Microsoft migrating Windows Live Spaces to WordPress blogs

After Microsoft recently killed blog statistics (even though primitive were better than anything since MS didn’t allow scripting) on Live Spaces I was definitely going to move my blog elsewhere. I was considering Blogger (http://www.blogspot.com) since it now has a very nice theme designer and cool readymade templates (see http://tziortz.blogspot.com and http://skiadas.blogspot.com for example) and WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org).

 

Seems Microsoft listened to the feedback regarding the state of Windows Live Spaces blog mis-service and is offering a migration path to WordPress (obviously Google’s Blogger was a no-option ;-), where it will redirect old links after one migrates. It allows not only downloading a backup of your blog but also migrating to WordPress automatically (pictures included, but not the Lists feature of Live Spaces, the temporary saved posts, the guestbook or the picked theme and its mini-apps).

 

For more details and instructions (including important dates that authors should act upon), see:

http://explore.live.com/Windows-Live-Spaces-Help-Center/

 

It contains info on how to use Windows Live Writer with WordPress:

http://explore.live.com/spaces-using-windows-live-writer-faq

 

and on how to connect the Live Spaces blog (or other blogs you also keep) with Windows Live Messenger to exploit its social features and let your friends get notified of your new posts:

http://explore.live.com/spaces-using-messenger-faq