1. Install WordPress (I used 2.6.3)
2. Import the blog posts and comments from Blogger. Go to Manage -> Import in WordPress and follow the instructions there.
3. Set the authors properly.
4. Download and install the WordPress plugin wp-maintain-blogger-permalinks-1.0.zip. (Do not forget to enable the plugin as well)
5. Under Manage > Maintain Blogger Permalinks click the button that says Maintain Blogger Permalinks.
6. You can disable (or even delete) the wp-maintain-blogger-permalinks plugin.
7. Go to Options > Permalinks, select Custom, and enter the following:

   /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

…and you are done .
Hope this helps someone who wants to move to WordPress form blogger.

read more | digg story

Some multiple blog ping services (e.g. Pingoat)  have ping servers that are no longer existant. We at Poll-n-Ping! continuousy monitor the upstream ping services to ensure that they are live. We are also believe in being transparent, hence provide you will the result of each ping we make.

We are constantly trying to increase the number of services we ping. Do not forget to check your Poll-n-Ping! account regularly for the latest additions. If you do not already have a Poll-n-Ping!, you are not exploiting the maximum potential of your blog. Grab your self a free Poll-n-Ping! account without further dalay.

Poll-n-Ping! is the latest pinging service. Poll-n-Ping! is morethan just a pinging service, it monitors (polls) your blog for changes. Also provides notification, should you blog go down for some reason. All this comes for free, the best price ever.

Go grab your Poll-n-Ping! account now, you can forget about pinging and concentrate on blogging. Poll-n-Ping will take care of pinging blog search services.

The number of services that Poll-n-Ping! supports will increase further in the near future. Don’t forget to create a Poll-n-Ping! account.

You can checkout the service at http://mohanjith.net/pnp. All this comes free of charge, but donations are always welcome. Right now there is no limit on the number of blogs that can be monitored by a single user. If you want your blog to be submitted to all the blog search directories that we add support from time to time, you will have to visit Poll-n-Ping regularly.

Soon I plan to add alert service Poll-n-Ping, the subscribed users can receive notification mails or IM when content changes, blog goes offline, and/or blog comes online. However this will be a paid service unless I receive enough donations to support the hosting.

Poll-n-Ping has Turbogears under the hood .

Hope you will find the Poll-n-Ping service useful.

Googling for a cause landed fruitless, my likely guess is blogger servers were overloaded. Hope this doesn’t happen again.

So I went about exploiting the XML-RPC services provided by the blog search engines. I came up with this python script. I set up a cron job to invoke the script every 15 minutes. See bellow for the source.

#!/usr/bin/python

import xmlrpclib
import urllib2
import os

from hashlib import md5

feed_url = '[Yorur feed url]'
blog_url = '[Your blog url]'
blog_name = '[Your blog name]'
hash_file_path = os.path.expanduser("~/.blogger/")

def main():
req = urllib2.Request(feed_url)
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
feed = response.read()
hash_file_name = hash_file_path + md5(blog_url).hexdigest()

if os.path.exists(hash_file_name):
hash_file = open(hash_file_name, "r+")
last_digest = hash_file.read(os.path.getsize(hash_file_name))
else:
hash_file = open(hash_file_name, "w")
last_digest = ''

curr_digest = md5(feed).hexdigest()

if curr_digest != last_digest:
ping = Ping(blog_name, blog_url)
responses = ping.ping_all(['icerocket','technorati','google'])
hash_file.write(curr_digest)

hash_file.close()

class Ping:
def __init__(self, blog_name, blog_url):
self.blog_name = blog_name
self.blog_url = blog_url

def ping_all(self, down_stream_services):
responses = []

for down_stream_service in down_stream_services:
method = eval('self._' + down_stream_service)
responses.append(method.__call__())

return responses

def _icerocket(self):
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080')
response = server.ping(self.blog_name, self.blog_url)
# print "Icerocket response : " + str(response)
return response

def _technorati(self):
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping')
response = server.weblogUpdates.ping(self.blog_name, self.blog_url)
# print "Technorati response : " + str(response)
return response

def _google(self):
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2')
response = server.weblogUpdates.ping(self.blog_name, self.blog_url)
# print "Google blog search response : " + str(response)
return response

main()

When ever the script is invoked it will get the post feed content, and create a md5 hash of it and then compare the hash against the last known hash, if they differ ping the given list of service.

This is very convenient if you have someplace to run the cron job. Even your own machine is sufficient if you can keep your machine on for at least 15 minutes after the blog post is made.

To run the script you need to python 2.4 to later and the python package hashlib. Hope you will find this useful.

To edit the template, Sign into your blogger.com account and goto Template -> Edit HTML and then select Expand Widget Templates. Search for <data:post.body/>, just after <data:post.body/><div style="clear: both;"> <!-- clear for photos floats --> insert the following code.

<!-- Start of social bookmarks -->
<div class='service-links'>
<div class='service-label'>Bookmark this post with: </div>
<ul class='links'>
<li class='service_links_digg'>
<a class='service_links_digg' expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Digg this post on digg.com.'>
<img alt='Digg' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/digg.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_stumbleupon'>
<a class='service_links_stumbleupon' expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Bookmark this post on StumbleUpon.'>
<img alt='StumbleUpon' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/stumbleupon.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_delicious'>
<a class='service_links_delicious' expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Bookmark this post on del.icio.us.'>
<img alt='Delicious' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/delicious.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_reddit'>
<a class='service_links_reddit' expr:href='"http://reddit.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Submit this post on reddit.com.'>
<img alt='Reddit' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/reddit.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_newsvine'>
<a class='service_links_newsvine' expr:href='"http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/seed&amp;save?u=" + data:post.url + "&amp;h=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Submit this post on newsvine.com.'>
<img alt='Newsvine' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/newsvine.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_facebook'>
<a class='service_links_facebook' expr:href='"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=" + data:post.url + "&amp;t=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Share on Facebook.'>
<img alt='Facebook' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/facebook.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_google'>
<a class='service_links_google' expr:href='"http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&amp;bkmk=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Bookmark this post on Google.'>
<img alt='Google' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/google.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='service_links_yahoo'>
<a class='service_links_yahoo' expr:href='"http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=" + data:post.url + "&amp;t=" + data:post.title' rel='nofollow' title='Bookmark this post on Yahoo.'>
<img alt='Yahoo' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/yahoo.png'/>
</a>
</li>
<li class='last service_links_technorati'>
<a class='service_links_technorati' expr:href='"http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url="+data:post.url' rel='nofollow' title='Search Technorati for links to this post.'>
<img alt='Technorati' src='http://mohanjith.net/images/service_links/technorati.png'/>
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- End of social bookmarks -->[/sourcecode]
Add the following code before <code>]]></b:skin></code>.
[sourcecode language='css']/** Service links style **/
.service-links {
padding-top: 3px;
}
.service-links ul.links {
margin:0pt; padding:0pt;
}
.service-links ul.links li {
display:inline;
list-style-type:none;
padding: 0pt 0px;
background: none;
}
.service-links ul.links li img {
border: none;
padding: 3px;
}
.service-links ul.links li a {
border: none;
text-decoration: none;
}

Then save the template. Adding social bookmarking links and submitting your posts to social bookmarking networks would improve the visibility of your blog and help drive traffic to your blog.