How to Move Your Blog From WordPress to Blogger

WordPress2Blogger is no longer available as of 2015. You may be able to use one of the other WordPress conversion tools found here, but they appear to be somewhat neglected and they have much more involved processes. Some people are still getting this method to work, although it requires downloading the code and executing the Python script yourself. 

Here's the Old Process 

Moving a blog from WordPress to Blogger was actually fairly simple as long as you had administrative access to your WordPress blog.

Google's Chicago office is home to an engineering team known as the Data Liberation Front that actually makes this pretty easy. The goal is to move data to and from any Google tool, and while there isn't a tool to directly move your WordPress site to Blogger with a single click, Google simplified the process and hosted the open-source resources needed.

One thing that won't import is the general look and feel of your blog. That's handled by the theme. You can pick a new theme in Blogger, but you can't import your WordPress theme.

First Step: Export

First, you must export your WordPress blog. If you maintain a single-person blog, this usually isn't a problem.

1. Log into your account wherever you're hosting it. In my case, I'm using a blog hosted on my own domain with my own installation of WordPress software. You may have started a blog on WordPress.com. If so, the process is the same.
2. Go to the Dashboard.

1. Click on Tools: Export
2. You'll have some options here. If you want only the posts or only the pages, you can do that, but in most cases, you'll want to export both.
3. Click on Download Export File.

You'll end up downloading an export file with a name that looks something like "nameoftheblog.wordpress.dateofexport.xml." This is an XML file specifically designed as a backup of WordPress content.

If your intent is to move your blog from one WordPress server to another, you're set. In this case, we must massage the data to get it into the format we need.

Second Step: Conversion  

Update: This is the process that appears to have been discontinued.

The Data Liberation Front hosts an open-source project called the Google Blog Converters. It's designed to do exactly what we need. The WordPress to Blogger conversion tool will take that XML file and change the markup into Blogger's format.

1. Upload your file using the WordPress to Blogger tool.
2. Press Convert.
3. Save your converted file to your hard drive. 

In this case, you're going to get a file named "blogger-export.xml." The only thing that's really changed is the XML markup.

Final Step: Import

Now that you have your old blog data converted to a format for Blogger, you have to import that blog into Blogger. You can start a new blog, or you can import your content into an existing blog. The dates of your posts will be whatever date they were on WordPress. If you had an old blog you forgot about or didn't realize you could import, this is a good way to backfill your content.

1. Log onto Blogger and go into the settings for your blog. The steps you use to get there may vary a little depending on whether you're using the old or new version of the Blogger dashboard.

1. Go to Settings: Other
2. Click on Import Blog
3. You'll need to browse for your blogger-import.xml. Don't try the original WordPress file. It won't work. You may have to enter some CAPTCHA text to prevent someone from using a script to hack your account and import a bunch of spam posts.
4. Choose whether you want to automatically publish all posts. Uncheck this box if you want your posts to be imported as draft posts. This might be a good idea if you want to preview your work and make sure everything imported as expected.

Congratulations, you're done. Inspect your posts to make sure your images and content made the trip.

Don't forget to let everyone know the blog has moved and to hide your old blog after everything has imported successfully. This is located in the Dashboard under Settings: Privacy in WordPress. You should at least hide it from search engines even if you elect to keep the posts publicly visible. You're welcome to leave both blogs as is, but this might be confusing to blog visitors and it might also impact your placement in Google search results because duplicating content can make you look like a spam blog.