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How To Transfer Custom Domain Blogger To WordPress

By Aquif Shaikh

Nov 26, 2021

Got a custom domain blogspot blog and now want to move it to WordPress? If yes, you are at the right place.

While you can find several articles on how to move a custom domain blogger to WordPress, this is the most comprehensive article that will help you to move your blogger blog to WordPress. Make sure to complete each step as it is to avoid any errors.

How To Move Custom Domain Blogger To WordPress

Transferring your blog from Blogger to WordPress is not very difficult when you are using a custom domain for your blog. However, the challenge here is to make sure your blog gets transferred with least downtime.

To make sure your blog experiences least downtime, make sure to follow the steps in sequence, as mentioned in this blog.

1. Select A Web Host

The first thing that you need to do is choose a web host for your blog. This where you will install WordPress

While there are several hosting companies in the market, I always recommend my readers to go with A2 Hosting as it a good solid host with affordable pricing. It offers good quality of support and focusses a lot on optimizing their servers for speed. Website load time, as you know, is now a Google Ranking Factor. 

A2 Hosting Pricing

The Startup plan of A2 Hosting will cost you $2.99 per month when paid for 36 months in advance and can host one website. As with almost all the hosting companies, this discounted price is only for the first term and upgrading to a higher plan will be at regular pricing. So, if you are expecting your blog visitors to grow fast in the next one or two years, you can consider getting a Drive plan.

2. Register And Install WordPress On A2 Hosting

1. To buy Shared Hosting from A2 Hosting, you should first visit their sales page by clicking the link below

2. You will see various A2 Hosting plans as shown in the screenshot below. Select the plan that fits your need.

A2 Hosting Sales Page

Pro Tip: If you want to host just one website and have less than 10K page views per month you can go with their Startup Plan. However, if you want to host more than one website and have enough budget, I recommend going with their Turbo plan as it's the best and should be enough even if your website grows fast in next few years.

3. After selecting the plan, A2 Hosting will ask you to select a domain name. Since you already have a domain name, choose the first option Use My Own Domain and enter your domain name as show in the screenshot below and click on Use This Domain

A2 Hosting Domain Selection

4. On the next page, you will see various option. The first option important for you is selecting the duration of the A2 Hosting plan. The default option of 36 months is the best as the difference between Annual Plan and Triennial Plan is minimal. 

A2 Hosting Cart

5. On scrolling down a bit, you will see the option to select a data center. Choose the data center that is nearest to your target audience. If you have visitors from all over the globe, you can select the data center closest to where majority of your readers come from.

Leave the Dedicated IP option unchecked and set A2 Website Builder option to None. For the Auto-Install application option choose WordPress option. Here you must remember, the default option is A2 Optimized WordPress. You SHOULD NOT select that option and instead use the WordPress option from the drop-down menu.

Make sure to copy the WordPress Username and Password. We will change it later in step 5.

A2 Hosting Cart

5. On the next page you will see the summary of your cart. You can select the Checkout option. You will be asked to create an account and make the payment. 

A2 Hosting Cart Checkout

That is it. This part is complete. We will now go to blogger to export your blog. But in the meanwhile, keep a track of your email as A2 Hosting will send you links to access your cPanel as well as details of Nameservers.

3. Export The Blog From Blogger

For transferring the blog, log in to your Blogger account and navigate to Settings and scroll down to find Manage Blog section. Under the Manage Blog section, click on Back Up content and click on the download option to download an XML file. Make sur to save this XML file to an easily accessible location on your computer as we will need it later.

Export Blogger Blog

4. Change Your Domain DNS Settings

This is the most crucial step. Right now your domain DNS is mapped to your blogger account. So we need to change your DNS records to point to your WordPress website.

The best way to map your domain name with your WordPress website is by changing the Nameserver (NS Records) in your domain provider's DNS settings to point to your new hosting.

Most hosting providers send the Nameserver details through email. For A2 Hosting, you can either check your email or use the below two name servers.

  • ns1.a2hosting.com
  • ns2.a2hosting.com

So quickly let us see how you can change your Nameservers on GoDaddy as it's the most commonly used Domain Provider. The process would be similar for most domain name providers. 

Changing Namservers In GoDaddy

  • First, log in to your GoDaddy Domain Account
  • Next select the domain to visit the Domain Settings Page
  • Under the Additional Settings option, select Manage DNS
  • Next, in the Nameservers section, choose the Change Option
  • Next, choose the Enter My Own Nameservers option
  • Now Enter the Nameservers provides by your hosting provider.
  • For A2 Hosting enter ns1.a2hosting.com as the first Nameserver and ns2.a2hosting.com as the second Nameserver
  • Click Save.

Pro Tip: If you are unsure how to go about this step, you can simply contact the support team of your Domain Name Provider and provide them your hosting's Nameserver and they will do the needful.

5. Wait For DNS To Propagate

Before moving further, you will have to wait for some time before the DNS changes that you made above propagates globally. This is essential because, until the DNS changes propagates in your area, you will continue to see Blogger website and not your WordPress website. Also, you cannot install SSL till the DNS propagation is complete. 

Pro Tip: You can check the status of the DNS propagation through WhatsMyDNS. Just enter your domain name and select the NS option from  the dropdown menu and it will instantly show the Nameserver across the globe.


