GFC for WordPress
One of the things a lot of bloggers are a little wary of if they decide to move from Blogger to WordPress.org is that they think they will lose all their GFC followers. At first, I thought so, too, but lookie to the right! There they are, my wonderful GFC followers are still present here as well. If you decide to move from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog, there are a few things you can do in order to keep your GFC followers. It took me a while to make this work, but I’m very stubborn, so what I lack in tech-skills, I’ve more than made up for in perseverance.
And we really want to continue to see these happy faces when we come to our blog, right? So here’s what I did to make it happen:
First of all, do not delete your Blogger blog, you need to keep it open so you can redirect visitors from your old URL to your new URL anyway, right? So that people who have bookmarked your blog can find it even after your move across the web to another corner. In WordPress, there is a nifty plugin called Jetpack, it was automatically installed when I started my blog, it’s free, and it helps with stats, e-mail followers and RSS feed. You need to use the URL for your Jetpack feed on blogger when you move. That way, Blogger is fetching your feed from your new blog, it’s not trying to look for it on Blogger anymore.
In order to change your feed URL, you need to go into the settings in your Blogger dashboard, then click on ‘other’ all the way down to the left. It looks like this:
As you can see, my feed URL is very easy to remember, and now, Blogger can easily remember it as well. This feed is what people who follow me via GFC see when they look at their Google Reader or Feedly to follow my posts. Now, of course, to make things difficult for a lot of people, Google Reader will no longer be available as of July 1st of this year. I don’t know if Google is going to set up something else in its’ place, but I think it’s important to maybe look for alternatives already. I have set up Feedly both on my browser, my phone and my tablet so that I can read blogs I’m following anywhere. It’s very easy to use, and it follows both my GFC friends, and the bloggers I follow via RSS.
Once you have changed your feed, you need to set up the redirect from your Blogger URL to your new, self-hosted URL, that is also done in the Settings of your Blogger Dashboard, but it’s under Basic. It looks like this:
Now you already have made two very big steps on the path of keeping your GFC followers once you are all set up with WordPress.org
The final step you need to make can be found at Misdrifted SnowWhite, it’s easy to follow, and as you can see, it makes your GFC follower badge look just the same way it does on Blogger. Once everything is set up, it is important that you always keep your Blogger blog open. If you were to delete it, the feed in Blogger that GFC is looking for won’t be found anymore, and then, it would be impossible to get GFC back again. Ashley has also written a very easy to follow tutorial over at Nose Graze – and this is the way I did mine – I just wasn’t able to explain it as well as Ashley did.
I hope this will help, I am not very tech-savvy, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer lots of questions, but I can at least share what I did here at (un)Conventional Bookviews to keep my followers from disappearing completely. If you have qualms about leaving Blogger, you could also check out Ashley’s interview with four bloggers who have already made the leap. You can find her interview of me, and some other bloggers over at Nose Graze.
Have a terrific Thursday 🙂
I actually have a WordPress account but with a different url, and I couldn’t get the hang of it :/ Then I tried registering mybookmusings.wordpress.com but there’s already a site with that name. Sadly, I don’t have the money to purchase a .com domain so I’m sticking to Blogger for now.
Also, I think it’s hard to keep switching names and urls, especially since I’m still a noob blogger.
If you’re happy with Blogger, there’s no need to move, right? And this transfer of GFC followers won’t work with a wordpress.com blog, because it’s hosted by WordPress, not by your server. I think that’s a mistake many people make. I first signed up with .com when I moved, and then, I had to change it again so I could get all the fun plugins I wanted.
It is hard to switch names and urls in the beginning, but once you’ve blogged for a while, you’ll learn more as well, and it’s never too late to change platforms if you feel like it.
Good thing I didn’t switch to WP earlier then! I have so much to learn about WordPress, but so far Blogger works for me.
Thanks for replying on my meme, by the way!
Since I cannot notify you, here’s what I said 🙂
Thanks for your kind words, Lexxie! Whitney My Love is really one of my favorites. 🙂
Oh and I’m a new follower in Twitter. 🙂
I actually have a WordPress account but with a different url, and I couldn’t get the hang of it :/ Then I tried registering mybookmusings.wordpress.com but there’s already a site with that name. Sadly, I don’t have the money to purchase a .com domain so I’m sticking to Blogger for now.
