Moving from Sub-domain to your own Domain Views and Reviews

Blogger and Wordpress.com both offer free blogging platforms with one caveat : your blog is on a subdomain like http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com and http://MYBLOG.wordpress.com. This becomes a disadvantage for the serious professional blogger who would like his blog to be on http://www.MYBLOG.com.

Blogger offers Custom Domains facility where you can host your blog on Google for free and only have to incur the cost of a Domain Name. However, for professional bloggers this is not enough and they wish to host their blog on independant web hosting to have total control over it. Many bloggers start out on blogspot and then shift to outside hosting. This is a comparison of methods used by two prominent bloggers and the advantages and disadvantages of each method...............

BLOGGER CUSTOM DOMAINS

BLOGGER TO WORDPRESS

This method was used by David at Sciencetext.com :

1. Choose a domain Name and register it (and Hosting if you want to host the blog outside Blogger).
2. Load up Wordpress in your domain. (Ignore this step if you are hosting at Blogger - Custom Domains).
3. Backup Blogger Template, Backup Blog and Backup Page Source as a precaution and a fallback measure to ensure peace of mind.
4. Next you will need to create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with ghs.google.com using the methods shown here. The propagation of your domain name over the Internet could take several days so be patient. Check that this has happened by pinging it like this from a command prompt DOS window :

ping www.MYBLOG.com
You should get the following reply :
Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242

Ping statistics for 64.233.179.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 94ms, Average = 93ms

Chuck has a wonderful post on this here.

5. Use Import function in Wordpress and import all posts and comments from your Bloger blog. (Ignore if you are hosting at Blogger).
6. Login at Blogger.com and go to Settings----->Publishing in the blog you are redirecting. Click Switch to "Custom Domain” (Point your own registered domain name to your blog) and enter the URL for your imported Wordpress blog and save.

Your BlogSpot address will only redirect to that domain if it does not have "www" at the beginning. i.e. both xxxxx.blogspot.com and www.xxxxx.blogspot.com will display the blog correctly, but only the former will appear with your custom domain name.

7. Test in browser by entering your blogspot address and it should redirect to your new Wordpress blog. Test the redirect with this tool : http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect.php

ADVANTAGES : Google Page Rank and Backlinks maintained but took some time. SEO maintained with a 301 redirect.

DISADVANTAGE : New Technorati Rank. To maintain your permalink structure you will have to use this hack.

DIGITAL INSPIRATION METHOD

BLOGGER AND WORDPRESS

Amit of Digital Inspiration used this method :

1. New web domain registered through Google Apps. Dreamhost signed up for hosting.
2. Wordpress loaded on new site. New template created for the site as an exact replica of the blogspot site.
3. Steps taken to attract Google Juice to new site :
a) New Profile Page created at Googlepages and linked to Profile link on blogspot blog.
b) New Site Search Page created with a Google Custom Search Engine at Googlepages and linked to search box on blogspot blog.
c) MyBlogLog trackig code added to blogspot blog.
4. New posts created on the new site. Feedburner feed was modified to point to the Wordpress feed.
5. No importing and redirecting of posts. Blogspot site continues to be maintained while Wordpress site attracts new advertisers.
6. FINAL RESULT : Two sites. One with blogspot subdomain and one independently hosted Wordpress blog linked by a common search engine and brand name.


ADVANTAGE : Both sites maintained to have the best of both worlds. New site gets Google Juice from old site. Technorati Rank of old site maintained. Technorati Rank of new site gets a boost up due to association with the old site. Since Blogger is free there is more logic in continuing your old site and associating it with your new site. This method also avoids all the complications involved in redirecting your posts.

Source : http://www.blogdoctor.me/2007/12/moving-from-sub-domain-to-your-own.html