If you see the newly entered Namserver in your region, you should be able to access your WordPress website using your domain. Remember, you might have to flush your computer's DNS Cache

6. Install Free Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate

This is one of the two important steps before you transfer your custom domain Blogger to WordPress that most guides have missed. You cannot find this particular step in most guides because most websites used http until July 2018 when chrome started showing "Not Secure" warning in Chrome 68 onwards.

Chrome http warning

However, SSL certificates won't be pre-installed on your website as Let's Encrypt, the free SSL certificate provider requires you to have your DNS pointing to your website before you can install the SSL certificate.

The good news though is that most hosting providers (GoDaddy and a few other exceptions) allow you to install Let's Encrypt SSL with just a few clicks. 

You can follow this guide to install Let's Encrypt on A2 Hosting

7. Login To Your WordPress Website

Once the DNS propagation is complete in your area and you see the WordPress website instead of your blogger website, you can log in to your WordPress Dashboard by visiting the following link

http://example.com/wp-admin/

Just replace example.com with your domain. So for Blogging Ocean it will be 

https://www.bloggingocean.com/wp-admin/

Next, you will be asked to enter the username and password for your hosting account. Enter the Username and Password that A2 hosting provided in Step 2. This is how your WordPress Dashboard would look like.

WordPress Dashboard

8. Tweaking Your WordPress Website

Before you move Blogger to WordPress, you have to make sure the WordPress URL structure matches the Blogger URL structure. For that you have to make two changes.

a. Verify And Change Your WordPress URL

As discussed earlier, Blogger uses secured https URL. Also, they use the www subdomain for their blogs. The format of Blogger is as below

https://www.example.com/

However, most likely your WordPress blog must be using the below format

http://example.com

Therefore you need to change your WordPress website URL to match the blogger's format. To do so go to your WordPress Dashboard and in left hand side column click on Settings and then General option. You will see the page as shown below

Change Blog URL

Now, as shown in the image above, change both the WordPress Addres (URL) and Site Address (URL) options to below format

https://www.example.com

b. Change Permalink Structure

Another important think you need to check before you transfer your blogger blog to WordPress is the permalink settings on your WordPress website. As such the default WordPress setting for WordPress website is same as blogger.

But just to be sure, in the left side column of your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Setting > Permalinks and see if the selected option is Day And Name. If that's not the case, make sure to select the Day And Name option

WordPress Permalinks Setting

C. Create New Administrator And Delete The Old Administrator (Optional)

This step is optional but highly recommended. The default Username created by A2 Hosting is Admin. This username is very commonly used and hence not safe as hackers can easily guess the username and use Brute Force Attacks to hack your website. 

However, WordPress does not allow you to change the username. Therefore, you will have to create a new Administrator and Delete the existing Administrator with the username Admin.

Pro Tip: This step is also applicable if you have manually installed WordPress, but created an easy-to-guess username.

To create a new administrator, click on the Users option on the left hand panel. You will see the list of all users, which in your case will be Admin or the Username that you created. Click on the Add New option as shown in the screenshot below

Blogger To WordPress

Next select the username and password of your choice. Make sure both are difficult to guess.

Next, enter your email ID. This one has to be different from the email ID you selected for the other username. You can change it back to your old email later.

As shown in Image below, make sure to select Administrator for the Role option. Click on Add New User to create the new Administrator

Blogger To WordPress
Since you are cannot delete the account that you are currently logged in, you should now logout from the current user account by selecting the logout option on Top Right corner as shown in the screenshot below.
Blogger To WordPress

You will now be taken to the WordPress login page. Login with the newly created account. Next, go back to the Users tab and delete the old username as shown below. That is it. You can now move on to the next step.

Blogger To WordPress

9. Move Blogger To WordPress

Now, you are all set to Transfer your Blogger blog to WordPress. To do so, go to your WordPress dashboard and on the left side column navigate to Tools> Import. The following page will open. Click on Install Now option under Blogger

Install Blogger To WordPress Import Plugin

Once the installation is complete you will see the Run Importer option under Blogger as shown below. Click on Run Importer

Blogger To WordPress

Next, you will see an option to upload an XML file. Click on Choose File and select the XML file we exported from Blogger in Step 3. Next Click on Upload File And Import option

Blogger To WordPress

Now assign the posts to an existing author that you created and submit it. You will receive a success message to indicate the transfer has been completed.

Blogger To WordPress-Assign Author

In rare cases, the plugin may not be able to upload all the Images and will show error. Do not worry about it. Your posts will be correctly updated. You can then upload missing images manually.

You can also use Import External Images Plugin. This Plugin will automatically import all the images from links in your blog posts to your WordPress Media Library.

Pro Tip: This step will only transfer your blog posts. For pages, you have to manually create new ones and copy your content there.

Final Words

Transferring your Blog From Blogger To WordPress may seem tough and lengthy process, but once you start doing it, you will realize it is not that difficult. Following the above steps, you can easily transfer your Blog from Blogger to WordPress.

If you have any questions or facing any difficulty transferring your Blog, do let me know through comments or contact me through Contact Us Form of this blog.

About Aquif Shaikh

Aquif Shaikh is a Blogger and Web Hosting Expert from Mumbai. He loves writing, traveling, and sharing his knowledge and ideas with the world. At Blogging Ocean, he writes about blogging tips, web hosting tips, content marketing, online business, and SEO.