Okay, I need some collective wisdom. Here’s my dilemma, I’ve been operating on blogger for quite some time and I thought it was doing me well, but I’ve learned I can do better. So, I’ve got things set up at www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com with wordpress.com and it’s 90% of the way I want it (I can get it there in a day or two).
My question is essentially this: When you are ready to make the switch from one platform and domain name to another, what’s the best way to do that so that people can still find you etc?
Thanks in advance for the wisdom, you guys (all of you) are awesome!
Tom
Eric Blackwell says:
Hi Tom (and welcome);
Hate to answer a question with a question, but are you hosting your new WP domain yourself (like on godaddy, bluehost, 1and1, etc? or is it like vanderwell.wordpress.com?
Best
Eric
July 2, 2008 — 4:39 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Eric,
It’s at wordpress.com right now. At some point, I’ll move it to my own, but I’ve got more pressing things to do now. Check it out at http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com.
Thanks!
Tom
July 2, 2008 — 4:47 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
While I have not played with blogger much, here is a link to a post (and some links inside it to another couple) that may help. Looks like they were doing the same thing or similar.
http://www.filination.com/tech/2007/10/10/moving-from-blogger-blogspot-to-wordpress-the-right-way-301-redirect/
I cannot emphasize enough though that I’d go on and host my own if I was you. You are putting good effort into this, you might as well OWN it. JMO.
July 2, 2008 — 5:09 pm
Hunter Jackson says:
I completely agree. I moved off of wordpress.com to a rsspieces blog about 2 weeks ago. Within 4 days, I was ranking higher on my rsspieces blog for neighborhoods I target than my wordpress.com blog over months.
July 2, 2008 — 6:51 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Hunter, I believe you, I’m just looking at priorities. Right now, my priority is to keep business moving and get off blogger. The next step will be to move from wordpress.com to hosting my own (actually a friend of mine can probably host it for me – he’s a major computer nut.)
Eric – thanks – I’ll have to read those posts but that sounds like just what I’m looking for.
Tom
July 2, 2008 — 7:40 pm
Robert Kerr says:
When you are ready to make the switch from one platform and domain name to another, what’s the best way to do that so that people can still find you etc?
Change the DNS record for the old domain name to point to the new domain name. The old domain name will still work but it will land readers on the new domain name (and new blog).
If you have any secure transaction processing capabilities (https:, SSL) at the old domain that you want to migrate to the new domain, you’ll need a new certificate for the new domain.
July 2, 2008 — 7:42 pm
Malok says:
Echoing Eric’s recommendation: If you are going to make the move, go ahead and make the move to your own hosted site. Its really not as difficult as you might believe. After all, thats why there are thousands and thousands of self hosted wordpress engine sites out there in the first place.
July 2, 2008 — 8:21 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
Robert Kerr nailed it. Since you have already mapped your URL to the wordpress.com blog, all you will need to do is change the DNS settings to wherever you are going to host your site. Nobody will even know you moved.
July 2, 2008 — 8:52 pm
Todd says:
Mr. Kerr is technologically correct, but as an end user I would considered that hard boiled redirect “harsh”, mildly rude. When I made the transition I went ran both domains for about a month, took the time to personally write to all the commenters.
Suggestion: Before the cold blooded redirect, run both sites for a bit, respect your loyal readers, communicate in a transparent way about the change, and be sure to put a polite note in the RSS feed…”We’re moving. Please update your Reader!”.
July 3, 2008 — 7:06 am
Dan Fletcher says:
Todd’s method is certainly preferable, if you have the time. Even with a straight DNS change, I found some of my readers fell of the ship so to speak. Holding their hand through the transition would be helpful.
July 3, 2008 — 9:28 am
g.dewald says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but all the talk about 301 redirects does not apply to moving from a blogger.com account to a site where you control the URL.
Individual bloggers do not have access to place a 301 on Blogger.com, do they?
July 3, 2008 — 11:39 am
Todd Carpenter says:
I’m not sure why you guys are making a big deal out of this? When you move a website at the DNS level, there’s no change in the RSS feed URL, there’s no 301 redirect. There’s really nothing I can think of that would cause even the slightest problem for you readers. What am I missing?
Tom is generating posts, pages and feeds under his own URL. So long as he sets up his own WordPress installation to display links the same way, I don’t see how there would be any issues.
g.dewald – Blogger.com, and .blogspot blogs are a whole different story.
