How to convert a Typepad.com blog to a WordPress blog
I have been blogging for a very long time at the Questions and Answers blog www.qandablog.com that is hosted via typepad.com. But I have known for a very long time that,
1. I wanted to be working in WordPress, the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world, so that I can easily help my clients with their web pages and blogs etc
2. From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it is much better to be blogging at your main domain, in this case www.waynemoran.com so that you are driving traffic to your domain and not the generic typepad.com domain.
So yesterday I realized that my hosting company (www.gate.com ) had all three of the top blogging engines available in the easy scripts section of the web site. They have Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress and as I have been talking with a client recently who has a need for Moodle, which is a CMS for educational provider websites, I realized my provider has that tool also.
Anyway, I decided to turn on WordPress for my sight. That process was easy but then I immediately broke out in a cold sweet thinking how in the world am I going to get all my content from my last blog over to this new blog? I woke up at 3:30 last night thinking, yes worrying about this. Gosh there has to be a way to convert this. So early this morning I ran off to Google and searched for “convert from typepad to wordpress” and shazam I found this awesome post from www.blogstrategies.net
http://www.blogstrategies.net/2009/01/28/import-typepad-to-wordpress/
So I went to my Typepad blog and logged in.
I went to the help page http://www.typepad.com/account/help and searched for export which points you to this page http://help.typepad.com/import_export.html and under the Export Section I found this little point
To create an export file, go to Blogs > Settings > Import/Export and scroll down to the Export section. Click the Export button to generate the export file.
I saved the file locally as mt- export.txt. This is important for later. Then I ftp uploaded this file to my new blog directory on my web host under the new directory wp-content.
In the article above it says to
“Next, sign-in to WordPress, click Tools in the left sidebar and Import. Select Movable Type/Typepad. Choose the second option for importing – “Or use mt-export.txt in your /wp-content/directory.” Click Import, and give WordPress a few moments to do its magic, and import and convert the data.”
Well, being I am on a slightly newer version of WordPress things are a little bit different. When you go to the Import menu on the left of the form you 1st have to install the import script or at least I did in my environment. I selected
Movable Type and TypePad: Import posts and comments from a Movable Type or TypePad blog.
When I did that, it gave me a warning that this script as not been tested with this newer version of WordPress so I stopped for a moment. But being the intrepid developer that I am I decided to continue on. Once it is installed you get to choose to upload a file from your computer or import mt-export.txt. This is where the ftp file from above is important. I selected this second option and off it goes.
In a minute or so I get the message Converted 1279 posts. Wow, now this is awesome! It has saved me hundreds of hours.
You can see the results here http://www.waynemoran.com/blog2/
Now I still need to work on the design and make sure it is getting into Google and all that but to know that I have quickly converted the content is a huge miracle.
So thanks for the info and happy blogging!!
Hi,
Great post shared by author. I appreciate it. Thanks for sharing this post. I appreciate it. Keep posting updates.
I have noticed many changes in your blog and they are like improvements for you.
Company India
Its really great ways to convert according to client requirements, i work for a web development and design services company we often receive such queries from our clients where they demand to do such ordinary tasks.
Thank you so much.. I really apprecaite it.
Great method of demonstration to convert and But we can create one more blog with existing blog name -that too works good.
Thanks for the insight Chris
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My friend and I were arguing about this! Now I know that I was right. lol! Thanks for making me sure!
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Hi there great post. My company might have to move around a dozen typepad blogs in the near future and I’ve seen services that offer to do it for a fee including image transfer, posts, comments, everything.
My question is, since I don’t have access to any typepad blog right now, does the WP import feature takes care of images as well? if not I might go with the services I found.
No, it will not grab the images but if you keep the old site up then your new posts will actually just point back to the old ones.
Or if you really need to you can export them from Typepad and then just ftp them to your new site and then simply change the urls in the posts.
I know it is a pain but it is better than nothing..
Velvet Blue is a great plug in that quickly changes all domains in your blog to some other domain.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/velvet-blues-update-urls/
My question is about your images. How did you make sure those got moved over from your old site? Did you have to open each post and add images into your new WordPress site? Did your permalinks move over as well?
I actually kept the old site so I do not care that much.. but you can go into the old site and copy all the images and then move them over and then update all the links. You can actually update the links with a sql query if you are very good. 🙂
Wayne, I’m wondering if you had any problems gettings your images to transfer or problems with internal links, permalinks, or formatting. I’m the co-creator TP2WP, a product that converts TypePad’s export file to WordPress’s own XML standard. This makes moving from TypePad to WordPress as easy as moving data between two WordPress blogs. So, rather than shoehorning incomplete data into WordPress and then fixing the errors afterward, we clean up the data before import ever happens. And our service supports the full transfer of permalinks, comments, images, and other files. Let us know if you have any data cleanup needs as we’d be glad to help you out. We hope your readers may find ourTypePad to WordPress conversion service useful as they plan their move from TypePad to WordPress.
It all worked for me.. Thanks.