Ten – wait, Eleven – reasons to switch to WordPress

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I finally worked up the nerve to switch this site from Blogger to WordPress last week and it’s been a pretty good experience thus far. Here are a few good things that have come out of the change:

Excellent free WP layouts are everywhere. I chose the Structure theme for now because I’d seen it around and it was clean and simple. I’m going to try and keep things less cluttered here than they were on Blogspot.
Huge library of plugins to extend blog functionality. The WordPress plugin directory has 3300 plugins available right now to enhance and customize the blogging experience. In many cases installation only takes a few clicks.
Hands-free search engine optimization. The nifty All-in-One SEO pack is cramming each page with relevant meta tags and alt tags and all of the other things that make for better search engine results. This plugin helps Google do a better job of finding all of my posts and presenting them as relevant search results. This process is aided by automated XML sitemap generation (another plugin). I’ve already seen incoming Google traffic skyrocketing in the few days since I’ve moved to WordPress.
Robust tagging interface. Unlike Blogger’s reliance on categories, WordPress is letting me use real live tags to separate posts. While they can be about the same thing if you approach it the right way, tags are the dominant metaphor for content indexing under Web 2.0. As a bonus, I can now use the nifty WP-Cumulus tag cloud plugin seen in the sidebar.
Better integration of third party comment systems. I’ve got the same DISQUS commenting system I was using on Blogger, but now it’s served up through an internal plugin rather than just a paste-on javascript include. Wordpress publisher Automattic has just brought IntenseDebate back online so all WP users will be able to take advantage of another third-party commenting option. Check out this September post for some background on the awesomness of third-party commenting.
Better portability. Moving from Blogger to Wordpress required some server-side voodoo to suck up all of my Blogspot posts into an intermediate Wordpress account. Once I got the intermediate WP site working I was able to export the whole site as a 400kb XML file. As humbling as it is to see my blog reduced to a tiny text file it makes me feel more secure to know that I can export it and save it wherever I want.
Fine-grained caching control. I’m using the WP Super Cache plugin to cache every page to disk rather than returning to the database for each page view. The benefits here are twofold: First, page load speeds are dramatically increased. Second, If I ever accidentally post something that winds up on the front page of Digg the site will last a bit longer without melting. WP Super Cache offers plenty of options for exactly how much content should be static and how much should be reloaded on demand. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a great writeup on why all WordPress blogs should consider caching.
Native iPhone support via plugin. I’ve looked at the WPTouch plugin as a way to easily serve up a lo-fi version of the site to iPhones. Unfortunately it’s got some conflict with the cache plugin I mentioned in #7 and so I haven’t turned it on yet. I’ve read that I could switch to the slightly less exciting “WP Cache” plugin and then pop in a workaround to get WPTouch working but I haven’t taken the time to do that yet.
Open source flexibility. Google-owned Blogspot has its own cachet in the blogosphere but WordPress is a completely customizable PHP application. I can change absolutely anything about this blog if I take the time to read through the source code. I’ve already dropped in several tweaks and it makes my programmer’s heart melt.
Cleaner separation of content types. WordPress has a static “pages” feature that allows me to create permanent posts without dates. The Sharing at Work About and Contact pages are now standalone pages viewable from the sidebar. They have simple urls like /about and /contact. Under Blogspot I’d had to backdate my about and contact pages as old posts in order to push them out without messing up the flow of the site’s news feed. The fact that WP supports categories AND tags is just icing.
Cohesive presentation. The excellent Related Posts and Smart 404 plugins automatically identify related content within the site and present it to the reader in easy to understand lists at the bottom of the page. Now new readers, curious readers, and casual drive-by Googlers are going to have an easier time finding the posts they are most likely to want to read. If you come here to read a post about iPhones you’ll see links to five other iPhone related posts in the footer. Enjoy your visit, leave happy! If you follow a bad URL to get here the Smart 404 will do its best to redirect you to the intended post or at least present you with a set of similar posts to browse.

Matt Cuts On WordPress – The Good and The Bad (howtospoter.com)
Three Best Ways to Improve Your Online Reputation (online.wsj.com)
Disqus – Why 95% Of Bloggers Should Switch (andybeard.eu)

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Thanks, Daniel. You make the whole thing sound almost pain free. I've noticed the tubu.net has become quite popular of late. Is it just the price or are there other benefits?I really appericiate your ideas & i am totally with it.

VMaryAbraham

Congratulations, Daniel!

