Blogger Tips and Tricks: WordPress Tips

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Monday, July 22, 2013

How to Change Wordpress Page URL

Attention WordPress users and future WordPress users! This post is the first of many in our new series “WordPress Tips”. Each month a new tip will be posted that will expand your arsenal of WordPress knowledge. We plan to start with the basics and build from there.

So without further ado, this month’s WordPress tip is…how to change the URL of a page or post.

When you create a new page or blog post, WordPress automatically uses the title to create that page’s URL. In some cases this might be exactly what you want, but not always. That’s where this useful tip comes in! It is important to optimize your URL for search engines, keep in mind what a person looking for the information on that page might search for. Create a simple, easy to remember URL if you are including it on printed marketing materials or verbal advertising like radio that encourage recipients to visit that page. Take these few steps to change your webpage URL:

    → Login to WordPress
    → Open the existing page or create a new page
    → Enter a Title if necessary
    → Save the page, this will automatically create a URL
    → Look directly under the title field, you will see Permalink: followed by the URL
    → Click the Edit button behind the link
    → ype in the new URL and click OK
    → Save the page or post

Keep in mind, if you go back to a published blog post or web page and change the URL, you will want to confirm there are no other pages linking to the old URL. If you have provided others the URL, used it in an email, etc. you will not want to change that URL.

Put your new WordPress knowledge to use, customize the URL of one of your new blog posts or pages. The possibilities are endless!

Do you use web pages in your traditional advertising? Is this tip useful for your marketing needs? Let us know in the comments below!

How to Make a Photo Slideshow for Blogger/WordPress Post

Blogger gives you the ability to publish photos on your blog using a slideshow, which automatically rotates pictures on your page. These animated images are an entertaining feature for your visitors, and they give you the opportunity to create eye-catching displays out of your media. As long as you have your photos hosted on a photo management service, such as Flickr or Photobucket, you can build a slideshow using Blogger's slideshow gadget.

First, we capture them in pictures. Then we use social media, blogs and websites to make them visible for friends or a larger audience. If you use Blogger, make the most of it and post a nice photo slideshow on it .

You can make a photo slideshow with PhotoSnack:

1. Go to PhotoSnack and log in
2. Upload photos
3. Choose a template and customize the settings
4. Publish – Copy the embed code

Post photo slideshow to Blogger

1. Log in
2. Create new post

Setting Up WordPress For The First Time

With the WordPress finally installed, there are just a couple of things left to tweak to ensure its maximum performance. To start with, log in to your WP dashboard.

On the left hand side, click on a column entitled »Settings«:

1) The »General Settings« window should now be opened:

Here you can enter your site’s title and tagline, modify your access URL, insert your e-mail address and change the date settings.

The Site Title and Tagline is what the WordPress shows as the header of your homepage (depending on the theme you’re using), so make sure it is short but descriptive.

For example:

Site Title: Mark’s dating advice

Tagline: Learn how to become successful at dating!

If you want your website to have a (www.) prefix, then you can change that in the WordPress Address and Site Address fields. Just add (www.) before your URL.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to hit the »Save Changes« button!

2) Now click on »Reading« to open up the »Reading Settings«:

By default, WP will have »Your latest posts« checked, which is fine if you’re running a simple blog, but if you want to build a real website, you should select »A static page«, and from the drop down menu of Front Page, choose »Sample Page«.

The sample page is just a page that was automatically generated with your WordPress installation, and you can edit it and change its name to »Home« later on if you wish.

Don’t forget to save changes before moving on to the next step!

3) Open up »Discussion Settings«:

Since WordPress is primarily a blogging platform, comments are an inherent part of it. You can either choose to enable or disable comments on your website and modify their settings.

If you do not want people to comment on your website, uncheck the box that says:

»Allow people to post comment on new articles«

Other options are pretty much self-explanatory, so we’re not going to get into that in details right now, but if you wish, you can play with them more later on.

4) Click on »Privacy Settings«:

Here you can choose whether you want search engines (like Google, Yahoo and Bing!) to index your website (so others can find it) or not.

In my opinion, it is always better to leave this as it is, unless you really do not want to get traffic from Google (for some weird reason). However, even if that is the case, note that it is up to the search engines themselves to honor your request – so there are no guarantees.

5) Finally, open up »Permalinks Settings«:

This is where you decide how your URL looks like when opening a new page or post on your website. Since the default option looks really ugly, I’m going to show you a nice little trick which makes it look much better:

- Select »Custom Structure« and enter: /%postame%/

Now, when accessing a new page on your website, instead of having a URL that looks like this: www.youriste.com/?p=123, it will look like this: www.yoursite.com/new-page

Much better, agreed? Don’t forget to save your changes!

Widgets – What Are They And How To Use Them?

Widgets are one of the best features of WordPress in my opinion (along with plugins). There are literally a thousand ways you can use them + they give your site a fresh & unique look.
So what are they?

