Blogspot Barf?

October 23, 2006 4:59 PM

A friend asked me to create a Wordpress-powered site on her newly-acquired domain, and wanted me to import all of her Blogger entries that are hosted on Blogspot. No problem! Except...

I tried a shortcut, instead of following WPs recommended method, and it apparently has backfired on me. My primary concern was to NOT lose any of my friend's entries during the import process. So I cleverly (riiiight) directed Blogspot to publish all of her entries to a NEW Blogspot URL, which I easily typed in the Settings area.

Her original Blogspot site: http://example.blogspot.com
My "backup" site: http://examplebackup.blogspot.com

See how clever I was? That way I knew that her original site would remain untouched. So I carried on with the import, directing WP to import all entries from the examplebackup.blogspot.com site. The import was completely successful, and her new domain is now fully-loaded with two+ years of entries.

Now comes the weird part: she asked me to post on her Blogspot site that she had moved to a new domain and remind folks to change any bookmarks, feeds, etc. But when I went back into Blogger and tried to "write" to the original http://example.blogspot.com site, it just wouldn't work - the service just told me that THAT name was already taken! So somehow the act of publishing all of her entries to a NEW Blogspot address left me unable to write to her OLD Blogspot address. WTF?

And now comes the REALLY weird part: if someone tries to visit her original Blogspot site, they are redirected automatically to this weird page-- which yields search results for tractor parts!

I am baffled - how could a URL that ends in "blogspot.com" be redirected to a funky search? But more importantly - do any of you kind folks know if there is any way that I can make an entry to her original Blogspot address to let folks know about her new site?

Whew. Very much appreciate any tips or insight.

posted by davidmsc to computers & internet (4 comments total)

have you since resolved this? the url seems to go where it is supposed to go now.
posted by jessamyn at 5:05 PM on October 23, 2006

Well, holy cow -- the power of AskMefi is amazing -- about 30 seconds after I posted this question, Blogger somehow finally let me back in to the original Blogspot site. But I swear - I tried for hours to no avail - it was simply the psychic power of AskMefi that must have done it!

Thanks jessamyn.
posted by davidmsc at 5:09 PM on October 23, 2006

you're welcome! I seriously had nothing to do with this.
posted by jessamyn at 6:03 PM on October 23, 2006

I think you had some malware on your PC. Download AdAware and check it out.
posted by madman at 9:45 PM on October 23, 2006