July 3, 2008 — 11:49 am
g.dewald says:
Todd:
Yeah that’s what I mean, from Tom’s initial post:
“Here’s my dilemma, I’ve been operating on blogger for quite some time…”
And then his question:
“When you are ready to make the switch from one platform and domain name to another, what’s the best way to do that so that people can still find you etc?”
His question, on the face of it, would likely involve 301s and all sorts of fun. But if his question is placed in the context of his opening statement about previously using Blogger/Blogspot… then I think 301 redirects are not much of an option.
Just hit the Manage/Import on the WordPress blog, write one last post on the Blogger blog (and maybe another follow up in two weeks) and call it done.
I think we need some clarification from Tom about:
1) What is the address and platform of the blog he is currently using (which has a number of post/visitor assets).
2) What is the address and platform of the blog he is moving too (I think I know but at this point it might be good to re-iterate).
With those two items clarified I think we can provide a nice short answer to his question.
July 3, 2008 — 12:31 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
http://straighttalkaboutmortgages.com/
This blog is hosted on WordPress.com
July 3, 2008 — 12:41 pm
g.dewald says:
Ok. Give us the URL of the previous blog (item 1 in the “needs clarification” list).
Thanks!
July 3, 2008 — 12:44 pm
Greg Swann says:
The WrodPress.com blog is new and abuilding. Tom’s canonical weblog is at http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.blogspot.com/
This is what he wants to move. You can’t DNS that, 301 it or .htaccess it. All Tom can do is reimport all the content into WordPress, put a new “I have moved” post on top of the Blogspot blog and then, at some point, kill all the Blogspot content, leaving only the I have moved post. If he can noindex at Blogspot, that would help, as would building a default 401 at WordPress, if this is possible. There’s a smart 401 plugin for WP.org blogs, but I don’t know if it works at WP.com. A default 401 at Blogspot, with an autorefresh to the WordPress blog would help, too.
But: Lo tech don’t mean no tech. This is a good excuse to do a postcard to Tom’s entire CRM database.
July 3, 2008 — 1:09 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Wow, you guys have been great. So, to recap things, I should:
1. Do a final “I have moved” post with a link to my new spot at http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com.
2. Start running with the new blog.
3. A while down the road, start removing content from the old site?
What’s the whole 401 thing? I’m not a novice when it comes to mortgages and real estate, but I’m learning a LOT from this stuff.
Thanks again!
Tom
July 3, 2008 — 1:52 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Are these the “things” that I should disable eventually?
Add your blog to our listings?
A Listed blog may be linked to from Blogger.com, such as the Blogger home page, Blogger Play, and Next Blog. If you select “No” your blog will not appear in these places, but it will still be available on the Internet. This blog will still be displayed on your profile unless you hide it. Edit displayed blogs.
Let search engines find your blog?
If you select “Yes” we will include your blog in Google Blog Search and ping Weblogs.com. If you select “No”, everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
July 3, 2008 — 2:00 pm
g.dewald says:
How about going through each post on the blogspot, making a one sentence summary of the article, then a keyword rich link to the article as imported at the new, real website?
I know this is a pain because he has a few posts, but it gets him a few things:
1) Inbounds to the old site aren’t completely lost (they get to a summary and are led to the new site).
2) Keyword rich inbound anchor tags that delivers people to what they want.
July 3, 2008 — 2:06 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
What if I just left the titles for the posts alone and put the same text in each post.
Something along the lines of:
Straight Talk About Mortgages has moved. The new site is http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly and come over and check out the latest!
Thanks!
Tom Vanderwell
straighttalkaboutmortgages@gmail.com
July 3, 2008 — 2:19 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
Now I get it. I thought Tom was trying to go from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
Will Blogger let you edit the code inyour theme when it’s hosted on blogspot?
If so, what I would do is go into the Blogger template and edit the link for the title and the “home” link that appears at the bottom of each individual post to point to the new URL. That way when people find these old pages, and click to go to your home page, they are directed to your new blog. then just leave the old blog on blogspot.
July 3, 2008 — 2:31 pm
Mark Eckenrode says:
@tom : i strongly recommend against removing content from your old blog. first off, google’s already found it, likes it and has content indexed. simply tweak your post template in blogger with instructions “New blog this way –>” kind of thing and a link.
now, i suggest you keep posting to the blogger site – at least for a while, anyway. you can “steal” the google juice. i’ve created a video on how to do this over on homestomper.com
July 3, 2008 — 7:56 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Why hurry about closing down the Blogger site? It’s free, why not just leave it be for a while? I’d add the “we’ve moved” notice, but otherwise, I’d leave it in tact.
