We’ve talked about the benefits of owning your own blog, but what if you’ve already got a blog someplace else and want to move it to your own, hosted, WordPress blog? You can do that.
WordPress offers a number of easy import options for most major free or paid blogging platforms out there. This makes it easy to move away from other software to your own, hosted, WordPress blog.
WordPress currently offers the ability to import:
- Blogger
- Blogware
- DotClear
- GreyMatter
- LiveJournal
- Movable Type
- TypePad
- Textpattern
- WordPress
- OPML Files
- RSS Feeds
Each one of these options can be access by logging into your hosted WordPress blog and visiting the Tools -> Import section. From there, WordPress will give specific step-by-step instructions on what to do.
Additional blogging platforms can also be imported, but are not officially supported. This includes:
- b2
- b2evolution
- Blosxom
- Drupal
- e107 CMS
- Excel/CSV Spreadsheet
- Jogger.pl
- Live Space (MSN Space)
- Mambo
- Motime – Splinder
- Pivot
- Plone
- PostNuke
- Nucleus CMS
- Radio Userland
- Roller
- Typo
- web-log.nl
- Xanga
- Zoomblog
- [X]HTML
Information on how to import this content can be found at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content
When it comes to sites like MySpace or Facebook, importing the content can be trickier. You can try the RSS approach or see if the social network offers an export function, but you may end up having to copy and paste the content into your new site. Currently, social networks don’t make it easy to get out what you put in.
The down side to moving all your content to your own hosted blog is you’ll loose any inbound links, rankings in search engines, and any exposure those posts may have built up at the original location. However, in time, the benefits of owning, and controlling, your blog are much greater over time.
