Switching to Self-Hosted Blog -- I NEED HELP AND ADVICE!

Currently, I have a blog hosted by Blogger. When I began blogging and did my research, I heard many complaints from people who used WordPress and were switching to Blogger. Then certain big blogs, such as Kevin and Amanda, recommended using Blogger. Hence, I am now using Blogger.

Lately, I have been contemplating switching to a self-hosted blog. And here's where my inexperience (I've only been blogging less than a year) and confusion come it to play. Btw, I am pregnant and therefore slow, and I am not a super genius at technical stuff, so small words help!

My blog is getting pretty good. I have a Google PR of 2 (not awesome, but it'll do), over 1,000 GFC followers, more than 1,000 email/RSS subscribers, and more than 20,000 pageviews. I don't want to lose ANY of this if at all possible!

Here are my questions I hope you can help me with:

1) Are there other ways to self-host besides via WordPress.org, or do you recommend WordPress.org?

2) What is the least painful (and least expensive) way to switch from Blogger to a self-hosted blog?

3) Can I maintain my current numbers after migration (GFC followers, pageviews, Google PR, etc.).

4) I currently have a domain name (www.MeasuringFlower.com). Can I keep it in the transfer? Do I need HostGator or something similar (which would you recommend)?

5) I have an email (via gmail) for my domain name. Can I keep it as well?

6) Can I maintain my current blog design or pretty close to it?

7) Do you know of a blog designer who can transfer my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted blog? Maybe even including my followers, pageviews, etc., and without costing too terribly much (we do struggle to eat)?

8) Do you have any other tips/advice? I welcome all--and please speak clearly as I am pregnant and not the most technical-minded, lol.

Thank you! :-)

Tags: blogger, migrating, to, wordpress

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Permalink Reply by Joanna Liberty on August 12, 2011 at 5:40pm

Congratulations on your pregnancy! I'm also expecting (any day now...), so I totally understand what you're saying about the small words being helpful LOL!

Answering your questions isn't an entirely easy task. I am assuming that by self-hosting your blog you mean that you want to go to a hosting provider, purchase server space and launch your blog from their server rather than the blogger server. Another option is to set up your own server and host it yourself, but generally people don't mean that when they say self-hosting. So based on that assumption here are my answers to your questions (and by the way, I use blogger):

1) There are a lot of different options as to which blog platform you can use. I would say the two most common are Blogger and Wordpress. This isn't to say that I think one is better than the other or that these two are better than other options, they are just the names you hear most often. Here's a link from LifeHacker from 2010 that talks about their 5 favorite blog platforms: http://lifehacker.com/5568092/five-best-blogging-platforms. If I were to move my blog away from the Blogger platform, I would go with either Wordpress or SquareSpace, personally. Blogger and Wordpress are both free - you have to find a host for Wordpress if you are choosing to self-host, but the platform software is free. SquareSpace combines a fee for both the hosting and the platform software.

2) I don't know, I haven't researched this at all.

3) Because so many people have completed the transfer from Blogger to Wordpress, there are tons of tutorials out there on how to best keep your stats. I know there is a tutorial here (http://www.myfrontporchswing.com/taking-google-friend-connect-to-wo...) to transfer your GFC followers to your new blog, but that's only applicable if your domain name is changing. If you are using Blogger to publish your feed, then you won't be able to transfer that as easily, but if you are using something Feedburner, it follows your domain. Provided you own your domain (have paid to register it and pay to renew it from Go Daddy or another domain registrar), you should have minimal problems making this transition. I believe you may have problems with Google PR - even if you do own your own domain and are using the same domain on a new host and with a new blogging platform.

4) Who did you pay to register your domain? The domain should be yours, but I know there's an option to register a domain through Blogger and I'm not sure how that works. If that's what you did, I'm not sure. If you registered your domain name through a third party (mine is through GoDaddy, for example), then yes you take it with you.

5) Your email account is through Gmail, so it's yours regardless of what you do with your blog. They are not related, although it may be what you use to sign in to Blogger, it's not the property of Blogger. Blogger and Gmail are both owned by Google, but not using the blogging platform doesn't change your Gmail access. Just don't delete your Google account and you're fine.

6) Did you design your blogger template yourself? If you did it yourself it's likely that you will be able to use the same or something similar on a different platform. The question is really does that platform work with that template or what tweaks will you have to make to get it to work. If you paid a designer to create your blogger theme, then you will likely need to pay him or her to make the design work on whatever platform you decide to go with.

7) Tons of designers do transfers. Ask for references first and never pay in full upfront.

8) I'm not convinced that you need to switch platforms to mature your blog. I just checked out your blog and honestly, the first thing that I would advise is to do more relevant posting. Here's what I mean - on the front page right now you have 3 memes, 1 post featuring another blogger and 1 post with content that belongs to your blog. You could have a million followers from hops and memes and link exchanges, but if you're not posting content that people actually want to read, you're only getting pass-through traffic instead of traffic from people who are actually reading and responding to your blogging. You have great numbers, but the best way to improve from there would be to bring more readers in through your content. Maybe it's an off week, I went back 5 more posts and again there were 3 hops/memes. It's great to be involved in those, but that would be my advice for growing more.

I would also suggest losing some of the graphics. If you want to be taken as a serious, professional blogger, it might help to have a header that is not quite as large and fewer graphics in and around posts - they can seriously be distracting and draw the eye away from your content, which is supposed to be the reason I'm at your blog.

Above all, I have to say - you don't have to take my advice. You have more followers and visitors than I do - and I've been blogging for 10 years now. You have so much to offer with your background that I think you are doing yourself a disservice by focusing on ad revenue and blog hops/memes. 10,000 readers that are just clicking through are not going to give you the boost that you would get if you had 5,000 people who are dying to see your next cake design post or couponing post. That's just my opinion, though.