In our Blogger to WordPress migration tutorial, one of our readers asked us for the step by step guide on moving custom domain blogger website to WordPress. Blogger allows you to use 3rd party custom domains as well as Google domains with your blog. In this article, we will show you how to move custom domain blogger blog to WordPress.
Note: If you’re looking for moving a normal Blogger subdomain blog to WordPress, then see our guide on how to switch from Blogger to WordPress.
Only use this tutorial, if you are trying to move a Blogger site on a custom domain to WordPress.
Step 1: Getting Started
Before we start, it is important to note that this guide is for the self hosted WordPress blog. See our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org site vs free WordPress.com blog.
In order to get started, you will need a WordPress hosting provider to setup your self hosted WordPress website. We recommend Bluehost because they are an officially recommended hosting provider of WordPress, and they will give WPBeginner users 50% off discount.
If you want a Bluehost alternative, then take a look at Siteground who also offer the same special offer to WPBeginner users.
Step 2: Change DNS Settings
Blogger allows you to use any domain name registered by a 3rd party. U.S. based users can also use a domain registered with Google Domains.
When you first setup the domain pointing to your Blogger blog, you were asked to add CNAME and A records to your domain’s DNS records. You will need to delete those records and add your WordPress host’s DNS settings.
You can get DNS settings required by your WordPress hosting provider from their documentation or support websites. A typical DNS nameserver looks something like this:
NS1.Bluehost.com
NS2.Bluehost.com
In this guide, we will show you how to update DNS settings in Godaddy. If you have registered your domain with some other registrar don’t worry. The basic settings are the same on all domain registrars.
Important: DNS changes may take anywhere between a few hours to one or even two days to fully propagate. During this time, you can access your Blogger blog by logging into your account.
Changing DNS Settings in GoDaddy
Log in to your Godaddy account and click on the manage button next to domains. Click on the gear icon next to your domain and then select manage DNS.
You will see your domain information page. Next, you need to click on the DNS Zone File. This is where all the DNS level records for your domain are stored.
On the DNS Zone File page, you need to locate the A record and CNAME aliases you added for your Blogger blog and delete them. Click on save changes button to apply your changes.
The next step is to setup nameservers for your WordPress hosting provider. Go back to manage DNS page for your domain and then click on manage under the namservers section.
On the next page you need to click on custom and then click on edit nameservers link to add your new WordPress hosts nameservers.
Click on the save button to make your DNS changes go live.
Step 3: Remove Redirect
Your Bloggger blog’s original blogspot.com address is redirecting users to your custom domain. Since we have changed the domain settings, we need to remove this from Blogger too.
Simply log into your Blogger account and go to Settings » Basic page. Under the publishing section, click on the cross icon to cancel the redirect.
Step 4: Install WordPress
If your domain’s DNS has propagated now, you can now install WordPress on your hosting provider.
If your domain is registered on a 3rd party service other than your web host, then you will need to add the hosting for the domain. For example, in BlueHost you will add your domain as an Addon domain through cPanel unless it is the main domain on your account.
After adding domain to your new host, the next step is to install WordPress. Follow the instructions in our complete WordPress installation tutorial.
After successful installation of WordPress on your custom domain, you will be ready to import content from your Blogger blog.
Step 5: Export Content From Blogger
Before you can import content into WordPress, first you need to export it from your Blogger blog.
Blogger allows you to export content in an XML file.
Login to your Blogger blog and visit Settings » Other page. Under the blog tools, click on the Export Blog link.
This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the Download Blog button.
Depending on the file size, it may take a few seconds or a few minutes. Once you have your data, it is time to import it into your WordPress site.
Step 6: Import Blogger Blog into WordPress
Login to your WordPress admin area and visit Tools » Import page. There you will see a list of importers for different services. You need to click on Blogger to install the Blogger importer.
This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the Insall button. WordPress will now download and install the Blogger Importer plugin for you. Once it is finished installing the plugin, you need to click on Activate Plugin and Run Importer link to continue.
