The Codex MT import Guide now contains detailed directions, with links.
Mena says It’s about time, and I can’t agree more. It’s about time Movable Type users moved to WordPress.
A lot of MT users might want to move to WordPress, but may have a lot of questions and doubts regarding the move, and about WordPress. I thought a short post with essential resources, tips and answers will come in handy to at least a few people, so here goes.
Downloading and Installing WordPress:
WordPress 1.2 “Mingus” is now ready, get it from The sourceforge download page.
Importing MT entries:
You can import all your MT entries into WordPress using the import-mt.php script that ships with WordPress, which can be found in the wp-admin folder.
Updates:
- MT exports the entries with the dates set wrong. The dates do not carry AM/PM or 24 hour information. There is a Fix for the date problem at the MT support forums.
- WordPress uses UTF-8 as the default encoding. So if your MT blog uses ISO 8859-1 or Latin - 1 to encode posts, convert the posts to UTF-8 before importing, to ensure that all characters display properly. Optionally you could also set an Option (Option -> Reading -> Character Encoding) in WordPress to set the Charset for the WP weblog to ISO 8859-1.
- The import-mt.php that ships with 1.2 had a couple of bugs, which I fixed. The new import-mt.php is available for use. Read the post at scriptygoddess. Use this to ensure the backslashes in your posts are treated properly, and the “——–” strings in your posts do not break anything.
The MT import tutorial is there if you need help, and be sure to read the notes at the end to see how you can refer visitors to your new WP powered blog from the old MT urls, and other such bits and pieces. 
Edit: If you are having trouble importing all the entries at once, getting timed out on the import etc, this thread has some pointers regarding how to work around it.
Modifying your template, stylesheets:
1. LaughingLizard’s Well commented index.php should be helpful in understanding the wordpress index.php file/template.
2. The template tags are explained at the template tags wiki page, and Gregory Auld has written a nice article comparing the MT and WP “template tags”, which should also be of help.
3. NuclearMoose’s Annotated default CSS and podz’ Graphical CSS are excellent guides to the default css stylesheet that ships with WordPress.
Growing wings:
A few very useful wordpress links:
1. The WordPress Wiki - I find myself here at the beginning of a search for a hack/plugin/technique all the time.
2. The Support Forums - search and you shall find
3. AlexKing.org WP styles competition - for awesome ready-to-use stylesheets (…and how to use them).
4. WeblogToolsCollection.com - The blog with loads of tips and useful links.
A few answers:
Multiple blogs using WordPress:
From the trackbacks to Mena’s post above, it seems like a lot of people think it impossible to use WordPress to run multiple weblogs. It is possible to use wordpress to run multiple weblogs off of the same server, with just one MySQL database. I have 7 WP weblogs running on one server! All it takes is to install wordpress multiple times. Each blog would have a different MySQL table prefix. Installing a wordpress blog takes less than five minutes (I agree it could take longer to get the template and stylesheet modified), and so, it’s not only possible, but really easy to have more than one blog powered by wordpress on your server.
Rebuilds and pages:
WordPress does not have to rebuild any pages each time you update your blog. It uses PHP to dynamically create pages on the fly, and is real quick, too. (You can see how much time it took to create and display this page at the bottom of this page)
This also means that all you need to have is one template - index.php. The individual entry “pages”, the archives and everything else is created by WordPress depending on the parameters passed to the index.php file.
Keeping your MovableType links:Last Edited July 10th, 2004
You can redirect visitors to pages on your old Movable Type blog to the correct ones on your new WordPress blog using some readily available solutions. If you are only concerned about search engines, most of them will catch up with the changes in the URLs within a certain amount of time. The following solutions work for both kinds of urls, ones that use the ‘post_id’, like so — http://example.com/000121.html, and the ones that are ‘dirified’, like so — http://example.com/archives/2004/05/12/this_post . For some solutions for the former type, you may need to keep your MT installation around until the search engines are updated to reflect the changes in your blog. This is because of the fact that the MT export file does not provide the ‘post_id’ s for the posts. For dirified urls, there should be no problem.
Update: If your MT permalinks had the post ids in them, then with a little code-fu, you can get wordpress to use the same post ids as MT, and the detailed directions, complete with required changes is available at Dr. Bacchus’ Journal.
Licensing and other issues:
WordPress is distributed under the GPL, and will remain Free Software. Period.
Please leave a comment if you have any questions, or if you find a resource not listed here very useful in making the transition.
