How to Change a Blog Name

...WITHOUT losing everything!

Hello folks!
As you might have noticed I recently changed the name of my blog, including the url because I have an OCD about things matching think it looks more professtional if my URL and blog name match .  However when I first changed the url I opened up my blog, clicked a post link and AHHHHHHH!!! the link was broken and I got a message that the blog was no longer running! NOOOOO!!!!
Frantically I scrambled for a way to undo it, I tried changing my blog url back to what I had originally had it as and it did restore all the links.

Now for a way to discover how to change the name while transporting all the posts to the new blog url the steps below are how I've discovered how to do this.

Note: The instructions are only good for blogger platform blogs.

STEP 1: Export current blog to .xml file saved on computer.

• Go to the "Settings" tab
• Under "Settings" select the "Basic" tab
• On the top next to Blog Tools select "Export blog"

• Selecting "Export Blog" will bring up the above screen.
• Click "Download Blog" to download the complete code for your blog.  Remember which folder this is downloading to.  On most computers you can find it again under the "Downloads" folder.

STEP 2: Change blog URL

• Go to the "Settings" tab 
• Select "Publishing" tab
• You should have a screen like below where you can type what you'd like to change your blog URL name to:

• Enter a name you'd like and it will show if it's available or not.  If it is, you can enter the CAPCHA code and hit save settings.

STEP 3: Import blog

• Go to the "Settings" tab
• Under "Settings" select the "Basic" tab
• On the top next to Blog Tools select "Import blog"

• Select "Choose file" and select the file on your computer that you created when you Exported your blog to your computer in STEP 1

• Enter the CAPCHA and select "automatically import all published posts" this will make your previous posts visible under your new URL right away.

STEP 4: Transfer Widget links

• If you have added widgets to your blog that link back to posts or pages (my toolbar is a widget with custom images that link to pages I've created) you will need to go in and manually update the URL associated with it so that it links to the new page. 
• Open the widget you want to edit. See example below (this is the widget for my header of my blog):

• The highlighted code above tells me where I'll be sent if I click on the photo. 
• So, it's pretty easy to change, all I have to do is replace the "lisaranae.blogspot.com" with my new URL "sewgloried.blogspot.com"

• If you are linking to a page and it has more modifiers after the ".com" all you have to do is replace your name "lisaranae.blogspot.com" with the new main name "sewgloried.blogspot.com" and you can leave the modifiers after that unchanged. 

View your blog and check to see if all your lovely links work.  If links for widgets don't work investigate the URL address associated with them by opening the edit feature of each widget and looking for a URL that is associated with your previous blog address.

Hope some find this useful! If you have any questions about this process in BLogger let me know and I'll do my best to answer your question or direct you to a resource who would know!

LInking UP!