301 Redirect From Blogger To WordPress

YEP! Yep yep!

BEHOLD, BITCHESSS!

This, is my 2nd! And check out my new slick-ass header above.

The previous post was my first foray into WordPress. Monumental. And now I’m all  misty-eyed! *sniff*

I tried out several diff. templates and of course, ended up with this one called Cutline. Which is cool, cuz I just realized the author of this template is on my Twitter feed. He also makes other nifty, SEO-friendly templates @ pearsonified.com.

Today’s post will be a brief mention about the infamous 301 Redirect tool and, some script that I used on my blogspot site. It will save your butt in the event of moving your blog to another.

Now the thing about SEO you gots to realize is that it’s like having seniority. If search engines have been indexing your blog that’s been around for oh, I don’t know, 2-3 yrs. online, then you’ve been in the system quite a while. So the longer you’ve been around, the more you’ve already moved up in the ranks. And that’s without doing much.

Like I just did, for example. I’ve had my blog since Nov. 2008 but, I had applied an RSS feed to it. That means I now have subscribers and aggregated analytics results.

Do I want to lose all that cache of information? NO!

But, some people make co$tly errors…Like Toys R’ Us, according to this article.

The lesson learned is that if you’re acquiring a new domain you should transfer is, instead of moving it. The same can be said for changing domains/names.

——————————————————————————————————————-

Now I just made the move from Blogger to WordPress. Some folks simply migrate all posts from one to the other, then delete old blog posts altogether. What a mistake! I mean ok, if you blog for fun and don’t care about losing readership, then, screw it.

But if you’re doing this for business’ sake, dayum! Think ahead for one second.

All the notoriety and ranking you’ve spent years building up will be wiped out by one simple change.

I’ve  had to read up a lot on this subject, and it’s tricky.  Since I wasn’t able to find such key info, I’m going to tell you something…

What You Need To Know Before

Migrating From Blogger To WordPress

1. Don’t wait to move after 500 + blog posts! Anyone who’s done this already can concur what a trememdous pain in the arse it is! And some things get lost in the move, so back everything up first!
2. Blogger is FREE – So you can do mods all you want limitlessly
3. WordPress.com is FREE – You can’t modify anything beyond the header, really
4. WordPress.org isn’t free – Actually, you must pay for hosting before you can use it, but customize all you want. AND, they let you use plugins instead of crappy widgets
5. It really makes no sense to go from FREE Blogger to FREE WordPress because all your widgets will not show up, nor can you add them. They won’t let you. So don’t do it until you can afford hosting services for it. Yea, I know, but I’m giving myself a month deadline before making the transition. MYOB already!
6. WordPress has pretty damn good free templates if you search all over the web. The best of the best you can purchase from developers
7. Why use WordPress.org? It’s completely customizable and uses the best plugins
8. DO NOT DELETE YOUR OLD BLOG RIGHT AWAY. Even soon after the migration!
9. Give the search engines enough time to realize you moved to a different domain
10. You must set up a 301 Redirect attribute so the search engines will know about your move
11. If you don’t 301 Redirect, not only will your readers will get lost in limbo, but also your current page rank and RSS/Atom Feed
12. Search engines will read duplicate posts from your new migration and your old blog. Set up the attribute to prevent this
13. Search engines will penalize you for duplicate posts. They can’t tell if you are the original author or some scraper sites so they split the page rank credit between both, knocking you down a few notches
14. 301 attributes are all worded differently so choose wisely. You may hafta try it a few times to get it right
15. 301 code sometimes works, sometimes not. Sometimes you won’t even get feedback for a malfunctioning one
16. After you 301, make sure to notify your feeds right away
17. You must put the NO FOLLOW attribute on your previous blog so search engines will know to no longer follow it as primary blog
18. Page rank may suffer for a bit so give it time to catch up
19. You should just get the Redirect Plug-in and save yourself all this hassle if you have WordPress.org. If you’re like me with FREE WordPress.com, then you can’t use it so read on!