This is something I've been thinking about doing (and agonizing over) for months. Since, unlike you, I'm not blessed with a "programmer's heart," the whole prospect of shifting from blogger to wp seems daunting. Are there any guides you used that you'd recommend? Alternatively, are you available for consultations? :-)

- Mary

Daniel J. Pritchett

Once you get your WP blog running and your posts imported there are a few other important things to do.

4) Modify your feedburner feed to point to your new blog. If your site is anything like mine then most of your readers are coming in via RSS and not going straight to the blog anyway. Install the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin and it will walk you through the process.

5) We need to figure out a way to preserve some of the search engine mojo your existing blog has already built up. It will be somewhat difficult because your current links all end in .blogspot.com and any new WP blog you set up won't be on Blogspot. Worst case we can put something in your blogspot template that redirects everything to your WordPress front page. Something like this might be painful but I agree with Chris Brogan's advice here:
Get your own unique URL. It matters in the long run, especially should you choose to change hosts. For instance, if you move off a blogger account at *.blogspot.com , you lose all link equity and page rank for that domain. This means you’d have to start again from scratch. Already in that position? Make the switch now.

VMaryAbraham

Daniel -

To be honest, this is the part that worries me the most. That Google ranking feels like a precious commodity. I've got about 175 posts in my archive and a fair amount of site traffic. And, a lot of that traffic seems to come via Google searches. It's the issue that stopped me from moving over earlier. Ironically, the longer I wait, the harder it gets.

- Mary

Daniel J. Pritchett

We should be able to set up some redirects to send old links through
blogger to your new site. Maybe I can try that on my own site as a
test.

VMaryAbraham

That would be great. It's a shame to walk away from the equity you've built in your blog. If there's a reasonable way to preserve it, we should definitely do it.

- Mary

Daniel J. Pritchett

Here's a guide for automated per-post redirects from blogspot to wordpress. They claim it will preserve your SEO ranking!

I think you ought to go ahead and buy a domain name and set up your new WordPress blog when you get the time. Once you get it running ok, try and flip on this blogger redirect and see how it goes!

Edit: Hat tip to Filination for the link. There's a bit of background here if you need more explanation of this particular 301 redirect process. It's certainly not something I'm familiar with.

VMaryAbraham

Thanks so much, Daniel. The $60m question is whether a non-programmer can actually do all of this. I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'll keep you posted.

- Mary

Daniel J. Pritchett

I'd be happy to help, Mary. There are a few major points to focus on, the rest can fall into place after the move as you have time.

1) Choose a web host that automatically installs WordPress for you and install it to the root directory of your web space. I chose tubu.net and while I had some initial headaches it's working pretty well now and it's hard to beat the $10/year price ($9 with a discount code).

2) Import your posts from Blogger to Wordpress. There's a feature in the WP control panel under Manage->Import that is supposed to slurp up all of your Blogger content automatically. That didn't work for me so I used a slightly more complicated method outlined by Brad Linder:
If your new site is hosted by GoDaddy or another web host that blocks imports from Blogger, just go to Wordpress.com and create a new, free blog that's hosted by Wordpress. You should be able to import your posts this way, and then go to Manage -> Export in the control panel to save your blog as an XML file on your desktop. You should be able to import this file into your new hosted blog without any problems.

3) Pick a WordPress theme other than the default Kubrick theme. You can find plenty at the Wordpress site. Installing this will require some basic knowledge of FTP. If that's a problem let me know and I will do it.

Good luck!

VMaryAbraham

Thanks, Daniel. You make the whole thing sound almost pain free. I've noticed the tubu.net has become quite popular of late. Is it just the price or are there other benefits?

-Mary

Daniel J. Pritchett

it's the $9 package as endorsed by Chris Brogan. Everyone else lookns
to me $5/mo. I'm sure there are other low-cost providers I just
haven't seen.

entmike

While I have no recent basis for comparison from one blogging application to another, WP was pretty easy for me to set up. I do like that their are tons of themes and plugins available and the fact that's all written in PHP means I can write in my own terrible code as I see fit.

Daniel J. Pritchett

There are certainly some reasons to use other platforms, I just wanted to jot down the good things I'd experienced in moving from Blogger to WordPress. I'm guessing my new host will have less uptime than Google, for instance.

Amen to the PHP stuff. Consider making anything cool you write into a plugin, Mike!

Ten – wait, Eleven – reasons to switch to WordPress

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Daniel J. Pritchett

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