I figured writing about the blog migration process from Blogger to Wordpress would help Yahoo customers who are trying to do the same thing, as moving this blog over to Wordpress was harder than I thought. The phrase “third time lucky” really applied in my case because after two unsuccessful attempts to move to Wordpress, I was ready to stay with Blogger. But upon the third successful try, I realised that all my previous problems were due to Yahoo.

For a start, they do not allow the uploading of a file called “.htaccess” which is what you need if you want to use the WP-cache or if you want to set up blog re-directions. Just type in “Yahoo + .htaccess” into any search engine and you’ll see that this is a widely contentious Yahoo policy.

Secondly, Yahoo offers an automated Wordpress set-up process for anyone who has signed up with Yahoo Webhosting. But this is not as generous as it seems. For a start, the current version being offered is Wordpress 2.0.2 (so they are pushing an outdated version at paying customers) and to rub salt into the wounds, they try to dictate to you how your permalinks should be set up! If you fail to use of their permalink structure suggestions, they block your customised permalinks by refusing to allow you to upload the .htaccess file. The lack of this file means that your customised permalinks are broken and you are virtually forced to go back to one of theirs. So I was forced to do a quick hack job by adding “index.php” to the beginning of my blog pages. I’ve been told by a reliable source that this will have search engine positioning implications. But at the end of the day, I can live with that if the blog works properly.

The biggest thing I hated about the whole automated Yahoo process was that it did not allow you to set the blog up at the root folder. The root folder is the name of the blog so my root folder would be http://www.betterthantherapy.net . Along with many other bloggers, I want people to be able to type in that URL and be taken directly to the blog. But Yahoo demanded that I set up the blog in a sub-folder such as http://www.betterthantherapy.net/index . You want to refuse, Mr Blogger? Then we’ll just cancel the automated process and delete the blog! Ka-POW!

So in short, they push outdated software at you, dictate how your blog should be set up, ban certain files from being loaded to your domain and then they charge you $11.95 a month. I don’t know how you would react to that but it really got my back up until I was in a rage. I intensely dislike being pushed around - and having to pay for it as well!

I was lucky the third time because I had Aibek from Make Use Of to help me out. We started by completely wiping the entire domain of all Yahoo-set up files and then we downloaded and installed the Wordpress 2.3 software directly from the Wordpress website (well, Aibek did. I just watched and learned). You will need a FTP program to move the set-up files from your computer to your domain - FileZilla is my favourite. Aibek set up a new database and did his magic. I have to admit he lost me part-way through so I just trusted his judgment to get it right. Maybe he will blog about what he did one day so we can all learn how to do it ourselves. I hope so!

Once the Wordpress files were uploaded to the website, I then had to choose a theme (a design for the page). This is harder than you might think as there are thousands of templates out there to choose from. Some are for sale while a lot of others are for free provided you keep the designer’s link at the bottom of the page. I must have went through about 20-30 possible themes, all of which looked great on the designer’s website but which absolutely sucked when I got it uploaded to the website. As one person remarked on a website, “most Wordpress themes look like they were designed by a crackhead with a set of crayons!”.

Then I went through a Goth period and wanted an all-black website but I was advised that would turn a lot of people off. So Aibek came to the rescue once again and recommended a very nice theme called “Cleaker“. I went with that one, mostly because I really liked the design but also partly because I was so tired of the whole process that I just wanted to choose one and get it finished. But I really like the theme now. It kind of grows on you!

Many tweaks and little problems later, the wrinkles were ironed out and the blog was finished. Once it is installed on your website, the key is just to go through all the options and get it the way you want it. As many people pointed out to me, “if you don’t like something on Wordpress, there’s a plug-in to change it.” Plug-ins and widgets are what makes Wordpress great as you can virtually make the blog do whatever you want. In fact I am stunned that I stayed with Blogger for so long when all these fantastic tools were at my disposal here at Wordpress. I mean, I was completely ignorant about trackbacks when in actual fact it is the backbone of blog promotion! So you can see the steep learning curve I had to quickly get used to.

But I decided to leave my old blog where it was at Blogger and start afresh here at Wordpress. The main reason is that any permalinks and comments at Blogger should be kept and maintained, and moving the blog would have broken them all. But to be honest, I was glad because the thought of manually moving over all 248 posts was not an appealing one. The old blog will always be up and available if anyone wants to see it. I just won’t be updating that one anymore.

But I really love Feedburner. As well as ensuring that my RSS subscribers don’t have to change anything at their end, it also formatted my blog title for me, which was one of the sticking points. Feedburner is an amazing tool and should be used by every blogger.

As more of the migration experience comes back to mind, I’ll blog about it again but this is basically everything. In short, Yahoo doesn’t make things easy with their various policies but that is probably why they have such a reliable uptime with their servers. I guess if you want big reliability, you have to sacrifice some things, but my once-perfect image of Yahoo has been tarnished a little. They could, if they cared, make the whole Wordpress set-up process a little easier and relax some of the restrictions a little. I was ultimately lucky in that I had someone skilled enough to help me but what about all the people out there who have no-one to help them? How many incorrectly formatted blogs are out there because of Yahoo’s restrictions?

Related posts:

1. To Use Blogger Or Not Use Blogger
2. MyBlogLog introduces “Just For You” Wordpress Widget
3. Math Question Blocks Most Wordpress Spam Comments
4. Mass deleting pictures from Flickr
5. Better Than Therapy 2.0