WordPress Designers: Blogger Import Auth (403) Errors — Solution!

SINCE THIS WAS POSTED, A FIX HAS BEEN FOUND. SEE MY NEW ARTICLE: WordPress: Blogger Importer 403 Auth Error — THE FIX!! If you are less technical, you may want to continue reading this article to process the workaround instead.

You have two options if you’ve gotten the 403 authorization error while attempting to import a Blogger blog into a self-hosted WordPress installation:

1. Use Blogger’s export feature to save an XML backup file of the blog. THE ONLY WAY this will do you any good is if the XML backup is 1MB in size or less because any file larger than this will not be accepted by the converter powered by Google Apps (http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/)… otherwise, you must have knowledge of the structure of XML code to be able to modify it so that the markups match up when you import it into WordPress. Once you convert it to WXF format, you can import it using the WordPress import tool in your dashboard rather than using the Blogger import tool (which is essentially busted right now). I have yet to have a client whose backup was under 1MB in size so hopefully you’ll get lucky. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, this method won’t import images, but you can likely use the Blogger Image Import plugin to accomplish this on your own.
2. Since WordPress.com has resolved this issue on their installations, simply create a WordPress.com account and use it to import the Blogger blog as you usually would do using the Blogger import tool. Once you’ve done that, export the blog to obtain a WXR file and import that file into the self-hosted installation using the WordPress import tool. If it is a large file, you may notice that you have posts and comments missing. Here’s the trick: when the import seems to be finished (the status bar says “DONE”) there should be a link to your blog’s main URL at the bottom of the imported content (each line has a number and title, etc.) with anchor text that says HAVE FUN! If you don’t see that, it’s not done. Simply keep hitting refresh until you see that. Voila. Done. Using this method of getting the data from Blogger to your installation of WordPress is going to pose a few issues of its own, but they’re mild for the most part and easy to work around to achieve the same result as the Blogger import would have.

If you have specific issues once you’ve done this, feel free to submit a question using my contact form.

Good luck working around the 403 authorization error while processing your Blogger to WordPress transfer!