Getting your Blogger/Blogspot posts, comments and labels moved to WordPress? That’s easy. Getting all the other little details? Not so much. This is the second post in a series that will help you sort through the best methods for making the entire process painless.
Today, migrating all of your images from Blogger to WordPress.
Here’s a dirty little secret about the super-easy Blogger Import utility that’s included with WordPress: It doesn’t import attachments, e.g. files and images, that are stored at Blogger. Instead, it creates hotlinks to those images and they remain on Google’s servers.
Theoretically, this is no big deal—as long as you keep your Blogger blog alive, this system works. But what if that doesn’t work for you?
Cache Images by Matt Mullenweg
Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress.com. While Mullenweg is a young entrepreneur whose life looks all too easy, he’s no slouch when it comes to code. There’s a simple elegance to the tools he creates, and Cache Images is no exception. Cache Images scans through all of your blog’s content, identifies all hotlinked images, and downloads a copy to your WordPress media library.
NOTE: This plugin is also handy for anyone who uses hotlinked images from elsewhere on the web (with permission, of course). No more worrying about someone else’s website crashing or disappearing; you will have your own copy of every image, stored away for posterity.
But enough of my geek swoonery—let’s get to work:
You must import all of your posts from Blogger into WordPress before this will work.
- Go to Plugins > Add New. Search for the Cache Images plugin and install it.
- Go to Tools > Cache Remote Images.
- Click Scan.
- Select the servers from which you want to download copies of images. (DO NOT CLOSE THIS WINDOW UNTIL THE TASK COMPLETES!)
- You’re done!
NOTE: There is one major shortcoming to this method. Blogger, like WordPress, creates multiple copies of images at different sizes, displaying the best size for your blog, which is sometimes smaller than the original. Cache Images plugin can only download the hotlinked image, not (necessarily) the original, full-sized image. So, if you’re a photo blogger with lots of high resolution images stored on Blogger, you can’t get the original image out. Links to the original image will remain active, but will NOT be downloaded to WordPress.
Have you played with downloading the images from Picassa? I just found the original large format images for my blogger blog are already in a Picassa album. Looks useful but I don’t know anything about it.
I found this plugin really useful! I’ve recently migrated a blog from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve been doing it manually post by post, but I knew there had to be an easier way!
Thank you!
We have been using WordPress’ “import” tool to import all posts and comments from Blogger over to a new WordPress blog. It seems to import only one post, and yes, the images do not display, but the code for them does. We will try the above, but presently, are stumped at the first step: namely, importing posts and comments! Is using the “import” in tools the best way to do what we are trying to do? Thanks!
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble. Are you getting any error messages when you try to import? Are you logged into your Blogger account when you try using the import tool?
We finally got it!
Ended up “exporting” the posts,comments,images from blogger, then converted to WordPress wxr format using an online tool we stumbled onto – then – in wordpress, imported that wxr file and voila — everything was up there in the new wordpress blog, fully intact, images, links, comments and all.
Hi,
Thanks for the information on this plugin! This is helpful. However, I just tried this with a blog I recently imported from Blogger to WordPress, and now the images are broken. Not sure if I need to do something after the scan? Or should it just update?
Thanks!
~ Doniree
Doniree, sorry to hear you’re having trouble. What do you mean by “broken?” Are you getting any error messages when you try to import? Are you logged into your Blogger account when you try using the import tool?
Dude, this is just awesome. You solved my headache. Thanks a bunch. I see all the servers of my blogspot domain …
Hi,
I have imported my blogger and followed your steps & installed remote cache images but when I press the “scan” button, nothing happens…what am I missing?