In addition to what Mark said, other people may have linked to the your posts. You don’t want to leave them with a dead link.
Yes, you can edit the theme code on Blogger. I really like Todd’s idea to edit the Home link.
July 4, 2008 — 3:27 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
Cheryl,
Thanks. My question (as a newbie who has done very very little with html but is learning), when you say “edit the theme code” and “edit the home link,” how do I do that?
Thanks to all!
Tom
July 4, 2008 — 7:13 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
Well, I did it!
Straight Talk is now up and running on the new site at http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com. Any advice or improvements would always be welcome.
I’ve put links to some of the sites of those who I’ve gotten to know. If you’d like them “worded” differently, let me know. Also, if I missed anyone who would like to be linked to Straight Talk, e-mail me.
I also figured out how to “redirect” from blogger to my new site. I’ll do a post with the details of that later (it’s getting late) but I wanted to let you know it can be done.
I put an “I moved” post on http://www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.blogspot.com and I’ve decided that I’m going to leave that up on there until the traffic on that site has dropped to virtually none. Then I’ll put the redirect in place. My thinking is that since the new site looks substantially different than the old site, it’s going to be less confusing for my readers if the first time they “read” about it, it’s an explanation of it. Does that make sense? Or should I just put the redirect in right away?
Thanks all!
Tom
July 5, 2008 — 8:13 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Tom,
It’s been so long since I used any of my blogger accounts, I had to go back and take a look..
From the Blogger Dashboard
Click Manage: Template
Click the HTML tab
Before you do anything else, select all the html, copy it and paste it into a simple text file. Name it and save it, and don’t touch it again, unless things get messed up and you need to revert back.
What you do next will depend on the theme you are using, but there is probably a line that looks like this
<a href=”<$BlogURL$>”><< Home</a>
You’d change the a href=”<$BlogURL$>” to read a href=”http://www.yournewblogaddress.
And there’s probably a section that starts like this or something similar… That’s where you’d insert the “New blog this way” link to appear with each post. It would take some experimenting to see where the inserted line works best.
July 6, 2008 — 7:18 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
Oops. Didn’t proc it. The last part should read
And there’s probably a section that starts like this <div class=”post-body”> or something similar… That’s where you’d insert the “New blog this way” link to appear with each post. It would take some experimenting to see where the inserted line works best.
July 6, 2008 — 7:21 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
Just a side note: The Blogger theme system does not use separate style sheets. The CSS code for each theme is contained in the HTML header. That’s not terribly important, I just thought it was interesting.
July 6, 2008 — 7:27 am
Greg Swann says:
Good on ya, Tom. It looks good. The text on your about page is spectacular.
July 6, 2008 — 8:17 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
Greg,
Thanks for the compliments. My about page was actually pretty easy to write because it’s just my story, straight talk.
Tom
July 6, 2008 — 8:59 am
Terry Heath says:
It’s probably too late, since you’ve already done the move. But for the record, here’s how I have handled such moves in the past . . .
You see, the issue is ALL your links from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other places will still point to your Blogger blog URL. If someone follows one of these links, they’ll never see your “I’ve moved” post. If you could post something on your 401 page, that would help, but I’m not sure Blogger allows that.
What I recommend is using your new domain at Blogger as a “custom domain” (see the option in your dashboard). That way your old Blogspot domain will automatically redirect to the new domain AND issue a 301 redirect which informs the search engines to change their links.
Then after a month or two, go ahead and move everything to a SELF HOSTED installation of WordPress. The new domain will already be indexed by the search engines, so people won’t be fed broken links. If you insist on WordPress.com, remember they do not allow profit-making blogs unless you buy one of their large packages. Also, you will not have control over the way your permalinks are displayed, and you’ll still lose your Google links (because Blogger structures them differently than WordPress.com).
If you host your own WordPress, you can structure the permalinks to match your old Blogger ones, and not break a single link. Plus, if you leave everything as is at Blogger, even after you’ve moved the domain to your new blog location, the old blog will still be redirecting to your new domain . . . wherever it is located!
July 7, 2008 — 8:47 am