There’s many tutorials out there, and a few are hopelessly outdated, or supply buggy code. As for me, I used this one from Laffers.net. Yea, that’s your cue to go check it out, smarty-pants! Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Ok, first up is this easy code that you place anywhere between your head tags:

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"/>

And similarly, let’s get this out of the way. This here’s the message window that’s gonna pop up on the screen to tell you the blog moved:

<div style='position: absolute; top: 30px; left: 30px; border: solid 2px #333; color: #000; background-color: yellow; padding: 5px; width: 400px; z-index: 5; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;'>
<p><strong>My blog has moved!</strong></p>
<p>You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit<br/> <a href='http://yournewblog.wordpress.com/'> <strong>http://yournewblog.wordpress.com</strong></a> <br/> and update your bookmarks.</p>
</div>

Anything that is in blue can be modified to your liking, but I wouldn’t mess with anything else.  Remember to change the http://www.address.com  to your new blog’s home address! Ok, so now you gotta add the following string of code between your head tags:

<meta content='6;url=http://yournewblog.wordpress.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>

This next one’s tricky though…add this below your main wrapper code :

<b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var new_page='yournewblog.wordpress.com/';
var permalink = '<data:post.url/>';
var timestamp = '<data:post.timestamp/>';
timestamp = timestamp.split('/');
timestamp = timestamp[2]+'/'+timestamp[0]+'/'+timestamp[1];
new_page = permalink.replace(/youroldblog\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/[0-9]{2}/,new_page+timestamp);
new_page = new_page.replace(/\.html$/,'');
document.location.href = new_page;
</script>
</b:loop>
</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Because this serves as your redirects.

And after applying it, I got this error message:

The new widget id “redirector” ; is invalid for type: Blog

It basically tells you that that whole first line of code in the script below, is wrong. I’m not sure which part though; I ain’ts no developer!

Some other commenters encountered the same error. Unfortunately I could still find no resolution in any forum whatsoever. All the top page ranking blogs that covered this topic merely blow you off, don’t offer a fix to their bugs, and/or tell you to go get the damn plug-in!~

However, even as I erased all this snippet of code:

<b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var new_page='yournewblog.wordpress.com/';
var permalink = '<data:post.url/>';
var timestamp = '<data:post.timestamp/>';
timestamp = timestamp.split('/');
timestamp = timestamp[2]+'/'+timestamp[0]+'/'+timestamp[1];
new_page = permalink.replace(/youroldblog\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/[0-9]{2}/,new_page+timestamp);
new_page = new_page.replace(/\.html$/,'');
document.location.href = new_page;
</script>
</b:loop>
</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

And applied everything else, my blogspot address still resulted in the 301 Redirect.

You want proof? www.supermunk.blogspot.com ! Here’s SuperMunk’s 301 Redirect:

BUT, I didn’t add that string of code above , because I kept getting the error message, which I found was universal amongst other forums. Such as this blog comments from another site:

“The new widget id “Redirector” is invalid for type: Blog” and will not allow me to save the template.

Which was the same damn problem I kept having. Ugh! And I remembered before Blogger Beta, the old Blogger had such issues with <b:> tags.

So being the smart monkey that I am, I simply erased that part of the attributes within the code.

SO, if – <b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>

THEN remove, – <widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts'type='Blog'>

Remove the b: within all the attributes. And that’s it!

Please note: I’d like to mention at this time that after you remove it and Save Changes, you will be notified that Blogger has saved the changes. BUT, when you go back to check it, it dissappears and don’t ask me why.

Honestly, I can’t believe after all the sites I read that I was the only one to crack that code bug! Dayuuum I am proud of myself! Like a, a self-proud monkey!

Ok enough gloating…so after this I went into my FeedBurner acct. and updated it with my new URL. Only time will tell if it worked properly. Time will also show the progression of my newly diverted traffic flow. So now it’s my feed I’m anxious about and not so much my readers. They already know where I’m at! (^^)

Oh, and here is a list of those sites I went to visit to find all this info:

• http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress
• http://www.blogherald.com/2007/12/14/blogger-sucks-wanna-move-to-wordpress/
• http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php
• http://hellosam.net/project/blogger-redirector

Uh-hunh…you’re welcome!