I have tried doing trackbacks to a couple different WordPress blogs, and they don’t seem to work…..I’ve tried using the “trackback URI” given in the comments section under an entry, and I ‘ve trie4d using the http://myblogurl/wp/index.php?p=5 type URL . I see no sign of any trackbacks being recorded or referenced on the site whose entry I referenced. How does one get a trackback recorded on WordPress, and does it work from other blogs such as MT and/ort dotText (a dotnet version…tried it from both)
Dale
PS also, how does one do the multiple blog thing……what are the steps to get there (aside from step 2, from what I gather, is the re-installing of WordPress again…but at what step does the table prefix get set? I understood that prefixing the tables differently allows for the multiple blogs.
[...] WordPress Info Filed under: general — mookie kong @ 06/10/2004 @ 9:55 pm Here is a good article that has good links to WordPress resources. Check it [...]
[...] ing b2, but I decided to give WP a try. The first thing I did was take a look at the post Moving From movable type To Word Press, and it was a handy guide on how to ge [...]
Thanks for the great instructions here.
Re: Keeping your MovableType links. I had some problems doing the 301 redirects. I wrote some php to get the MT Entry Title and search for it in the imported WordPress blog.
Cheers
This seems to be a simple, yet effective solution. Thanks for sharing it here
Yes apparently so, either through comment moderation/apporval by site administration or with a plugin/hack that allows one to setup a blacklist see WP Blacklist Comment SPAM Filteration for more information.
Thank $DEITY for folks with some sense and more knowledge than I :).
google search that brought me here, and several other sites. (hits: 672)
[...] ressante o fato de o WordPress ser um programa GPL (que significa que sempre será aberto). Esse tutorial no site de um dos criadores do sistema ajuda mui [...]
Thanks for the great instructions! Pop up for comments is very essential, cause this awfull spam is repelling.
Loved the detailed instructions. It helped me a lot.
Thanks so much for the good advice. The link in #3 of importing doesn’t seem to work. Anyplace else I can find that updated import tool?
BTW, what is up with the huge frame taking up 60% of my screen in Camino? Making it very hard to read your good words…
Nevermind, I just downloaded it directly from ScriptyGoddess. Thanks!
Thanks for the heads-up. I have fixed the link to point at her post, instead of the zip file, since she seems to have disabled hotlinking.
[...] to try both these methods. For more help regarding moving from MT to WordPress, refer to the moving guide.
Comments &raq [...]
Somethings do not work:I have exported all the post from movable type.
In the main index: http://www.omegacremona.com/wordpress appears a wrong layout
The rest of the site is ok (example: http://www.omegacremona.com/wordpress/index.php?cat=16)
Why?
Thanks, ita
[...] The layout retains what my wife describes as ‘a serious look’. Related Link: Carthik has some very useful resources for those who want to move from MT to W [...]
In terms of first-time installation, WP is much, much easier to install than MT (yet still poorly documented). Here’s something that might help first-timers (like I recently was):
http://www.clearpointsystems.com/ewpi.php
I’m wondering what features MT has that WP doesn’t, or in what ways MT is better. In terms of sheer megabytes and files, MT has about 500 files (5.3Mg) while WP has about 150 files (1.4Mg). Either MT is bloatware, or it has some things WP does not.
I just installed MT myself after using Blosxom before. I did look into using Wordpress, and it’s capital-F Free, which MT isn’t, but MT lets you use the Berkeley DB whereas WP requires MySQL. Which would have cost me an extra 50 quid on my host.
[...] n 798 comments zijn zonder problemen overgezet, mede dankzij de duidelijke handleiding van Carthik. (want daar ontbreekt het nogal eens aan bij WordPress, duidelijke doc [...]
I switched to wordpress months ago and have found it beats MT hands down. To Yusuf, I’ve heard rumors of a Berkeley DB build in the works but I don’t have any info yet.
Thanks for the heads-up. I have fixed the link to point at her post, instead of the zip file, since she seems to have disabled hotlinking.
wordpress sucks, now I use movable… it’s the best blogging system
[...] ss some help : WP Layout explained Wordpress Plugin Database Neil’s Weblog Templates Import MovableType Entries into your WordPress Blog WP index.php described [...]
[...] I renumbered it, and followed the instructions at Dr. Bacchus’ Journal which I found via Carthik’s Blog to import my old MT posts. (Note: You can’t just add I [...]
Great info on WP, however I do like how MT “builds” pages, that way google, and other seach engines can actually index my site. with word press index.php is multiple pages, but only gets indexed once. I’m sure there is a hack for “building” pages somewhere.
just my 2 pennies.
ok, I was wrong about how google indexes WP pages. sorry
How to setup Mt Blogs for my webspace. Currently im using Blogger.
Does MT blogs are more useful then blogger? My webspace hosted on Linux. Will it works for PHP?
