I’ve been cheerleading WordPress ever since I made the switch in mid July.

After talking with two friends tonight who mentioned the desire to make the switch I’ve put together instructions for setting up a new WordPress account and then importing your blogger life into WordPress. I’ve done this 3 times before with no hiccups.

1. Go to http://wordpress.com and sign up for a new wordpress account. You can name it whatever you like. How about the same as your .blogspot?

2. Login and get to your ‘dashboard’

3. Now let’s fix a few things so that you don’t fall into the category of many neglegent WordPress users out there.

Delete the first post that has been automatically generated for you by WordPress.

To do this, Click on “MANAGE” and  for the post entiled “Hello World!” Click the “Delete” link on the right hand side.

Next, delete the comment below by Mr WordPress.

4. Customize your “About Me” Page.

While still under the “MANAGE” tab, click on “Pages”. Click the “Edit” link on the right for the About Page.

Feel free to change the name of the page if you like, but please change the default text to something that’s you. Check out this tip on how to write your “About Me” page. Then Save.

5. Import from Blogger

While still under the “MANAGE” tab, click on Import.

Click on “Blogger and Blogspot”

Now WAIT… Make sure you follow the directions WordPress gives you. It’s easy stuff, so if you’re not web savvy you can still do it. Here’s how…

(IN A NEW WINDOW: Go into your blogger dashboard, click on Template. Click in the text field of your current template. Select all that text. Open a word document, and paste it all into there. Save it as “Blogger Template”.

If you have any custom publishing options set up (like say you’re not using a .blogger domain instead you have your own hosting) then what I did was take screen shots of those publishing options. Those are found under the “Settings” Tab.

Once you’ve done the above, then sign out of blogger using the link in the top right corner.)

Go Back to your WordPress screen and login with your blogger name and password and hit “Start”.

If you have more than one blog under your name on Blogger then pick the one you want to import into WordPress. Otherwise, just the one blog will be listed. Go Ahead and Click it!

Now Wait… It will backup, Publish, Import, Restore, Re-Publish and…

Click the link at the bottom to reset the importer, and now click on the “DASHBOARD” tab…
Your blogger posts, comments and stats are now right there in WordPress as if you had been using WP all along.

6. Welcome to WordPress!

Here’s a few suggestions for things to do first:

1 . Click on the “Write” tab and get yourself a new post on there.
2. Click on “Presentation” and change your site’s theme. You can do this all you want without effecting your content.
3. Look around and explore the new options you have as a blogger
4. Add me to your blogroll

[See how it all worked out for me: I started with my blogger site and ended up with a new wordpress site]