Alternatives to Blogger FTP

If you use Blogger and you currently publish your blog to your own website (e.g yourwebsite.com/blog) using FTP, then you probably already know that Blogger are planning to stop supporting this method from May 1st 2010. A lot of people have been asking me what they can do about this, so in this post I intend to outline the different options available to you.

My first piece of advice is Don't Panic! Your blog is not going to disappear on May 1st. It will always be there on your website and people can still visit it and read your blog posts. On May 1st you will no longer be able to make new posts to your blog or edit your blog.

If you want to continue to blog then you have a few different options available to you. Here they are, along with the advantages and disadvantages of them.

OPTION 1 - Move your blog to blogspot hosting

This option will involve moving your blog so that it is hosted on Blogger's free blog hosting Platform, known as blogspot. Instead of publishing to yourwebsite.com/blog you would publish to yourblogname.blogspot.com.

The advantage of this is that it is easy to do. Simply login to blogger and follow the instructions, by clicking on the "Start migration" now link at the top of your dashboard. You will backup your blog, then choose your blogspot URL to publish to, then redirect the old blog to the new one. It is easy to do and you won't lose any traffic as it will be redirected to the new location.

The disadvantage of this is that you are no longer publishing to your own domain. Publishing to your own domain is more professional, it adds regular content to your site and you are in complete control.


OPTION 2 - Move your Blog to a Sub Domain

If your blog is currently on yourwebsite.com/blog, moving it to a sub domain means that your blog will publish to blog.yourwebsite.com instead.

As an example of this, I had a blog on my Wedding in Edinburgh website. The blog was originally at the address http://www.WeddingInEdinburgh.com/wedding-planning and after I did the migration the blog moved to http://wedding-planning.WeddingInEdinburgh.com . If you visit the old blog URL you will see a notice that says the blog has moved. The page will then automatically redirect to the new page within 30 seconds.

The main advantage of this method is that you are still publishing your blog to your own website, which looks more professional.

The disadvantage of this method is that it is a little more complicated to setup than the previous option. You will need to login to your cpanel and create a sub domain, then create a CNAME record that maps to ghs.google.com. You can however get your web host to do these things for you. Just raise a support ticket and ask them to create a sub domain and a CNAME record for that sub domain.


OPTION 3 - Switch to a WordPress Blog

WordPress is a much more flexible blogging Platform with more features and thousands of free themes (templates) and plugins available. It is free to use and allows you to publish to your own website.

This option would involve leaving your blogger blog alone (people can still visit it and read it, but you can't publish new posts to it) and then creating a brand new WordPress blog.

If you host on Hostgator, WordPress is very easy to install and you can install it by logging into your cpanel, clicking on Fantastico and following the instructions. I recommend creating a new directory on your site to install the blog into.

If you don't want to do this yourself, we offer a free WordPress blog installation for members of the PIPS Power Group. You can join the PPG for $1 for a 10 day trial and we provide the free blog install for you if you stay beyond the trial period.

The advantage of this method is that you are able to continue to blog on your own domain and have the power of WordPress.

The disadvantage is that some technical skills are required to install a WordPress blog and get it up and running.

If you currently host on Host4Profit unfortunately there is no automatic way to install WordPress. I would recommend moving your website to Hostgator as described in my Hostgator replaces Host4Profit blog post.


CONCLUSION:

I recommend that you choose one of the above options as soon as possible. I recommend either option 2 or option 3. I have a few blogs and I'm using option 2 for some of them and option 3 for others. I may consider providing a service for option 2 on my Plug-In Profit Update Services website, if there is a demand for this. If you are interested in this please post a comment below or email me.

You may find this video helpful - it explains how to do options 1 & 2.