My Experience of Migrating blog from Blogger to WordPress on Azure

You may have noticed the new look of my blog with a bit difference in URLs, as I have migrated from Blogger to WordPress that is hosted on IIS deployed on Microsoft Windows Azure.

Objectives:

• Migrate all posts from Blogger to WordPress
• Don’t end up with broken links for blog posts
• New home page, simple and improved responsive layout
• Update DNS settings to set adilmughal.com to new site

Migrating Earlier Blog Posts

After creating a new WordPress site from Websites gallery in Windows Azure Portal, migrating earlier posts was very easy and straight forward, a tool comes out of box with WordPress, just utilize the tools to import blogger post and comments on WordPress

There is a great tutorial on how to create a WordPress website on Azure in few clicks

Dealing with Broken Links

First, I wanted to move all my blog post with URL like {domain}/blog/{year}/{month}/{title} which is not really default in WordPress, however you can set it under Settings -> Permalinks. The thing I was worried about is that earlier my URL were of scheme {domain}/{year}/{month}/{title}.html and I don’t want to break any URL previously linked blog post. So for this I need to create a custom structure under Permalinks.

However, after setting custom structure, you would end up in URL like:

https://www.adilmughal.com/index.php/blog/2013/02/asp-net-mvc-4-redirects-incorrect-login-url-login-aspx/

To kick out index.php, you need to do some URL rewriting in your web.config, if hosted on IIS. This is pretty much explained in an article “Enabling Pretty Permalinks in WordPress“. Also refer to gist, code snippet, below containing “Main Rule”.

Second, blogger has convention of url scheme ending with .html. I want to get rid of .html but at the same time if I don’t want to break any previous linked blog post. For instance, a blog post link

www.adilmughal.com/2013/02/restoring-nuget-packages-for-external-dependencies.html

should take me to new URL

https://www.adilmughal.com/blog/2013/02/restoring-nuget-packages-for-external-dependencies/

Therefore I have to add another rewrite rule. “Remove html” rule demonstrates the same in gist below:

https://gist.github.com/adilmughal/6388876

It took a little time to figure this out but I believe that was the most important thing. Another thing I want to preserve was social media interaction like Facebook Likes, Tweeted etc. But that is something I was not able to achieve that as such they don’t work on redirection… however what matter most was done.

Home Page and Improved Layout

Previously my home page was merely list of posts, I wanted to add a new home page with a good snapshot of everything like recent blog post, recent talks etc… and that was one of the reason I went for a separate /blog link setting. WordPress and a custom theme gives me flexibility of adding a static page with as home page. I would like to dive deep into the PHP thing to make most of it, but that’s a thing to do later.

DNS Settings

Well that was a bit tricky for me. For DNS settings, first you need to set A (Host) and CNAME (Alias) with Host @ pointing to your IP of server on Azure.

You can find the IP of your server in “Manage Domain” under “Configure” section of your Web site on Windows Azure Management Portal

Second, you need to add CNAME entries to awverify.{website_name}.azurewebsites.net as screenshot depicts below:

Then all you have to do is to add your domain name in “Manage Domain” section

and that’s it. I am done! Enjoy reading my new blog and feel free to provide any feedback. If you are already hosting your blog/site somewhere else, try hosting it on Azure, it has it’s own benefits.