What I Learnt When I Moved From Blogger to WP – Part 2 #Bloggingtips

~ This Reading Life

When I penned the first post on this topic a month ago, I did not think or suspect that it might turn into an ongoing series. I guess when you’re in survival mode, it’s hard to see that one day, all these new processes that seem difficult or unusual or unintuitive will one day become easier and more natural.

My first post was about the initial set-up. This post reflects the consolidation period.

Now that I’ve been using WordPress for two months I have a few more points and tips for anyone who is considering a move between blogging platforms.

The Good:

  1. More comments and longer threaded conversations – it’s lovely chatting to more WP bloggers, although I seem to have lost many of the Blogger regulars.
  2. Easier to respond and reply to WP blogs thanks to the app on my phone. I moderate all my comments, so the app makes it easy to approve them wherever I am. I still prefer typing my longer comments on the laptop, but quick replies are very do-able on the app.
  3. Block Editor – yes, really! For instance, when I started this post I had the glitches first and the good second. A simple click of the up/down arrow in each block moved them exactly where I wanted them.
  4. Reblogging – a great way to share posts between my blogs & to share posts of fellow readalongers on my blog.

The Glitches:

  1. Formatting issues on old posts and pages. This will obviously be an ongoing issue that I will resolve one post at a time as I need to.
    1. For instance, any time I wish to link an old post to a new one, I check the old one for problems first. This makes writing each post a much longer process, as I edit and reformat and curse a few times.
    2. ALL the issues are to do with the CLASSIC editor. All the old posts from Blogger have been imported into the old CLASSIC platform on WP.
    3. The main issue has been loss of all line spacing in these posts. They read as one long paragraph, but not all of them!
    4. To fix – click on paragraph drop down box and highlight text to be fixed, then select PREFORMATTED.
    5. Fix issues, then select fixed areas and go back to PARAGRAPH mode.
    6. It’s clunky but it will usually tidy things up enough.
    7. The second way is to go to WP admin, find post/page you want to work on and select CLASSIC EDITOR option underneath the heading.
    8. However, my various pages have been a bigger headache as these include long lists. Blogger allows lots of latitude with line spacing, WP does not. See my CC TBR page as an example.
    9. I have tried to copy & paste the entire page into a new page. But the line spacing issue still exists.
    10. I will think about this another day.
  2. Every single photo, from every single post, for the last 11 years has been added to the WP media gallery, twice!
    1. Sigh.
    2. I deleted a few early on only to realise that if I deleted the wrong one of the two, then the image disappeared from the post.
    3. When I have the time I will need to work out which one is the double and can be deleted without consequence. It will then just take time to tidy up.
    4. But for recurring posts, like Stories & Shout Outs, I’d rather not have 37 copies of the badge, cluttering up the storage space. Do I just live with this? Or do I pick one, label it properly (title, alt text etc) and sit down one day and edit all the older posts?
    5. How important is it to have a tidy media gallery?
  3. Major loss of page views and other statistical mishaps.
    1. I accept that it took 11 years to build up the traffic that I had at Brona’s Books & that it will just take time for everyone to find me here.
    2. But it is a little dispiriting to see that, over the past two months, the older posts on Brona’s Books have still had more views than the posts on my new blog.
    3. One solution I am playing with is to repost the reviews and posts that continue to get lots of traffic on the old blog.
    4. Any other SEO tips most welcome.
    5. Thanks to Kim’s comments below, I looked into how to do a URL redirect from Blogger to WP.
    1. If you would like to continue to access your stats and edit old posts, bookmark the URL for this admin area or if you have more than one Blogger blog, you can still get into this area via one of the other blogs.
    2. Go to your Blogger – Theme – and find the CUSTOMISE drop down box.
    3. Select EDIT HTML
    4. This should let you see the template code.
    5. Type CTRL f to bring up the search box
    6. Type in <head>
    7. Directly underneath <head> copy in this code using the URL of your new WP blog and SAVE.. 
<script type='text/javascript'>
  var d='<data:blog.url/>';
  d=d.replace(/.*\/\/[^\/]*/, '');
  location.href = 'https://bronasbooks.com';
</script>
  1. All the reviews I have posted on Goodreads, include a link that takes interested parties to my old blog. Couldn’t be bothered to fix this, but it’s something I hadn’t thought about before the move – just how many places I have left links to my posts – The Australian Women Writers Challenge, The Classics Club, other bloggers posts and readalongs.

None of these glitches are deal breakers, but they are time consuming to fix (if I can be bothered). And, of course, I will be bothered, at some point. The look of my blog is important to me. It bugs me that there are formatting glitches. It will be about prioritising which ones to fix.

  • All the pages will need to be fixed as I add to them regularly. Some more regularly than others. Ongoing, not urgent, but necessary.
  • When I read a new book by a favourite author I like to link my old reviews to the new. When this happens I will take the opportunity to tidy up the old posts. Sporadic, not urgent, maybe not even necessary, but I will feel happier knowing that the new link to the old post on this blog will take visitors to a properly formatted page.
  • I have observed that when I fix an older post, if I have a link to another blogger’s WP blog, they will get a pingback notification when I post the update. Not sure if this is good or a glitch?

