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Archive for the ‘Blogger’ Category

I recently reported on the launch of bing.com and how it claims to bring an end to search overload by over-promising their esp capabilities and under-delivering, well, on everything.

You may recall or have heard about about an event that occurred a few years back (2004 election cycle to be exact) when the phrase “miserable failure” returned the bio page of George W. Bush in Google search results (funny right). A group of bloggers had taken it upon themselves to add a whole-lot-a inbound links to the Whitehouse.gov site with the anchor text – miserable failure.

Back then it pulled enough weight in Google’s algorithm so that an anchor text from a large number of inbound links, from various sources could push a listing up in rank… but that has since changed. Now when you search the phrase in Google you will find among other things Wikipedia pages referencing the incident.

Interestingly enough, now when you perform the same search, “miserable failure” in bing…or as they would say if you “bing” the phrase “miserable failure”, then you will see that hmmmm George W. Bush still shows up. But tied to the Whitehouse.gov page? Oddly enough, alongside of good ole W. you see Barack Obama in the organic results and then as “related search options” Martin Luther Kind and Waffles? Yes, of course I get it…um no I don’t. I may have skipped the class in school where Waffles, MLK and W. had something in common.

So what’s your take? Besides that the Whitehouse obviously needs to update their bio pages. Is bing really the one failing misrably? What has your experience been with this new and supposedly improved search engine?

My most recent wordpress project was one that required a move from Blogger’s Blogspot to Wordpress. Check it out www.rungranolarun.com

Many bloggers often start out with Blogspot.com and then wish they were using Wordpress instead. The move is actually not too difficult.

Depending on the hosting solution that you use for your Wordpress, you may or may not be able to upload the Blogger’s blog directly. I use Bluehost (found it’s limitation) and had to use a workaround. Wordpress.com actually did the trick.

Here are the steps you want to follow:

1. Log in to or create a Wordpress.com account. Once logged in you want to find the “Tools” tabAfter selecting the tools tab click on “Import.” Within the import section you then select “Blogger”, then authorize. This section will take you to your Google Account for which the log in is the same as your Blogspot.com log in. If you are already logged in then this won’t be prompted. Google will then ask you again to authorize the connection so click “grant access”.

Once you have finished this connecting process. Your Import > Blogger access will now show you all Blogspot.com blogs that you have with that respective account. Select the one that you want to transfer to Wordpress.

Click “Import” and the process will proceed automatically. This however is where (if your Wordpress setup won’t allow it) you could get stuck. What happened to me was that I’d select import and each time only one post would import and then the process would stop. The workaround is to use Wordpress.com as I mentioned.

After the import is complete and you verify that indeed all of your posts and comments are uploaded you can then do the reverse (unless you are not self hosting, in which case you’d be done now). For those who are self hosting follow the steps under “Tools” > “Export” now. It simply exports Wordpress to a file that can then in turn be uploaded to your hosted wordpress account.

2. Before you proceed with the final import make sure that you have installed the Wordpress Plugin Blogger Redirector and that your permalinks are set to /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html which is the same format that Blogger uses. This way when you set the final redirect from Blogger all of your posts will redirect as well.

3. Test, test, test

4. Log in to Blogspot.com under “Settings” > “Publishing” > “Advanced Settings” and enter your new Wordpress domain address. Then save those settings.

Your final product just may look something like this

Hope this helps. I’d love to know what your experience with blog migrations has been.