Since making the move from Blogger to Word Press, I’ve heard from a number of others who said they too had been thinking about making a similar move. As a public service, I thought I would offer some of the lessons I learned the hard way. Here, in one single post, is every blessed thing I learned about migrating a blog:

1. No matter how well-written and user-friendly a manual is things will go wrong. For no apparent reason.

Zipping happily through my instruction manual I thought I was making good progress, feeling more confident, tech-savvy, and smug with the turn of each page. Until I got to page 46. There, the instructions said,

Now tell Blogger that it’s okay for your Word Press to have access to your Blogger account.

So I did.

Blogger said, “Nuh uh.”

So I tried again. And again. And again.

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then most likely I’m certifiable. That I have not received an official diagnosis is perhaps due only to the fact that no one wearing a white coat and carrying a DSM IV was in my general vicinity during the transfer process.

I retraced my steps, started over again at the beginning, and pushed enter. Repeatedly. Using a little more emphasis each time I hit that key.

I researched. I Googled. I found others in cyber space that got stuck at the same point I had. They taught me about things like meta tags. I inserted one somewhere. Blogger said I had succeeded in authorizing access to my site.

I went back to page 46 and pressed enter.

Nothing.

2.  When things do go wrong, yelling at your computer will prove pointless. It will just sit there and mock you, its cursor blinking in indifference.

3.  There exists in this world a small minority of people who can actually read and comprehend HTML. It is highly probable that considerable overlap exists between the subset of the general population which can speak HTML and that which is fluent in Klingon. I believe both tongues descended from the same original language which originated in a culture long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Get to know these people. They have been uniquely gifted by God and will become your friends and allies against the indifferent blinking cursor.

4.  If you are attempting to undertake this project yourself, it is helpful to have the site Blogging with Amy on your web browser’s equivalent of speed dial.

5. To paraphrase the great detective Dirty Harry Callahan, there may be a point when a middle-aged blogger needs to accept her limitations. If you reach that point, seek the help of a professional.

6. Blogger and Word Press do not play nicely together. At. All. See item 1 above.

Even after the professional got my blog to budge, I found I had clean-up work to do. Word Press doesn’t seem to care much for the way Blogger interprets spacing between words and paragraphs.

I spent days reading through old blog posts and inserting spaces. The rhythm of my life sounded something like this:

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

I can’t believe how many blog posts I have to go through.

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

Maybe I should have deleted some.

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

Not really sure that master’s degree I have sitting in a box with all the rest of my really useful stuff is coming in all that handy right now.

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

I’ll bet my son could make a cool rap song out of this.

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

Wonder what carpal tunnel syndrome feels like?

Backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.

7.  If a friend who does web design for a living tells you to think about limiting the number of blog posts you move to your new site, you may want to listen to him.

8.  If anyone ever says anything nice about you on the internet, it will most likely happen during the days you are offline hitting, “backspace, backspace; shift enter, shift enter.”

9.  I know not what Akismet is nor how it tells the difference between a legitimate comment and spam, but I am truly grateful for the person or persons uniquely gifted by God to come up with such a thing. Word Press seems to attract spammers like a hillbilly to moonshine. If you decide to go with WP, activate your Akismet at once. At once!

10. I’m still not sure I know the difference between a category and a tag in Word Press. But at this point, in the words of my friend Janie, “I can’t care.”

11. There is such a thing as Word Press for Dummies. Which I bought. There is much I have yet to figure out, though, such as how to embed a widget into a post or page. I have Googled, and I have found results like:

This is pretty straightforward. Edit the theme template file, and wherever you want the widget section to be, put the following lines: <?php if (!dynamic_sidebar(‘some name for this widgets section’) ) : ?><?php endif; ?>

Sure looks like Klingon to me.

And I ask my computer, “Put the what, where?” And, “If I put all of that in the wrong place, how badly could things go wrong?”

My computer answers me not. The cursor does, however, continue its blink of indifference.

The first person who can explain to me in plain English how to get my archive widget on my archive page will become my new best friend. World without end. Amen.

12. The first person who says to me, “Did you hear? There’s a new platform, even better than Word Press, and everyone is switching to it,” will become my enemy for life.

Okay, maybe not my enemy for life. But I may have to pray for his or her immortal soul.