You may have started blogging using the platform provided by Google(blogger)  or Wordpress, as they are free of charge. But when you are hosting your blog with them the domain name of your blog will actually be an extension of a top level domain name (like – http://nazdroviahosting.blogspot.com).

Hence you may not find the URL to be very attractive. Once you start receiving enough number of visitors, you may want to transfer all your data (blog posts, comments etc) from those sites to your own domain. Adding them manually (as new posts) is not a good idea and most of the search engines will treat those posts as duplicates.

The best way to do this is to ‘import’ all the content from the third party blogging sites to your personal site. This edition of techblog tells you how to do this procedure.

Migrating to your site

After buying enough space from an economic web hosting service provider, you can simply ask the host to install the blogging software in your website. The only thing that you need to worry here is that some hosts won’t allow server-to-server import. If this is not supported, then the importing won’t be easy in most cases. This blog recommends Nazdrovia Hosting for your hosting needs (especially if you want to host a personal site or blog).

Once you have installed a good blogging software like Wordpress (which is the most popular one), you can go the ‘admin dashboard’ to view the settings. In the dashboard you will be able to locate a utility called ‘Import’ under the ‘Tools’ menu (in the sidebar).

By clicking on that link, the software will guide you through the whole process of importing. Here you can select the site from which the data should be imported.

From Blogware

If you were using the service provided by Blogware , the you need to go the ‘admin panel’ and select ‘Export’ from the manage blog options.

Once you have done that, the website will allows you to download all your posts as an XML file. You can simply upload this file to your Wordpress and click on the button ‘Upload file and import’. All your posts will be uploaded to your new site.

From Blogger

Blogger is one of the most popular services and Google allows you to import all the posts and comments directly from the website. All you need is to select ‘Blogger’ from the list of service providers (from your Wordpress dashboard) and click on the ‘Authorize option’. Even if you were hosting that on a custom domain, you can go for this option. 

Once you have done that you will be redirected to the Google account page where you have to authorise the transfer by clicking on the ‘Grant access’ button.

That’s it. The software will automatically transfer all your data from blogger to your new site.

From Wordpress.com

If you were hosting your blog in Wordpress.com, you need to create a WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) file by using the ‘export options’ in Wordpress (in wordpress.com) and the importing this file to your new website (using the ‘import utility’).

LiveJournal

LiveJournal  is yet another popular service. You can directly connect to the LiveJournal site from the Wordpress dashboard and download all the posts and comments.

If you are stuck in between, contact your web host. They will help you to import all the data.