[...] n 798 comments zijn zonder problemen overgezet, mede dankzij de duidelijke handleiding van Carthik. (want daar ontbreekt het nogal eens aan bij WordPress, duidelijke doc [...]
[...] e.jsp http://www.globetechnology.com/ http://www.elise.com/mt/archives/000246concerning_spam.php http://blog.carthik.net/vault/2004/05/14/movabletype-to-wordpress/ http://heygom.com/blog/?p=243 By: mara | 03/30/05 | Surfling Log | Tr [...]
[...] y Movable Type blog over to WordPress. I used some export/import tips from WordPress, and here, and an updated import-mt.php scripthere. The url is the same so anybody [...]
[...] me resources that were helpful to me, in addition to the official sites for each service: Carthik Seth Kinast Rick Klau
You can follow any responses to this entry [...]
[...] he permanent links to entries and archives changed. There are many clever ways to get them working again, but… it seems like too much trouble. Not [...]
[...] WordPress and Movable Type, because others have already done that. Turns out it is fairly trivial to move from one to the other, and WordPress installation really is de [...]
[...] n 798 comments zijn zonder problemen overgezet, mede dankzij de duidelijke handleiding van Carthik. (want daar ontbreekt het nogal eens aan bij WordPress, duidelijke doc [...]
some people may also find my article on keeping MT permalinks helpful.
http://blog.art-app.com/archives/2005/12/from_mt_to_wp_using_the_same_permalinks_as_movable_type.html
it involves an SQL Query and the substring function.
Can Anyone help me that how can i add RSS in my blog pages and I am trying to get those to become links. Can any one guide me to be linked with RSS?
Hi Carthik, My name is Chris and my friend Bill Lazar showed me your blog
I read that you have a love for Internet technology and so am writing to you today to let you know about this new internet company I work for - Rawsugar. We have a new topic-based, hierarchical navigation that shows the most relevant topics in a blog at each level of search so your visitors can successively apply topics/tags to narrow results further, finding any post with just a few mouse clicks. It’s easy to use and integrates seamlessly with your site.
Examples of sites which already use this capability include:
- Bill’s Movie Reviews, http://www.billsaysthis.com/movies, which also uses the ‘Save to RawSugar’ link right under each title. Example search:
recommended family comedies.
- Sprol.com, http://www.sprol.com, which is an environmental damage photo blog; the embedded box is at the top right just under the flags. Example
search: industrial disasters.
- Soft-hard, http://www.soft-hard.net/, which is a mature software and digital media site based in Russia.The topics box in both Russian and English, as the person who manages the site uses the same tags in each language to better suit his audience. Example search:
software security utilities.
Incorporating this into a blog is quick and easy:
- Create a free account
- Run a script to make an XML file listing all the blog’s posts with categories used as topics and upload it to our service.
- Go to the Publisher Dashboard, get the JavaScript–some aspects can be customized using options on this screen and for complete control of the appearance we use named CSS styles–and paste it into the blog template.
- As new entries are posted, just tag them using our browser bookmarklet.
Our initial offering is for WordPress blogs, support for MovableType is experimental and other platforms will be added soon.
Try it and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. We love to help, so let us know if you have any questions or comments.
Thanks for your time and consideration. Regards, Chris
I’m working on an import-mt that will import with entry ids, when I get it done (probably a day or two to test), I’ll post a link over at the wordpress forums. I’ll have both the export needed (I’m going to do it via an index template rather than the mt-export function) and the hacked import-mt. I’ll try to post the link here too, so you can add it to the tuorial, but it will definitely be there if I forget to put it here.
Glad to read such a nice piece of information.
Hi, I solved the task of preserving the links in MT format after moving the MT to WP. It means that you won’t lose any external references to your old posts, but the new posts will have WP’ish nice format. Here’s the post:
http://blog.noizeramp.com/2006/11/02/preserving-links-when-moving-from-movabletype-to-wordpress/
The steps are really simple.
Aleksey
[...] the day Mena announced the new pricing structure for MovableType. A day later, I wrote up a post on how to move from Movable Type to WordPress. Then, and exodus began - with famous users, like Mark Pilgrim, Molly, and so many others shifting [...]
[...] the day Mena announced the new pricing structure for MovableType. A day later, I wrote up a post on how to move from Movable Type to WordPress. Then, the exodus began - with famous users, like Mark Pilgrim, Molly, and so many others shifting [...]
[...] Type. For example, Carthik Sharma remarked that with Six Apart’s new policies in place, “it’s about time Movable Type users moved to WordPress” and then provided guidelines for bloggers wishing to make the [...]
Please can you tell me if there is a character limit for the “Comments” section of MT blogs?