They are individual programmable parts of your website. Now before you go all »This is way too complicated for me…«, let me tell you that it’s much more simple that it sounds!

On this image, you can see that the basic WP template comes with 5 default widgets installed automatically: »Recent Posts«, »Recent comments«, »Archives«, »Categories« and »Meta«, and all of them are embedded in the right sidebar of your website theme.

You can substitute these with different widgets, like images, videos, graphs or whatever your current WP theme supports. To do this, click on the »Appearance« tab and select Widgets:

Notice that there are over 10 default widgets available at your disposal. You can have as many of them as you like, and some themes even come with their own pre-programmed widgets.

On your right hand, you can select where you want to put your widgets (main sidebar, showcase sidebar, footer, etc.)

To install them, simply use the drag & drop technique. For example, if you wanted to add the »Calendar« widget, you would click on it in the »Available Widgets« area and drag it all the way to your »Main Sidebar«.

Then, you can set it up and configure as you like and it will be shown across all pages on your website. You can also install custom widgets of your choice through the use of plugins!

Plugins – What Are They And How To Use Them?

Plugins are basically addons for your website and there are virtually thousands of them to pick from. Some are free and some you have to pay for, but none the less – they are a must-have.

Almost everything you need for your website, there’s a plugin for it. I once had a website that needed to have weather for my city displayed, so I simply found a plugin that does just that!

Took me about 2 minutes to install and set up. If I had been using a regular HTML website, I’d have to hire a good programmer to do that for me. Think about the money I saved!

To access your plugin area, click on the »Plugins« tab of your WP dashboard:

Here you can search for, upload and set up plugins. I won’t go into details right now, but you can read all about that + some cool plugins that I recommend in another tutorial here.

That’s it – we’ve pretty much covered all the important parts that need to be set up once you install WordPress. It’s pretty easy and takes about 5 minutes once you get used to it.

See you in the next tutorial!

How I moved my Blogger Blog to WordPress

As promised, I am letting you all know how I moved from Blogger to WordPress, and what I did to make the move as painless as possible! So without further adieu…

Moving from Blogger to WordPress: A Step by Step Guide

(These instructions assume you have your own domain already. If you don’t own a domain name you can purchase one when you purchase hosting. You can also skip step 4.)

Step 1: Purchase hosting.

I purchased hosting from SiteGround for my new WordPress blog. Although you can purchase hosting at whichever host provider you prefer. I chose SiteGround because I already have an account with them, and they have been good to me! Plus they have a one-click WordPress installation. No uploading files through your FTP Manager, no creating document roots, no complicated instructions at all. I just had to click install, change a few simple settings and it was done for me! How convenient is that?! You can view Siteground’s installation tutorial here to see just how easy it is! I would also recommend GoDaddy as well. I have previously used GoDaddy’s hosting service and didn’t find it too terribly difficult to navigate.

Step 2: Install WordPress.

Once you have secured hosting, I recommend installing WordPress on your site at this point. Don’t worry this WILL NOT effect your current blog. It will still be visible on Blogger until you redirect your domain to your new blog. (I recommend doing this now because once the redirect is processed your WordPress site will be seen by visitors versus a landing page from the host provider.)

Step 3: Export your Blogger content.

From your Blogger Dashboard, click “Settings” >> Click “Other” >> Click “Export Blog” >> Click “Download Blog“

Again, don’t worry this WILL NOT delete your blog or your content. It simply downloads all your content (posts, comments and pages) into a file for safe keeping should something go wrong while importing to WordPress.

Step 4: Redirect your domain.

You need to update your “Nameservers” for your domain in order to redirect your domain to your new WordPress site. I purchased my domain through Blogger so I will give instructions here on how to update your “Nameservers” if you purchased your domain through Blogger.

You will need to access the cPanel for your domain, to do that you need to go to:

http://google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com

Changing “yourdomain.com” to your own domain. You will be directed to log into Google Apps. If you do not have an administrator account set up, it usually defaults to bloggeradmin@yourdomain.com. If for some reason you cannot log in, follow the steps to recovery your log in information, which will be sent to the email address used when you purchased your domain.

Now that you are logged in, click the “Domain Settings” Tab >> Click “Domain Names” >> Click “Advanced DNS Settings“

Here you will be given your log in information to change your DNS Settings. Domains purchased through Blogger are usually through GoDaddy or Enom.

Click “Sign in to DNS console“, and use the information provided to log in so you can update your “Nameservers”. I am not sure how the Enom console is set up, but for GoDaddy you need to click “Set Nameservers“.