On the Import Blogger screen, WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file. Simply click on choose file button and upload the XML file you downloaded earlier. Click on the Upload file and import button to continue.
WordPress will now import your blogger posts from blogger, once it is finished you will be asked to assign an author to the imported posts. You can assign your blogger posts to an existing author or create a new one.
Congratulations! you have successfully imported your Blogger blog into WordPress. However, you still need to make sure that you don’t loose any search rankings and that visitors to your old blog can easily land to the same content on your new WordPress powered website.
Step 7: Setup Permalinks
WordPress comes with a feature that allows you to set up SEO friendly URL structure. However, since you are importing content from Blogger, you would want your URL structure to be as close to your Blogger URL structure as possible. To set permalinks you need to go to Settings » Permalinks and paste this in the custom structure field:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
Setp 8: Setup Feed Redirects
You have successfully redirected your Blogger blog to WordPress. However, users who have subscribed to your Blogger RSS feed will stop receiving updates.
You need to redirect feed requests to your WordPress feeds. This can be easily achieved by editing .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root folder. If you can’t find your .htaccess file, then see this tutorial.
Start by connecting to your WordPress site using an FTP client. You will need to enable ‘Show Hidden Files’ option in your FTP client settings. If you are using Filezilla, you will find this option under Server menu.
Once you are connected to your website, you will find the .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root directory. You need to edit this file and paste the following code before any other code in the file.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine on RewriteRule atom.xml /feed? [L,R=301] RewriteRule rss.xml /feed? [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^feeds/posts/?.*$ /feed? [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^feeds/comments/?.*$ /comments/feed? [L,R=301] </IfModule>
Save your changes and upload the .htaccess file back to the server. Your Blogger feed subscribers will now be redirected to your WordPress site’s feed.
Customizing Your WordPress Site
WordPress comes thousands of beautiful themes and extremely powerful plugins.
See our guide on how to choose the perfect theme for your WordPress site. As for plugins, take a look at WPBeginner’s blueprint to find out the plugins and tools we use on this website.
As a new WordPress user you will often need help. WPBeginner is the largest WordPress resource site for beginners. See how you can make the most out of WPBeginner’s free resources.
We hope this article helped you move your custom domain blogger blog to WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog.
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I have more than 14000 posts. It is big file of 145 MB. Then how will I do it? What will be the moving time. If it is removed from blogger, then is there any downtime? Will my site loose rank? Can I copy abc.com on blogger custom domain to xyz.com on WordPress press? and then set back to abc.com on the same hosting? Pls guide me.
what to do for google adsense and how to show google ad on new website (moved from blogger to wordpress which have custom domain) .
reverification of google adsense for new website or anything else
Thanks in advance
Hi, I have a blog on blogspot with 200 + post. Recently I have purchased the domain from godaddy and hosting from hostgator. Hostgator sent me an email with username and password. There is no any option of cpanel login. I have purchased the wordpress hosting plan. Now on my hostgator profile, it says that wordpress installed. But when I try to login admin panel. It says no page found.
I want to migrate my blog from blogger to wordpress blog but don’t know what to do with that domain or How can i shift.
Looking forward to your positive response.
Thanks for this valuable and clear guide.
But still I have couple of questions:-
1. why This Importer is only importing my blogger site posts not the static Pages.
2. Blogger site Posts urls are pointing perfectly to respective WordPress permalink urls but why the static page url (bloggerexample.com/p/pageurl) is not redirecting to WordPress concern urls (wordpressexample.com/pageurl) ? I have more then 100 static pages on my blogger site so I think using a redirection plugin is not a good idea.
2. how to perfectly mapping these static blogger pages urls to respective WordPress pages url in bulk?
Thanks in advance.
Please If registering for the bluehost web hosting where do you start, is it with the new domain or I already have domain options?
