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One of the requested topics for the be a better blogger series was a step by step set of instructions from moving from a hosted blog at blogspot to a self-hosted WordPress blog on your own domain.
Before you do anything, notify your subscribers and readers about the upcoming change. Tell them where the new blog will be and how they can resubscribe at the new location.
The first step is to prepare your account with your hosting company or server. Create a new MySQL database to connect to your WordPress blog when you install it.
Most web hosting companies offer a C-panel or an account interface of some sort that will allow you to perform tasks such as add a new database. Your web host must have PHP version 4.2 or greater and MySQL version 4.0 or greater. If these basics are not provided by your hosting company, you will be unable to install WordPress.
When the database creation is complete, you'll see information about the database name, server name and some user names and passwords. Take note of these, especially the database server name. Keep this information in a safe place.
Create a new directory in your web space where you can put the blog and where you can test it prior to making it public. A subdirectory with a name like "blog" or "yourblogname" is all you need. You can use the same control panel or admin area in your web hosting account to create the new folder or directory that you used to create a database. Or, you can use whatever FTP tool you'll be using to upload the blog to create the new folder.
Get the blog files
On your own computer, in the folder where you store the files for your website, add a new "blog" directory as well. You'll store the downloaded blog here while you configure a couple of bits, and you'll upload it to your server from this location.
Go to wordpress.org/download and download the latest version of WordPress. You'll grow very familiar with this web page, because WordPress updates often and you may be downloading updates from time to time.
Unzip the download and move everything from the resulting Wordpress directory to the waiting "blog" directory within the site files of your existing site on your own computer.
Install the blog on your server
WordPress' famous five minute install instructions are probably all the help you need.
Two steps to take before you upload the files to the server are:
* Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
* Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.
This wp-config.php file is where you fill in the database information you saved when you created the database.
Wordpress says you can probably leave this line as is:
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
If you get an error later when you try to log in, go back to wp-config.php and change 'localhost' to the actual database server name.
Use FTP to upload everything from your local "blog" directory to the waiting "blog" directory on your web server.
Now a big moment. Go to http://yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php, with yoursite.com being changed your own domain name. Take the simple steps to install the blog. It's just few items, and obvious. If you get an error message about the database location, look at the wp-config.php file as I explained above.
Import and test
When you've succeeded in completing the steps at wp-admin/install.php, log in to your blog at http://www.yoursite.com/blog/wp-login.php, with your own domain name taking the place of yoursite.com.
All right. The WordPress blog is installed, working, and waiting for all that information you want to move over from Blogspot. At this point, no one knows the new blog is there but you. Until you finish testing, this space on your server is not visible to the public.
When you are logged in to the WordPress blog, go to the Dashboard in the Site Admin area. In the sidebar, click Tools > Import. Follow the steps for a Blogger import. You can see in this image that WordPress is prepared to import from any number of blogging platforms.
Wordpress uses the RSS feed from Blogger to import the files. If you have anything in your Blogger settings that is meant to appear in an RSS reader (as opposed to the actual blog post) you'll want to delete that before you import. Otherwise, it will have to be deleted from every individual post by hand after the import. Don't bother to ask me how I know this.
When the