You will need the Nameservers for your hosting provider. Usually this information can be found in the sidebar of your hosting account’s cPanel. Nameservers will vary from host provider to host provider, but the SiteGround Nameservers look like this:

NS1.SITEGROUND205.COM
NS2.SITEGROUND205.COM

Make sure you select “I have specific nameservers for my domain.” You just need to delete the Nameservers that currently exist, and replace them with the Nameservers for your host provider, then click “OK“. Congrats! Your nameservers have been updated. Propagation can take anywhere from 2 hours to 48 hours, while usually NOT that long, just be patient for the redirect to process.

Step 5: Import your content.

Once the redirect is processed and you can see your new WordPress site when visiting your URL, you are ready to import your content! There are TWO ways to do this, and I will give you the instructions for both. They are equally simple but either way has it’s “cons“.

→ Use the Blogger Importer. You can use the Blogger Importer by clicking “Tools” on your WordPress Admin Sidebar >> Click “Import” >> Click “Blogger“. Note: If you use the Blogger Importer you will need to be logged into the Google Account in which you manage your Blogger blog.

You will be asked to install the Blogger Importer plugin before proceeding. So go ahead and install the plugin and then return to the Import section.

Once you run the Blogger Importer, you will be prompted to grant WordPress access to your Google Account. You will need to grant access so the Importer can import your content. After granting access you will be redirected to a page listing your blog, the number of posts and the number of comments to be imported. Click “Import“. If you manage more than one Blogger blog under your Google Account, make sure you import the correct one!

Depending on how much content you have, will depend on the length of time it takes to import.

CONS OF USING THE BLOGGER IMPORTER:

#The Blogger Importer does not handle Blogger Static Pages. So if you have Static Pages on your Blogger blog, you will need to manually create them again, in WordPress. This could be as easy as copying and pasting from your Blogger Pages to your new WordPress Pages.

#The Blogger Importer removes the formatting for ALL of your posts, making your nice, neat paragraphs one big paragraph.

PROS OF USING THE BLOGGER IMPORTER:

#Quick and easy.

# All of your Blogger labels are uploaded automatically as Categories.

→ Convert your Blogger file into a compatible WordPress file.

Trust me it is A LOT easier than it sounds… There’s an App for that! You can use this Blogger to WordPress Conversion Utility, and all you need to do is upload your Blogger file that you obtained in Step 3, and the Conversion Utility will convert and download a WordPress compatible file for you!

Then you would use the WordPress Importer (instead of the Blogger Importer) to upload your new file to WordPress.

CONS OF CONVERTING YOUR FILE AND USING THE WORDPRESS IMPORTER:

#Your Blogger labels do not upload as Categories and all posts are left “Uncategorized”.

#The WordPress Importer deletes formatting on SOME of your posts, versus the Blogger Importer, which removes formatting on ALL your posts.

PROS OF USING THE WORDPRESS IMPORTER:

#Quick and easy.

#Converting your file, and uploading keeps your pages in tact. So it will import your Blogger static pages!

So as you can see both options are simple, but the real decision is: do you want to create all new static pages for your site, OR do you want to re-categorize all your posts? I am a stickler for formatting, I like nice clean breaks, justified text and organized paragraphs, so I chose the latter. I thought it would be easier to re-categorize all my posts versus re-formatting them all! (I did have to re-format some but not all, and I am sure there are some that I missed, but I will get to it eventually!) I used a Bulk Category Creator, to create categories for all the labels I had over at Blogger. I just copied all of my labels and pasted them in the plugin, and voila! I used the Quick Edit feature on each post from the “All Posts” screen to re-add the posts’ categories. It was a lot of work, but better than having to re-format all my posts!

CONGRATS you are done with your move from Blogger to WordPress! Here are some other things to consider:

→ Design. You can peruse the internet for free WordPress themes, or you can purchase premium themes like Genesis Framework and Child Themes from StudioPress, or The Thesis Theme from DIY Themes. If you aren’t savvy with coding or just can’t seem to find a theme you like, you can hire a professional like me to create custom design for you!

→ Feeds. You will need to update your feeds such as your RSS feed, your email subscription feed, Networked Blogs, etc. After all, you will want all of your loyal followers and readers to come with you! …and those GFC Followers, they won’t miss too much, you will still appear in their Google Reader (if you already had a domain – if you had a blogspot domain, I am not sure, but I don’t think you will. {sad face}

→ Sidebar. Unfortunately, you don’t get to “bring” your Blogger sidebar with you to your new WordPress blog, so you will want to add all of your sidebar goodies from your Blogger blog to your new WordPress blog.

I think that’s all folks! My perfectly imperfect Blogger to WordPress Step by Step Guide. I hope you enjoyed and that this assists you in completing your own Blogger to WordPress Migration!

Cheers!

Don’t forget to share the love! ↓

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Blogger Tips and Tricks

New Post

Rss

How to Change Wordpress Page URL

How to Make a Photo Slideshow for Blogger/WordPress Post

Setting Up WordPress For The First Time

How I moved my Blogger Blog to WordPress