I am still leaving Blogger as I cannot support even localized censoring of content.

Tonight (Wednesday) – Finish selection of hosting provider and register for service. Create WordPress.org* blog. Install plugins, theme, and otherwise configure wordpress site. Add side bar widgets.

Thursday night – Import archives from blogger.

Friday night – Actual move starting at 11:00 pm MST**:

• Change DNS entries to point to hosting server. Verify that domain name points to the right server.
• Test from several browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Konqueror, Rekonq, Internet Explorer, and Safari) and operating systems (Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora, openSUSE, PC-BSD, and Windows XP) using several of my virtual machines.
• Modify Feedburner settings as needed to ensure it points to the right site. Publish test blog post to verify the feed is working properly.
• Install Disqus in WordPress. Post comment to this blog post and to the test blog post to verify that comments are working properly.
• Take appropriate steps, if necessary, to ensure that dwnomad.blogspot.com redirects or links to dwnomad.com

Saturday – Testing and debugging**:

• Publish blog posts that have images embeded from another site, using images uploaded to WordPress, and a video embeded from YouTube, if all tests work, then announce that the transition was successful and that it’s time to start bug testing. This means that I will need each of you to try things out and report anything that appears to broken. Please make sure comments work as well, instructions on bug reporting will be included in that blog post.
• Ensure links between posts and embeded multimedia are not broken in the archives.
• Resolve and respond to any reports of bugs.
• Adjust tagging to better fit with the flow of WordPress.

Sunday – Advertising! Costs will be going up four to eight fold, while that’s not much, I would rather not have it all come out of my pocket. I enjoy generating content and the privilege of having people read it, but it takes a fair amount of time and a lot of work. Frankly I wouldn’t mind making money off of it, but I at least want to minimize the amount of money it costs me. I’ll be looking into different options, but there is a good chance I’ll just be going back to Google Adsense.

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*WordPress.org is free and open source software and the world’s most popular blogging software. It is not to be confused with WordPress.com which is a free hosting site that utilizes a locked down version of the WordPress.org software.

**Update – After selecting the hosting provider and reading more on the process, I have found I made an error with the timeline. The name server changes will take 1-3 days to propagate across the internet. I will be sure to post on both servers during that time span. This also means I’ll be able to start as soon as I can get around to it on Friday after work.