Well, I’m probably not the person to ask as I really have no clue what I’m doing, and I’m still sitting here worrying about whether my feed-based readers will find their way back here – or whether six years of building readership has just gone down the drain. Alas.
But, what I did was actually pretty easy. It did involve converting my blog to a blogspot one temporarily. Also, I set up my WordPress install in a subdomain to start with – as in blog.shellykang.com instead of the normal shellykang.com. That way, the old blog stayed intact until I had the WordPress one set up.
So, the process went something like this:
-back up the old blog somewhere safe, and then back it up again somewhere else safe just to be sure.
-set up new subdomain with Dreamhost (my server host) and install WordPress there – Dreamhost has a one-click install thingie, so that part was easy.
-go to blogger and convert my blog to a blogspot one. This was also easy. It didn’t change anything publicly visible on my actual website, it just created a shellykang.blogspot.com website with the exact same content. And made it so that I couldnt publish to the actual shellykang.com blog any more. Oh, how I’m kicking myself for not posting something to the effect of “Hey, I’m fiddling with my blog tonight. If you don’t see a new posting from me in your feed reader tomorrow, come to the actual blog and see what’s going on.”
-Go back to WordPress and find the import blogger blog gizmo. Works great once you’ve set it up as a .blogspot.com blog. Go get a cup of coffee or something because it takes a while to copy the files. Oh, and if you want to keep all your permalinks the same, there is some place to designate that before you do the actual import. I, being not a technical expert and too impatient to think it through, forgot this part. Which means that all those lovely links people have pointed to me over the years are now mostly broken. Alas.
-Finish setting up your blog – you know, put up your header image if you have one (and by the way, I’ll just say that I’m using the default template because it’s nice and clean and simple – and the easiest way to get my header image up was to copy the existing image to my computer, overwrite it with my own, and then FTP it back to the same spot on the server. In the defaut template, the image name is kubrick.jpg I think) I also re-added my blog roll and a couple of pages of information about me and some of the junk I write about.
-Move the new WordPress blog from the subdomain to the actual domain where it belongs. I don’t remember exactly how I did this, but there was a set of instructions somewhere in the WordPress codex that was useful.
-Go delete the blog you set up at .blogspot.com and give blogger a big, wet smoochie kiss goodbye!
-Sit around worrying about your .RSS feeds and hoping someone will pop in with an easy solution, meanwhile surf Amazon.com for a fancy new camera to allay your nerves, clicking on the buy button at half-past your bedtime, then stumble off to bed. I can’t wait to get my new Canon Rebel XSi in the mail later this week, and I’m trying not to think of the look that will be on my husband’s face when he sees it. But at least I’m not as worried about the *&^% RSS feed. I should go write a blog post now.