Also, I think it’s hard to keep switching names and urls, especially since I’m still a noob blogger.
If you’re happy with Blogger, there’s no need to move, right? And this transfer of GFC followers won’t work with a wordpress.com blog, because it’s hosted by WordPress, not by your server. I think that’s a mistake many people make. I first signed up with .com when I moved, and then, I had to change it again so I could get all the fun plugins I wanted.
It is hard to switch names and urls in the beginning, but once you’ve blogged for a while, you’ll learn more as well, and it’s never too late to change platforms if you feel like it.
Good thing I didn’t switch to WP earlier then! I have so much to learn about WordPress, but so far Blogger works for me.
Thanks for replying on my meme, by the way!
Since I cannot notify you, here’s what I said 🙂
Thanks for your kind words, Lexxie! Whitney My Love is really one of my favorites. 🙂
Oh and I’m a new follower in Twitter. 🙂
You are a genius! Well, I don’t have wordpress but I know that this GFC is a nice tool that wordpress is missing.
LOL, I’m not really much of a genius, but thanks anyway! I did a lot of searching, then, suddenly I got it to work. Might as well share how, right?
You are a genius! Well, I don’t have wordpress but I know that this GFC is a nice tool that wordpress is missing.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice how strange it was to find a GFC widget here before. I just figured out that (Un)conventional Bookviews is a wordpress blog. (^^);
That aside, this is so cool! I’m not planning to get WordPress anytime soon, but I’m happy to have found a way to keep the people who built us up along the road if we ever do switch. And if anyone I follow does switch to WordPress, at least I’ll still be able to find them on my blogger dashboard.
Exactly, I think it’s important both for those who want to keep their followers, and for those followers.
I get all my updates in my Feedly feed, and I can keep up with everybody this way.
Thanks for stopping by Sydney 🙂
Thanks for the FYI, That was something I was bummed about b/c I had over 1000+ followers on GFC. I think I”ll try it out and hopefully I can get everything to work. 🙂
I hope you can get it to work out too, Mariya! It’s hard to get people to follow you a different way if they’re used to GFC.
I did what you and snow white lady said and it is still not right. Can you help me??
Merisha, I’m not sure I am really able to, but why don’t you tell me exactly where things seem to have gone wrong?
on my wordpress site it is showing but it is showing part of the blogger page instead of the gfc follow widget
Have you made sure that the feed you are using on your Blogger is the feed you actually have here on your WordPress blog? It seems to me as if your feed is still the blogger one, since it shows your blogspot URL.
Also, make sure that if anyone goes to your Blogspot blog, they will be redirected here. I hope this helps!
I’m confused on the feed thing?
on wordpress, your RSS feed is usually not via feedburner, so you need to use the URL for your feed from your wordpress blog, and input that in what I show in the first picture in my post.
My feed address is mentioned there, I use the jetpack plugin for mine.
I having a blonde moment because I’m still confused. I don’t know if my blog has jetpack and I don’t know what feeder the blogger thing has.
The thing is, blogger has it’s own RSS feed, and that can’t be connected to your WordPress blog.
I went to your blog, and your RSS feed URL is : http://blissfulbookreviews.com/?feed=rss2 this is what you need to copy and paste into your blogger dashboard – as showed in the first picture I use in my post.
I hope this helps!
Well, I thought I was doing fine until I tried to change my blog url. My hosts’s instructions are way different than Blogger’s for adding those two Cnames they want. I had to call support at Arvixe. Then I ran out of memory trying to import my content, which I now know I should have done before the redirect. So I had to unredirect. But at least now I know what to do, so I can try again in the right order. And then I’ll come back to add the GFC widget. Thanks!
I hope you’ll be able to get it to work! Thanks for stopping by.
Well, I thought I was doing fine until I tried to change my blog url. My hosts’s instructions are way different than Blogger’s for adding those two Cnames they want. I had to call support at Arvixe. Then I ran out of memory trying to import my content, which I now know I should have done before the redirect. So I had to unredirect. But at least now I know what to do, so I can try again in the right order. And then I’ll come back to add the GFC widget. Thanks!