Published by This Reading Life

30 thoughts on “What I Learnt When I Moved From Blogger to WP – Part 2 #Bloggingtips”

  2. I think I was lucky that I transitioned back when I did, i.e. before the classic/block editor problem.
    I’ve just done a quick search for ‘Brona’ through my blog posts, and I’ve got 21 hits. The first one I looked at had a link back to your review of The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney at the Blogspot blog. It won’t take me long to go through them and find any where I can replace the link with the post at this new blog.
    What you should see when this happens is notification of a pingback to the new post…

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    1. Thank you Lisa I really appreciate the effort involved in doing this (as I do it myself one by one)! I was checking the stats page too & it was gratifying to see how many people came from Bills recent aww week in particular (where all the links go to my new blog).

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        2. I was thinking maybe WP follows all the links when you come over, but your (Brona’s) review in Gen 1 for Ada Cambridge, Sisters is still linked to Blogspot

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    2. PS Now here’s an interesting thing! Using the search box I searched The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney on this blog to get the new URL, and couldn’t find it. So I clicked the link on my blog post (https://anzlitlovers.com/2009/10/20/maurice-guest-by-henry-handel-richardson/) which, when I hovered over it showed that it linked to the Blogspot blog. But when I clicked on it, it took me straight the review here on this blog! I can’t figure that one out at all.
      It will be interesting to see what else I find when I check out the other 20 links.

      But… I reckon the reason a search in your WP search box didn’t bring up the book is because you haven’t tagged that post with the title. If you want traffic, the quickest way to get it is to (a) tag everything with the book’s title, and (separately) the author, and (b) link to other people’s reviews. It’s not only a nice friendly thing to do, but apparently (because it encourages others to reciprocate and do the same with your blog posts) it ups your ranking at Google so that your results come up earlier in search pages.

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      1. Thanks for taking the time to work some of this stuff out Lisa. I’ve tried it out myself and RM came up straight away, but then I saw that you had Mahoney, not Mahony typed above, so if you tried that in the search box, you wouldn’t have got anything. Thanks for the tip about the tags. I try to link to other reviews (when I think of it), but I’m not consistent that’s for sure!

        Both blogs have bronasbook as the base for the url – but the old will have blogspot in it as well. This one is just bronasbooks.com

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  3. Well done on making the move. I did this back in 2014 (but from Typepad not Blogger) and it took me about 6 months to clean everything up! I had to do a lot of HTML!

    My traffic dropped off dramatically … back then I was getting 1,000 visits a day and it suddenly plummeted to about 50! If I knew then what I do now I would have set up a URL redirect but back then I was just a print journalist trying to teach myself digital stuff and there wasn’t much online to help because I guess it was all new moving from one blogging platform to another.

    Glad you find the app useful. I do almost everything on the app, including writing my reviews!

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    1. Thanks Kim. I did not know about URL redirects and how easy it is to do.
      A quick google has shown me how and it is now done and added to the post above.

      The only thing is now I cannot return to my old blog to check stats etc because I keep getting redirected to my new blog.

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      1. Oh dear. Can you reverse it? When I moved from Typepad to WP my typepad blog got deleted (I exported it all first, of course) because it was a paid subscription.

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        1. I think I’ll be able to go in the back way through one of my other blogger blogs. I’ll try tomorrow when I’m less tired! But don’t care too much atm. I was only going into the old blog to check stats.

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  4. It’s funny, around this time last year I was dreading the arrival of Block Editor, but despite a few niggle with it, I now much prefer it! I like a tidy Media Gallery, so I feel your pain…

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    1. Yes, Block Editor feels weird to start with, but after a few posts, it’s much easier to use. The only thing I don’t like so far is the how one of the edit/format box hovers above the block you’re working on, making it hard to get back into the block above quickly.

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  5. There are some things I like about WP, and some things I like about Blogger. I have not gotten the hang of the new block format on WP for TCC, and every time I try to post it is an awful, prolonged experience.

    I wonder if you are glad you moved over to WP. Sometimes I think about adding a different commenting system for my blog on Blogger. I created a blog on WP at the same time I did on Blogger, so I could also move all of my favorite posts (I’ve posted too much over the years to move it in one big move, I think) over there.

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    1. I am glad I moved Deb.
      If you want to move, it is VERY easy to import your entire blogger blog into the WP one (see my first post on this topic). I moved 11 years worth of posts in one go – easy! Just follow the steps 🙂

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  7. Looks like I’ll probably enjoy this, too, then as I had the same reaction to the two books you mentioned. I think I can post via FB to W/press but not everyone has this option, unfortunately.

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  8. Oops, Looks like I commented on the wrong post. I’ve been reading about your blog move and have been to and fro-ing for weeks. I decided not to change to W/Press and now I’m back thinking I should after fiddling around with google analytics which says I have issues…

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    1. Hopefully as you’ve noticed, there are 2 of these posts. Happy to answer any queries you might have.
      It’s a big move, that I nearly did several times, but baulked at each time, until my fit of fury of Christmas time!! So I know how much thinking goes I to it.

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    1. It did kick in straight away. So much so, that if I clicked on the old icon for my blogger blog, it automatically took me to the new wp blog. The only way I can access the old blog is through one of my other blogger blogs, via the back door, so to speak!

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