Moving from Blogger FTP to WordPress, Part 1

Life was easy when I set up this blog (and others) way back in May 2005 using Blogger's friendly FTP service.  Then in January 22 of this year, Blogger announced that they are shutting down FTP access in March -- since pushed back to May 1, 2010 -- and had set up a blog and some migration tools to help users shift to other Blogger-supported methods.  It's good to know that switching to a simple blogging method would be easy and painless -- but I don't trust Blogger now and want to maintain some of our traffic.  So I have decided to switch over to WordPress (which I've been admiring for a while anyway) and see if I can continue to maintain the same web addresses for our blogs.  Some things may change -- such as the RSS feeds (from what I have read) and certainly the blogging interface -- but I hope to pull off the switch with a minimum of downtime and no change to our link structure (fingers crossed).  Here are some guides I have been reading on the subject, in case you are in the same boat:

• FTP Publishing on Blogger to WordPress: Migration Guide by Ravi
• Migrating from Blogger to WordPress (FTP Blogs) by Ben Frain
  Be sure to check the comments area here, which suggests it may actually be easier than he says.
• Move from Blogger to WordPress without Losing GoogleRank by Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker
• Migrate Your Blog from Blogger to WordPress with All the Google Juice by Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration
• Move from Blogger to WordPress and Maintain Permalinks and Traffic by Arpit Jacob

These seem pretty helpful, but I get the sense that WordPress may be working behind the scenes to make the process even easier.  Just wish they would do more to announce what they are up to.  Seems like a great opportunity for them to gain customers.  I have backed up our site and started experimenting with The Center Square blog to see how this will go.  I'll keep you posted on my progress and welcome reader advice.