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Moving to WordPress, Step #3: GFC

 It’s been going really well moving to WordPress, so far I see that I can keep all my data without losing any content/follower/subscribers. I’m so excited!
I think I’ll write the whole process as one big post for anyone who wants to move from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress blog. It will make things easier for other bloggers. Meanwhile I’ll just write what I’m doing as I go along …


So I have a working domain and a dummy wordpress blog installed on it. I was really scared I was going to lose all my GFC followers, but found out that the integration is really simple. Just follow these steps:


1. Login to Google Friends Connect website (http://www.google.com/friendconnect)
2. Find your current blog, click on it
3. Choose Settings -> Advanced, and under “Other Options” -> “Alternate addresses” box, add your new domain. This is necessary for the GFC badge to work on your new domain as well as on your blogger blog. 



4. Click “Save your Advanced Settings” to save.
5. Choose Gadgets, then click “Get this Gadget” under the “Members” gadget



6. Click “Generate Code” at the bottom of the screen
7. In the code box scroll down until you see the following lines at the bottom (numbers shown below are just an example, don’t use them …):

        google.friendconnect.container.renderMembersGadget(
           { id: ‘div-11111111111111111’,
           site: ‘2222222222222222‘ },
        skin);
       </script>
Copy the number after “site:” (without the quotes)


8. In your wordpress dashboard, add the “Google Friends Connect Integration” plugin (Plugins -> Add New -> enter “Google Friends Connect Integration” in the search box, it’s the first one that come up -> Click “Install Now” on the plugin).



9. Activate the plugin
10. Go to Settings -> GFC Integration and paste the number you copied earlier into the “Friends Connect SiteId” box. Click “Update Options” to save.





11. In Appearance -> Widgets, drag the “GFC Login” and “GFC Members” to the sidebar under “Primary Widget Area” (or choose another widget area). This will include the plugins in your blog. You can then customize the widget to whatever you want to look like (size and colors).





That’s it!
I know it seems long, but the steps are really fast and easy. And most importantly – they work …


Next steps: migrating content and subscribers

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3 thoughts on “Moving to WordPress, Step #3: GFC”

  1. THANK YOU! I used these tonight while transferring my latest client to WP: SmittenByAPromise.com — it worked beautifully. now onto transferring comments/posts!

  2. That’s great!! I’m so happy to hear that this post helped you! I really put a lot of effort in writing it, because it really took me awhile to find all the right steps. Lots of websites had instructions, but none of them contained ALL the info.
    Good luck!
    I’ll soon add detailed instructions on the final move (the plugin I used to import content, the feed and more)

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