Exporting Blogger Blogroll/Bloglist To WordPress

So. You’ve finally jumped ship and moved your blog to WordPress after so many sleepless nights of indecision. You’ve transferred all your Blogger posts, comments, pages and sidebar widgets to your new domain in WordPress already. You’ve even managed to carry your Google Friend Connect followers with you. There’s just one last thing standing between you and saying goodbye to Blogger forever: your Blogger blogroll/blog list.

You’ve got hundreds of them accumulated over the years of blogging and doing them manually (copy pasting and linking to them one by one) is just plain craziness. But you don’t want to leave them behind of course! I, too, was in the same boat a couple of weeks ago, when a client requested help for transferring her Blogger blog to WordPress. I found an easier solution, fortunately. One that actually works. But it does require that you are willing to follow several instructions in order to make the blogroll transfer. What instructions?

These instructions:

1. Login to your Gmail Account (the same email/username you use to log on to your Blogger account).
2. Navigate to the Reader link on the upper left corner of your screen.



3. Click the down arrow beside Subscription on the left part of your screen, go to Manage Subscriptions and click.



4. If you want to export ALL OF THE LINKS on your Google Reader (all of the blogs you have followed through Google Friend Connect), then skip to Step #8.
5. If you want to select only certain blogs, then make sure you already have a folder to move those links into. Don’t have a folder yet? Refer to THIS POST to find out how to create a new folder.
6. Select the subscriptions that you want to appear on your blogroll and add them to the folder of your choice. (TIP: Split your screen and also open your blogroll widget from your Blogger blog so you can see which links to select).



7. Click on the Folders and Tags tab, then make your chosen folder public.




8. There are THREE ways with which to transfer the blogroll/blog list to your WordPress site:
   • On your sidebar, using a plugin:
   1. Install the Google Reader Blogroll Widget by Marcus Himmel, activate it, then go to your Widgets page.
   2. Drag the Google Reader Blogroll Widget to your sidebar and edit the configuration.
   3. The Public page link should be in this format: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/USERID/label/FOLDERNAME. To find your Google Reader user ID, refer to THIS POST.
   • On your sidebar, using a text widget:
   1. On the Folders and Tags tab within your Google Reader settings, click “add a blogroll to your site” for the folder that you have just put your blogroll in.

   

   2. A pop up window appears for configuration. Change the title and the box color so that it complements your blog template.
   3. Copy and paste the resulting HTML snippet on a text widget on your WordPress blog’s sidebar.

   

   • On a WordPress page using the BlogRoll import function of WordPress:
   1. Go to your wordpress dashboard. Under Tools, click on Import then install the Blogroll system. Activate it to run the OPML Importer by wordpressdotorg.
   2. On the Specify an OPML URL text box, copy and paste the following, changing the necessary information needed: http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/USERID/label/FOLDERNAME

   

   3. Click the Import OPML File button. Your links should now appear on your Link Manager page.
   4. On your Link Manager page, make sure all the links you just imported are in the Blogroll Category.
   5. Make a new page and give it a title (i.e. BlogRoll). Make sure you’re in the HTML view when you put the following code.

   [blogroll:2]

   6. Save the page and view it. All of your blogroll links should now appear on the page.

I know it seems a bit long, but this sure beats manually linking to your blogroll all over again just to bring them with you to your new WordPress site. Clarifications? The comment section is open.