November 10, 2006

Importing from Blogger to Wordpress to Movable Type

The mark of a good document/publishing format is good built in import and export. Import/Export keeps you from being tied to a single system and is a hedge against future technology changes. It also allows you do things like download your data to your computer or an ipod or some other system... it give you options. Right now only Movable Type has strong built in export (it's import functions are anemic). Other popular systems allow you to import, but neglect to include a good built-in export function. Anyway I've had to convert a few blogs in the past few days and had to dig around quite a bit to figure out how to move blog content from one system to another. Here are some simplified instructions for future googlers with the same issues.

How to import to Wordpress from Blogger

This is with Wordpress 2.05 and the non-beta version of blogger available as of 11/2006. The instructions don't work with the blogger beta.

1. If you are publishing to your own domain/ftp change, change the publishing settings in blogger and to publish to a temporary blogspot blog... make sure to copy down your old settings for later (also copy the archive publishing settings). You can republish to the temporary blogspot address if you wish to see if it works, but this is not required. If you are using blogspot already then just skip to #2.

2. In Wordpress go to import and select Blogger and follow the instructions.

3. If you were publishing in blogger to your own domain, remember to change the publishing and archive settings back to their original settings.

How to export Wordpress to Moveable Type

Eric Pierce has written an export Wordpress plugin called WPexport. It was posted a few years ago and has gotten a bit crufty over time, but people on the web have continued to post code fixes in his comments. Here is a patched version that worked for me with Wordpress 2.05 and MT 3.3. You can find the original broken plugin with all the specific fixes in the comments on Eric's seeming defunct website. Perhaps he's graduated. I couldn't find a working email address.

1. So install the plugin.

2. Activate it and go to options.

3. If you have a large blog you will see a blank text box. After some time (minutes in my case) a long text file containing your blog posts the MT import format will show up.

4. Copy all the text and paste it into a word processor that can save things as simple text files.

5. Save your file calling it "import".

6. Upload that file to the import folder in the base folder of your MT installation (if there isn't an import folder, create one).

7. Within MT follow the import instructions.

posted at 02:18 PM by raul

Filed under: interweb

Comments:

11/15/06 11:28 AM

While your at it, remember your post a long time ago about how you format/convert your pictures for your blog? I thought I bookmarked it but can't find it now. I would love to read the info again. I'm in the process of putting together a photoblog right now and would love your knowledge.
thanks/pj

11/16/06 11:15 AM

Thank you sooo much! It was step two that I was curious about.
pj

01/07/10 05:40 AM

This was posted a looong time ago, but I want to let you know that the plugin doesn't seem to work with the newest version of wordpress. Getting an 'invalid header' on the plugin.

01/07/10 05:49 AM

Got it working.

And now we wait for the export to be ready.

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