WordPress.org

Sergey Biryukov

Samuel Wood (Otto)

Ryan McCue

Workshopshed

<p>The Blogger Importer imports your blog data from a Google Blogger site into a WordPress.org installation.</p>
<h4>Items imported</h4>
<ul>
<li>Categories</li>
<li>Posts (published, scheduled and draft)</li>
<li>Comments (not spam)</li>
<li>Images</li>
</ul>
<h4>Items not imported</h4>
<ul>
<li>Pages</li>
<li>Widgets/Widget Data</li>
<li>Templates/Theme</li>
<li>Comment and author Avatars</li>
</ul>
<h3>Reference</h3>
<ul>
<li>https://www.simplepie.org/</li>
</ul>
<p>The following were referenced for implementing the images and links</p>
<ul>
<li>https://wordpress.org/plugins/remote-images-grabber/</li>
<li>http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/blogger-image-import/</li>
<li>https://wordpress.org/plugins/cache-images/</li>
<li>https://wordpress.org/plugins/tumblr-importer/</li>
<li>https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14525</li>
<li>https://wpengineer.com/1735/easier-better-solutions-to-get-pictures-on-your-posts/</li>
<li>https://web.archive.org/web/20211121020918/http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-plugin-update-urls/</li>
<li>http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions//media-sideload-image-file-name (not working)</li>
<li>https://code.tutsplus.com/a-guide-to-the-wordpress-http-api-the-basics–wp-25125t</li>
</ul>
<h3>Known Issues</h3>
<ul>
<li>Some users have reported that their IFrames are stripped out of the post content.</li>
<li>Requests for better performance of larger transfers and tranfers of images</li>
<li>Review of behavior when it re-imports, partiularly are the counts correct</li>
<li>Review using get_posts or get_comments with the appropriate parameters to get the counts and exists instead of using SQL</li>
<li>Incorrect notice, PHP Notice: The data could not be converted to UTF-8. You MUST have either the iconv or mbstring extension installed. This occurs even when Iconv is installed, could be related to Blogger reporting 0 comments</li>
<li>When the importer is running it’s not possible to stop it using the stop button</li>
<li>Blogger’s count of comments include those not linked to a post e.g. the post has been deleted.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Filters and Actions</h3>
<p>These actions and filters have been added so that you can extend the functionality of the importer without needing to modify the code.</p>
<p>Action – import_start – This is run when the import starts processing the records for a new blog</p>
<p>Action – import_done – This is run when the import finishes processing the records for a blog.</p>
<p>Filter – blogger_importer_congrats – Passes the list of options shown to the user when the blog is complete, options can be added or removed.</p>


Blogger Importer

Running the Blogger Importer in PHP 7 throws the following warning:

Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; Blogger_Importer has a deprecated constructor in /xxxxxx/wp-content/plugins/blogger-importer/blogger-importer.php on line 44

Another user reported this months ago, but it's not fixed yet.

Deprecated constructor warning

Imports posts, images, comments, and categories (blogger tags) from a Blogger blog then migrates authors to WordPress users.