2. When or how do you know the DNS setting has fully propagated?
Please help with an explicit directions on the 1 and 2 steps
Hey Favour,
If you already have a custom domain name (example: wpbeginner.com), then please select that option. IF you don’t already have a domain name then start with a new domain name.
There are online tools that you can use to check if DNS has propagated. However, the easiest way to check it is by simply typing your url in a new browser window.
Hi, please can you help me move from blogspot to wordpess, cos I don’t want to be stuck in the process?
Why can’t I use godaddy domain name on wordpress without new billings attached.
I have a blogger blog on a custom sub-domain http://www.blog.example.com.
I wish to move my blogger blog to WordPress on the same root domain http://www.example.com. May I do so?
OR, I’ve to install WordPress on thecustom sub-domain http://www.blog.example.com, where my blogger blog is already being redirected.
And If I am able to install wordpress on http://www.example.com then how can I manage my http://www.blog.example.com ‘Blogger’ blog to redirect my new wordpress site.
Please help me and oblige.
Thanks.
Will this still allow viewing on my Blogger site until my WordPress site goes live? Or does it transfer the domain immediately since we are altering on GoDaddy.
It will start pointing to your new WordPress site as soon as Namserver changes are propagated across internet.
I’ve been trying to import my custom domain blogger to wordpress for a while now. I changed the DNS and took away the redirect. It’s still not working. Is there anything else I could try to get the job done.
Thank you in advance.
I was searching for about one week on net to solve the problem i facing to move my custom domain blogger blog to WP but I could not get solution. This is only wpbeginner.com to help me on the problem. Now I have decided to move. Thanks.
Dear sir, i migrated my custom domain blog to wordpress. but images are not imported from blogspot to wordpress. only post texts and links are migrated. How can i import my post images? please give a solution.
Hi, My blogger site is still using the .blogspot.com, meaning I haven’t setup a 3rd party URL and my blog has not yet been ranked with only less than 20 posts and only a couple of static pages, can I just simply copy the content and delete the blogger so I could use WordPress and a different domain name coz right now and I don’t know what has gotten into me that I used the pronunciation for the actual word.
We believe that you should still set 301 redirect so that search engines don’t panelize your new WordPress site for duplicate content.
Blogger Importer is not working. What should I do now? Is there any other way to import blogger post without losing traffic?
This was helpful. However, my Blogger blog truncates the post names if they’re too long. Is there a way to set the permalink to respect the Blogger title truncation?
Hello. I’m moving my blog to wordpress and this is so helpful… However, I have a couple of questions:
1. Do you need to have your domain active for a month before the change? My log is under one domain (which is expiring) but the new one will be under another (That I bought this week). Since I wouldn’t like to have a “down blog” I would like to know if I can add the domain to my blog right before transfer and then transfer it. Hope it makes sense.
2. Where do I find my new WordPress hosts nameservers? I’m lost.
Thank you so mych
You can point your old blog to the new blog by updating its name server or DNS settings. You will need to point it to your new domain name.
Thank you so much!
One more thing… when I try to import my blog, it says the maximum file size is 2MB (which is too low. My blog file has 9mb.) Is there a way for me to increase this number?
Thank you!
What if I changed to Permalinks to Post name what will happen? One of the reasons why I want to migrate to WordPress is because I want to get rid of dates in blogger URL. Can you give options? Is it possible to set Permalinks to Post name without losing traffic or search engine rankings?
Thank you very much for this useful information. I would like to know the same as Jericho. Once I have imported my Blogger content to WordPress, can I then change the Permalinks to Posts name without loosing search engine rankings?
Thank You so much.
Thanks so much.
..Pls in case u re having AdSense codes on ur blogspot before switching in fr a custom domain and nw changing to WordPress with ur new domain, pls ll AdSense deactivate ur acct or it ll still be the same….
my site name.xyzloversbrain.blogspot.com
Totally needed this about 6 months ago. Oh well…. But i will save this for another time.