I am going to share with you some of the things I learned while making the transition to Wordpress (self hosted) from blogger regarding followers, friends, RSS Feed Readers and Email Subscribers and how I successfully made the jump!

There of course are many amazing resources that helped me tremendously while working through the transfer such as importing posts, fixing my links, and so on in this process. I am not going to repeat  whats already out there but instead link you to a couple sites that I found helpful for your review.mamablogga.com the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress

moving-from-blogger-to-wordpress-maintaining-permalinks-traffic-seo/

migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress.html

But when it game to transferring my feed and keeping my Google Friend connect in place, these were are a couple of the things that I wasnt able to find as much infomation on.

DISCLOSURE- I am not claiming to be an expert. I am not guaranteeing 100% issue free success. I am only putting down my journey and what worked for me down in hopes that someone may benefit from my experience.

Here are a few key items you need to pay attention to when transitining blogs and some mistakes NOT to make.

• FEED BURNER- There is a plugin called Feedburner Feedsmith that is suppose to help you re route your feed to the new location. I was unable to get this to work for the first month! The trick to this is- that you have to upload it to your plugin menu and DO NOT ACTIVATE IT! Go to your hosting account and move it out of its folder and into the main plugin folder all by its self. It did not work for me untill I did this. You do not have to burn a new feed. You only change the source address in feedburner from your blogger address to your  wordpress feed address. The feed address that all are subscribed to should be entered in the feedsmith pluggin. This will keep your email subscriptions.
• If already had your domain through blogger or if you are just adding a new domain. Keep the domain name you are using in the blogger settings menu for forwarding. In blogger also make sure the same feed address is listed as above for forwarding. NEVER ever put your feed URL in your feedburner forward to section. Your feed will break! Hear me. Will not work and fixing it is not guaranteed.
• FRIEND CONNECT- From what I understand Blogger has combined the Friend Connect and Google Reader feature in to one Widget that works in your blogger dashboard to benefit blogger users- As we know if you add someone on google friend connect they will pop up in your google reader (in the bottom of your blogger dashboard) But in saying this- You can use your Friend Connect Gadget on your wordpress page and show all of your friends/followers on your new wordpress site by changing the advanced settings on your google friend connect widget to allow your “domain address” to use your “blogspot” device.
• To allow use of your current Friend Connect on your Wordpress Blog you need to change your FC advanced settings in your google dashboard (or my account from blogger) or just click here. The setting’s menu is hidden (at least for me) Once you long into FC In the address bar of the page copy the long string of numbers at the end of the URL which is your friend ID. Then use the following link. http://www.google.com/friendconnect/admin/site/advancedsettings?id=# (replace the # with your friend ID) This will drop you into your advanced settings menu in the case you cant locate it. In the second field add the alternate address of your Wordpress domain. This is you giving your permission to let this domain use your friend connect gadget with your followers on it. In the general settings also change your primary URL to your domain. This will allow google reader to grab feed from your new domain address.

• Do NOT delete your blogger blog. You are still going to use it! for certain things! For example all picture links are part of blogger. Wordpress does not host them.
• Do NOT put your wordpress feed address in your blogger feed section. Refer above…

I have been on wordpress for a month now and after fixing all my issues, figuring out how to change things, maintain things, etc. Hopefully you can use these skips and skip directly to enjoying how much wordpress has to offer! The possibilities are endless and exploring has been a blast! I hope  you can already see all the new options on my blog and hopefully this make surfing easier for you going forward!

If you have tips or tricks to add to this please let me know! I honestly dont know much else in regards to all of this besides what I posted here. I wish you luck if you decide to take the same “leap” in the future! I just wanted to share what I knew and hopes it may help you!

All Cosmetic items discussed in the above post were purchased by me. Anything written is my own opinion and not influenced by any other person or company.

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