Blogger To WordPress Migration – Horrible Issues and Problems

So, you have your full proof plan to migrate your blog from Blogger to WordPress. Well I must say, it’s a very smart move. Approx one month back, I also take the decision to choose WordPress as CMS (Content Management System) for my blog and I’m really happy with my decision.

WordPress is great and have lots of potential to reach blog up in the blog-o-sphere. If you are aware with WordPress, then I must recommend you to go with it when you plan to start a new blog. It’s simply AWESOME but you will also face some horrible issues if you migrate your blog from blogger to WP. I’m listing them below with possible solutions.

Problems After Blogger To WordPress Move

I’m listing all the issues that I face after moving my blog on WP. I’m trying to fix them as soon as possible to protect my blog from any misshapen.

1. No Featured Image

WordPress have a great option that allows users to choose featured image of their choice that they wanna show as a post thumbnail. But after importing your blogger posts to WordPress blog, there will be no featured image by default and you’ll lose the thumbnails for all of your posts.
Solution:
Wordpress only shows featured images if they are hosted on your blog. Means to show your post thumbnails, you have to edit your posts. Upload the images inside the posts and set them as featured image. Only then they will appear as post thumbnail. (Really a time-wasting job – but have to do )

2. Dead Codes

In your blogger blog posts, you may use HTML and CSS codes to highlight or to decorate your texts. This is really important to grab user’s attention towards a particular piece of text. But all those codes will be lost after moving your blog on WP.
For example:

<div style=”background-color:yellow”>Demo Text</div>

Will convert to

<div>Demo Text</div>

If you are providing codes for any widgets and plugins to your readers, then you are really going to fall in a big trouble because all of your codes will be disappeared from the post. This thing happens with me. See below screenshot.

Codes within posts will lost

Solution:
If you wanna apply codes then you have to add them again.
And if you wanna show codes, then you have two options.

1. Encode your codes using this Encoder Tool before putting them into your posts.
2. Put your codes in Visual View but not in the Text View of post editor.

3. Static Pages will be No-More

Yes, I really mean it. After moving your blog from blogger to WP, you are going to kill all of your static pages. We can import our blog posts and comments but not the static pages.
If you are using your static pages for HTML sitemap and building links to those pages, then surely you can’t afford to lose your static pages. Right?

Solution:

1. Create new pages on WordPress
2. Redirect your blogger pages links to WP pages using Redirection plugin.

4. Duplicate Content Issues

You might be familiar that having duplicate content in blog is directly means to invite search engines to penalize your blog for duplicate content issues. This is really gonna happen with you if you are planning to move on WP.
In blogger, you might use multiple labels for single post which have no issues because labels are set to noindex for search engines, but on WordPress, all those labels will convert into categories. And having single post in multiple categories will be your biggest mistake.
Solution:
You can prevent your blog from this issue using below possible solution:

1. No index your category pages
2. Don’t include category name in post’s permalink. Use only post name in permalinks using below custom permalink structure.

/%postname%/

5. Unwanted Tags

Not for all posts, but you may get some unwanted and nonsense tags attached with your posts. This thing is really going to annoy you and will destroy your blog’s reputation.
Tags helps to categories the posts deeply and must be named wisely that attract readers to click. It not only make your blog navigation easy for your readers but also help to increase blog page views.
After the migration you’ll get lots of unwanted tags and those tags must be removed as soon as possible.
Solution:

1. Navigate to Posts > Tags
2. Delete all tags from there.

If you wanna add your desired tags to all of your posts, then navigate to Posts > All Posts and then hover your mouse pointer to your post titles, click on Quick Edit and change the tags from there. This process will be lengthy and time-consuming too, but it’s must to take care.

6. Comments Without Avatar

In blogger, commentator’s Google plus profile image shows as Avatar in comments they leave but this is not in the case of wordpress. We have to register for an account on Gravatar.com and have to upload our profile image there. That profile image will appear in comments as Avatar.
That means, your old comments will look ugly without any avatar. See below screenshot:

Comments on my blogger posts have no Avatar

Solution:

1. Register for an account at Gravatar.com and upload your profile image there.
2. Use your Gravatar account’s email id while commenting. Your avatar will show for your future comments.

If you wanna show avatar for previous comments too, then you have to edit the comments and replace blogger’s default email id (noreply@blogger.com) with your Gravatar’s email id. Possibly it’s the best solution

7. Tons of Crawling Errors

I’m not an expert and that’s why I got a lot of crawling errors in Google Webmaster Tools account after shifting my blog content from Blogger to WordPress. There were two major crawling errors:
Comments feed errors and mobile view errors.

Crawling Errors in GWT

Solution:
Actually I also don’t know how to remove these errors but truly said; as time passes, these errors are also reducing day by day. Now only 130 errors are left from 540. This improvement really feels me relax

8. Traffic Touches To Ground

Expert says that we don’t lose our traffic when we migrate our blog from Blogger to WordPress. But this was not happen in my case. I face decent traffic down after moving my blog on WP but within 10 days I recovered all of my traffic.

Traffic Hits the Ground and recovered super fast

Check out the solution to know how I recover my traffic so fast Solution:
Fix all the above mentioned issues as soon as possible to recover your traffic quickly. This is what I’m still also doing with my best efforts to make my blog looks great and free from any errors.

Conclusion:

These were the most horrible issues I face after moving my blog to WP. But now I’m on a right track and improving my blog for my valuable readers.
Questions for You:

• Do you ever migrate your blog? What issues you faced that time?
• If you are on Blogger, then will you ever think to shift your blog on a different CMS that is WP?

Please share your views and give me your valuable feedback. Keep in touch.