pipdig

<p><strong>The only plugin you need to move from Blogger to WordPress</strong></p>
<p>Blogger Importer Extended is the easiest way to import your posts, pages, tags, comments, images and authors from <strong>Blogger to WordPress</strong>. You can also enable 301 redirects from old Blogger links to preserve SEO ranking.</p>
<p>Import up to 20 blog posts/pages for free, along with all comments, featured images and post labels. If you have more than 20 blog posts, you may wish to purchase an <a href="https://www.pipdig.co/shop/blogger-importer-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">unlimited license</a>. This allows you to import an unlimited amount of posts, pages, comments, images, labels and authors. You can also choose from some extra options to help with SEO and content formatting.</p>
<p>Blogger Importer Extended can:</p>
<ul>
<li>Import published posts</li>
<li>Import pages</li>
<li>Import tags/labels</li>
<li>Import comments</li>
<li>Import images</li>
<li>Import authors</li>
<li>Preserve all post/page links</li>
<li>Setup all 301 redirects from Blogger to WordPress</li>
<li>Fix mixed-content (convert http to https)</li>
<li>Filter spam comments (good for SEO)</li>
<li>Automatically remove “?m=1” from old Blogger links</li>
<li>Enable native lazy-loading on blog post images (speed up page loading times)</li>
<li>Convert post content formatting to match WordPress standards</li>
</ul>
<p>“I have a huge blog with over 3,800 posts and I was skeptical that it would be imported, let alone be imported well. My skepticism was unfounded. Not only did it move all the posts to my new WordPress Blog but with all the images, all the type definitions, and all the links that I am aware of. I am way beyond pleased. I am thrilled. I will be using this plugin for many of our company’s blog transitions. Thank you for building this outstanding tool. You have my full appreciation.” – <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wow-im-blown-away/" rel="ugc">Review from terryminion</a></p>
<h3>Why is the free version limited to 20 posts?</h3>
<p>The Google Blogger API has a limited quota per day. Offering 20 free imports should be enough for personal blogs without hitting the Google API quota limit. If you have more than 20 posts, or simply want to support the plugin, you may wish to purchase an <a href="https://www.pipdig.co/shop/blogger-importer-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">unlimited license</a>.</p>
<h3>What is the difference between Free and Unlimited?</h3>
<p>With the free version, you can import up to 20 blog posts/pages, along with all comments, featured images and post labels. If a post has more than one image, the first image will be downloaded to the media library and set as the featured image. Any other images will display in the post content, but will be hosted on Google rather than WordPress.</p>
<p>With the unlimited version, all content is imported into WordPress (unless you select the option to exclude them). There are no limits on the number of posts, pages, comments, images or labels. The only thing which is not imported is draft or sheduled posts.</p>
<p>With both versions, you can setup all the required 301 redirects from Blogger to WordPress.</p>
<h3>What if I have A LOT blog posts?</h3>
<p>If you want to import more than 20 posts, please consider purchasing an <a href="https://www.pipdig.co/shop/blogger-importer-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">unlimited license</a>. This allows you to import as much as you like. The importer can handle any number of posts you have. We have migrated blogs from Blogger to WordPress with over 120,000 blog posts without any issues.</p>
<p>If you have a large blog, you may wish to consider using our full <a href="https://www.pipdig.co/shop/blogger-to-wordpress-migration/" rel="nofollow ugc">Blogger to WordPress migration service</a>. This covers all aspects of the migration from start to finish.</p>
<h3>Can I use it on more than one site?</h3>
<p>You can import an unlimited amount of blogs from Blogger with the free or unlimited version.</p>
<h3>Privacy and GDPR</h3>
<p>This plugin connects to your Blogger/Blogspot blog via the Google Blogger API. We do not store any personal information in this plugin or connected services.</p>


Blogger Importer Extended

I chose this plugin because as of this writing, the old option, the Blogger Importer Plugin recommended by WordPress, hasn't been updated in five years and throws a number of PHP-version-related errors.

I used the unlimited (premium) version of the Blogger Importer Extended Plugin to import 208 posts from a client's Blogger site into an existing WordPress blog. It took 18 minutes for the Importer to bring in all 208 posts, associated comments, and the multiple images in each post. The import went smoothly, with the CPU and memory use of the plugin not exceeding 5 and 0.3 percent, respectively. It's very well-behaved in terms of server resources. 

It imported  all the posts into the default post category, "uncategorized" on this particular site, which presented a problem as WordPress still doesn't have a way to bulk-remove categories, only add them, though there are workarounds. In retrospect, the thing to do is to set the default post category to the category you want the imported posts in just before running the import, then the imported posts will all be in the correct category after importing them. Once the import is done, you can revert the default post category to its previous value.

Another wrinkle was that the Importer set the first image in each Blogger post as the Featured Image for the post in WordPress, which in the theme I was using was not attractive. A simple SQL query can be used to remove the featured images in bulk, which offers a quick fix to this issue.

The other thing of note is that a minor modification of the blogger-redirect-template.xml file will allow you to do the redirects on the Blogger site if your permalinks on the destination WordPress site are in the same format, making it possible to remove the plugin after you've done the import and still have the redirects work.

Overall, this is a very well-designed and functioning plugin. It is worlds better than the old method of importing from Blogger/Blogspot, which didn't even get the post images.

The only things keeping me from giving this five stars is the inability to set the category for imported posts and an option not to set featured images.

Better Than the Old Days!

Easily move your blog from Blogger to WordPress. Import all your content and setup 301 redirects automatically.

Blogger Importer vs Blogger Importer Extended