ‘Move on”…
If for some reason things get stuck, you can “reset the importer”.
View your new Wordpress blog manage and see all your posts and comments are imported.
If you install Wordpress in a subdirectory instead of the root of your domain, read all about hosting Wordpress in an alternative directory.
Importing Bugs
- Several posts lost their formatting like text in bold, italics etc…
- The posts which had codes like javascript, html tags etc were lost these codes.
- Iframes inserted inside posts dissappeared. e.g. all those Amazon ads are displayed via iframes codes and they were gone.
- Of course all your customizations to the Blogger template need to be done again to the Wordpress template now.
- Also read how to prevent errors by unclosed tags in Wordpress Visual Text Editor.
Note: This post just gives my experience of importing from Blogger to Wordpress. Always back up your Blogger blog before doing this. I do not take any responsibilty if this does not work for you or causes errors in your blogs.
All I can say it could not have been more easier. Nothing was affected in any way on my Blogger blog. And all posts and comments are on Wordpress.
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would it support MSN Space transformation?
Any tips? I keep getting this ‘Sorry, you need to enable sending referrers for this feature to work.’ after moving to Dreamhost. Never happened before so I know my browsers are ok.
Thanks for the tips on importing!!
wow, awesome thanks so much for posting this. It really helped! :)
I’m currently trying to import from blogger but when I go to import > blogger, I only get this message.
“Import Blogger
Howdy! This importer allows you to import posts and comments from your Blogger account into your WordPress blog.
This feature requires iframe support.
Reset this importer”
And yes, iframes is available on my firefox 1.5 and IE 6
Any help?
nice info, thanks..
I’m having trouble with it. I only have 433 posts, but it keeps saying my MySQL server is timing out. Any thoughts?
Thanks for the tips. I used a lot of this information as the basis for my post, Moving from Blogger to WordPress: Best Practices. I go into some detail about maintaining the 1:1 correspondence between old Blogger entries and imported WordPress entries.
i keep having the 504 page popping up eveytime i try to import…
nevermind about having the 504 page popping up… my server adminstrator reset the IP address of Blogger, and i now can access to the importer… but the thing now is that I always reached the page where it says your blog doesn’t seem to accept the template or responding.. I check my blogspot blog and found that the template was changed… so wats the prob?
The import fails, and destroys the display of the Blogger blog too “Find a better blogging tool: wordpress” is what it replaces the blog front page with. Restoring backups doesn’t help because Blogger can’t republish itself, even the index. Not cool of wordpress.
One more detail to note: the process doesn’t work if you don’t publish through blogspot. I had a site publiched via FTP at http://example.com (names made up to protect the innocent) which wouldn’t import, so I had to change settings to use blogspot hosting.
Hi,
Congratulation. The script work fine to me.
Thanks Very Much!
I´ve imported all my posts from blogger to Wordpress. It worked fine, but i´ve lost all the text formating. The characteres are weird. Could you please help me?
tks,
Michelle
Good tips. I just transfered my blog site to wordpress and wordpress is a winner
I have blogs in WP and Blogger – they are different – both have different strengths. Categories much easier to set up in WP. Both have different appearnaces in Firefox, Opera, and IE -
it’s been astruggle getting optimum from either
What about Blogger Beta? Is it possible to imports blogs from Blogger Beta to wordpress?
Hi there! Nifty walkthrough. But am having trouble trying to import Blogger Beta in (since they changed). Any ideas on this too?
Yeah, blogger beta doesnt work so well.. any ideas
I too have Blogger Beta and would love to Escape but with 300 or so posts and tons of comments, I am not going to do so until I can (relatively) easily convert my stuff. Actually, I just blogged about this very topic today.
“mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM (the first choice in the dropdown menu)”
this is, in the new version (out-of-beta), the 3rd choice in the menu now.
these informations and links are enough for wordpress 2
thanks
Hi,
I wrote these http://tjantunen.com/2007/03/21/import-blogger-posts-to-wordpress/
simple instructions how to import blogger beta posts to wordpress easily and without using any plugins.
Hola all
How I can change avatar in this forum?
It is nice.Do you have also a plugin for blogger wordpress convertion ?
Regards
I just used your tutorial to export my sister’s blog from Blogger to her new Wordpress blog. Your help was great. Thanks!
I did not know there is a way to moving comments from blogger to wordpress. Good to know. Thanks!
I go into some detail about maintaining, and i now can access to the importer… but the thing now is that I always reached the page where it says your blog
thankss
I did not know there is a way to moving comments from blogger to wordpress. Good to know. Thanks!
Hi, I get the following message when trying to import. I have minimal tech knowledge – can someone please help me?
Unable to find the socket transport “ssl” – did you forget to enable it when you configured PHP?
Hi, I get the following message when trying to import. I have minimal tech knowledge – can someone please help me?
that like you
Congratulation. The script work fine to me.
Thanks