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I recently migrated one of my blogs from Blogger, along with all my comments from Haloscan, to WordPress 2.0. It took me a couple of days of research before finally understanding what was needed to accomplish this. Once everything was already in place, it only took a few minutes to move everything across.

WordPress itself is extremely easy to install. If you don’t believe me, have a look at their Famous 5-Minute Install page.

A lot of the information I gathered was from the WordPress website itself but the more important stuff regarding importing Haloscan comments came from Justin (a million thanks Justin!). I will be providing links to his page when necessary as he has done a lot of the hard work on this bit.

Now as the saying goes, why re-invent the wheel? Since Justin’s page has already provide all the information, why do I bother writing another one? Well, his page is truly excellent but it contains specific instructions for importing Haloscan to Wordpress verions 1.5 and 2.0. He also has a page on moving from Blogger to WordPress as well, but it’s specific to version 1.5 and is now obsolete on version 2.0.

I wanted a complete step-by-step breakdown of the whole process of moving from Blogger and Haloscan to WordPress 2.0, i.e. what you need, what needs to be done and the actual doing it bit. I want to give people a general idea of the whole process before plunging themselves in. Is that a good enough reason? I thought so.

The big question is, “Can everything be moved across?”. Short answer, yes. Long answer, yes.

While all your posts can be moved across safely, pictures that were uploaded to Blogger will not be copied i.e. their physical files will still remain on Blogger. Nonetheless, they will still appear on your posts in your new blog since the links remain the same. However, I have no idea how long they will remain on Blogger and if they will disappear should you delete your old blog. It might be best to copy them manually over to your new web host or use a 3rd-party image hosting service like Flickr or PhotoBucket.

Just like every other guides and how-to’s you come across, it would be wise to give this one a once-over (or twice even).

Anyway, let’s get on with it. Here are some pre-requisites; you will need the following:

1. A registered domain name
2. A Unix/Linux web host with PHP and MySQL
3. An FTP client
4. An upgraded Haloscan account

Not quite sure what all that means? Let me explain these points in a little more depth:

1) A domain name
You will either have to register a new domain name or use one that you already own. You’re free to register any domain registrar, but I can personally recommend GoDaddy (famous for their $1.99 Domain Name Sale). Another one that is quite popular across many web hosting forums is 1&1 (Hot! $5.99 Domain Names at 1&1 include FREE Private Registration + 1 GB Email + Starter Site Builder). Unfortunately, both have their ups and downs in the support area so I will leave it to you to make a decision.

2) A Unix or Linux web host
You will need to obtain web hosting services that run on the Linux platform since WordPress require PHP (version 4.2 or later) and MySQL (version 3.23.23 or later). Don’t worry if you don’t know what these two things are. PHP is basically HTML that is generated on-the-fly and MySQL is a very popular and robust database package on Linux. Both 1&1 and GoDaddy provides this service as well. (Special offers: GoDaddy.com - 20% off Shared Hosting | Affordable & Easy Hosting. Order 1&1 Linux Web Hosting from the World’s # 1 Hosting Provider. Up to 5 FREE domains+$600 in software!)

3) An FTP client
You will require an FTP software to upload your WordPress installation files. For Windows, I can recommend SmartFTP. For Macs, I can recommend Cyberduck. I found these two to be the most easiest ones to use as they are basically drag’n'drop types.

4) An upgraded Haloscan account
You will need to upgrade your basic Haloscan account to premium if you want to import all your comments across. It’s a shame that you need to do this when you’re actually leaving them, so this is entirely up to you. Personally, I think if you’re importing one or two years worth of blog entries, you might as well import all the comments as well. If you’ve been using Blogger’s own commenting system, then you can skip this part.

The next part of this guide will cover all the steps which will involve preparing your new web host, configuring the database, installing WordPress and the actual migration bit. Any suggestions are welcome. Think you’re ready to take the plunge? Then head over to part 2.