I finally took the plunge and switched over to this new domain (nice, isn’t it?) running on WordPress. I can’t believe how easy it was. The initial setup was magic.
Download WordPress. Set up a database, add a user, upload the zip file and extract, fire up the domain in a browser. The first page that comes up is a wizard that asks for the database details. You enter them, press OK, and… it’s done!
The latest version has an import function for popular blogging services – point it at the old url, push the button and voila! Blogger also provides a mechanism to redirect links to a custom domain. You are supposed to point your DNS server to Google, but if you don’t it will take you to your own hosting service (it’s cheating, but hey). If you want to tweak your URLs so that all of the old permalinks work, it’s easily done through WordPress’ admin console.
The most time consuming thing was picking out a theme. Switching was like getting out of a Lada into a BMW. Brilliant piece of software.