WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Migrating Your Existing Blog to WordPress

So you have a blog on a different blogging system and want to move your blog to WordPress? This chapter helps you accomplish just that. WordPress makes it relatively easy to pack up your data and archives from one blog platform and move to a new WordPress blog.

WordPress lets you move your blog from such platforms as Blogspot, TypePad, and Movable Type. It also gives you a nifty way to migrate from any blogging platform via RSS feeds, as long as the platform you're importing from has an RSS feed available. Some platforms, such as MySpace, have some limitations on RSS feed availability, so be sure to check with your platform provider. In this chapter, you discover how to prepare your blog for migration and how to move from the specific platforms for which WordPress provides importer plugins.

For each blogging platform, the WordPress.org platform provides you with a quick and easy way to install plugins that allows you to import and use your content right away. The importers are packaged in a plugin format because most people use an importer just once, and some people don't use the importer tools at all. The plugins are there for you to use if you need them. WordPress.com, on the other hand, has the importers built into the software. Note the differences for the version you are using.

Movin' on up

Bloggers have a variety of reasons to migrate ...