In my previous free blog I have already cranked up the PR meter to PR4 and have managed to land in the first page of some very competitive keywords. The problem was I was using a free account. I really should have started with a dotcom from the very start. Had I done that, I wouldn’t have to go through all the research I did in order to migrate successfully.

But still, there is a silver lining in all of these. Had I started with a dotcom from the get go, I wouldn’t have learned about 301/302 redirects, .htaccess, and all those meta tags redirect methods that a lot of experts were betting their nuts on as surefire remedies to the pain of migration.

The first instructions I did consider was Techcounter’s instructions, but the loooongg queu of questions scared the heck out of me. Then there were a lot of others in between before I arrived at bloggerbloke’s site. At first I had it made with his very nifty .htaccess system. It really worked for him and I think for others too. Even I was convinced I had it down pat. I typed my redirected blog address and voila, I was taken to blogger’s redirect page and then eventually to this site. It’s all good, except that in bloggerbloke’s case, there’s none of that temporary blogger stop.

I was prepared to live with it until I clicked on some of the permalinks pointing to my own blog. It did the usual redirect and ended up with a 404 error. I kinda slipped back down to earth after that. I had to play my final ace. I tapped on the great WordPress reserve for help. And there it was, the plug-in created by Sam Wong — the Blogger Redirector. I installed the template and removed the .htaccess code I pasted earlier. Everything worked real well after that. Including the permalinks.

I have already placed the noindex,nofollow meta in my old blog hoping that I won’t be penalized for duplicate content. I’ll also try to do a little 302 redirect so the search engines would know that I have moved to a new location and then later on will do the permanent 301 redirect.

Right now, my concern is how to get out of that blogger temporary stop when any of my link or my url is typed. I also have to work a little bit harder promoting this site. Also some of my internal links (of course they came with the migration) are still pointing to the old blog! I still have to see if there’s a quicker way of changing these internal links behaviour so they will recognize their new location. However I only have very few internal links to modify in case I decide to do everything manually.

It may take me a couple of weeks more to finally say that I have moved successfully and comfortably here in my self-hosted WordPress. But I’m not really that worried. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you happen to be here and you have some questions about migration, shoot me a note, I may not be an expert yet but with all the internet literature I’ve read and the kinks I’ve encountered, I may just be able to offer a few insights.

Cheers!

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