So, to the new goodies in this version:

• image editor in the media module (as in you can crop, flip, and rotate the images)
• easier media enclosures (youtube plugins are a thing of the past²)
• a trash bin for your deleted posts (you can restore them from the ‘trash’ tab in the Posts Panel>>Edit subPanel, although the trash bin will only show after you’ve deleted something)
• batch updating of plugins – I’m so glad to have this now!  I have 31 plugins on this site, and now I can update them all with one click!!  (this is found in the Tools Panel >> Upgrade subPanel)
• Attn: BlogHer Users: We can now set a custom theme directory – this means that all of you that have a separate blog for your reviews, can now use the same theme as the main site – no copying and pasting or doubling up on your changes for every single tweak!
• 3 tools that I didn’t know needed improvement – now even better: photo galleries (you can choose ANY image in the blog now); bookmarklet (yay!); and the sidebars now show descriptions – what a relief for those of us with 15 “text” widgets and try to guess which is which.

Other good things to explore – and possibly heavy on the geekery:

• SEO advancement: rel=canonical option
• Database optimization – now supported through the wp-config file
• Theme Support – is now a whole lot better with automatic thumbnail support for posts, metadata tables that are customizable for comments, more support for editing users, profiles, post types, and registration.  Can you see how incredibly versatile this makes WP?
• Custom category templates by slug.  Better support for custom wp-queries, and query-posts, excerpts and taxonomies.  And last but definitely not least – the theme editor will now remember your place after a save! Woot!   (but remember – never use the editor – use a text editor so you can undo your changes!)  lol
• Exports and Backups will now remember custom taxonomies.

1.  An established blog needs to keep its google ‘juice’ and page rank.

2.  Us bloggers, like to keep our readers, not confuse them with new addresses and redirects and warning pages.

3.  We also like to keep our FEED readers/ subscribers.

4.  We also like to have a professional top level domain (myblog.com or myblog.net)

For Blogger:

The ONLY way, and I stress – only – way to keep your google ranking with a move away from wordpress is to publish to a “custom domain” and stay on Blogger until every single one of your readers and posts are switched over to the new URL.  Meaning everyone will now be linking to:  myblog.com instead of myblog.blogspot.com.

After 6 – 18 months, depending on the popularity and complexity of incoming links, (more links will need longer to change), contact us to import your information.  We will change over your Name Servers, so they will point to your new WordPress self-hosted blog, and your readers won’t notice anything, unless you put up a new design at your new bloggy home.

NOTE:  The final move is a difficult one to try yourself, you need to be familiar with .htaccess files and permalinks to make the post titles on your WordPress installation match the post titles from Blogger. 

For WordPress.com blogs:

These are the blogs with a name like myblog .wordpress.com.   Because hosted WordPress blogs (the ….wordpress.com ones) will allow control over where the blog is published, you can switch to a new name (myblog.com) and to a new location (on your own host server) any time you like.  There is no wait, like there is with Blogger.   There is an additional $15 fee to purchase the ‘custom domain’ option in WordPress which will keep your permalinks in tact when the switch is made.

For Typepad and Moveable Type

For these platforms, you already have your own domain name, and we can change that to a new location at any time.  These blogs are more difficult to move to wordpress and keep everything in tact as they don’t provide very handy export tools.  But we can work around that!

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