T U T O R I A L S E R I E S
How to Import MovableType Entries into your WordPress Blog
Head over to the Codex MT Import Guide for an updated version -- look under the Movable Type section!.
Welcome to WordPress. To make your transition from a MovableType powered blog to a WordPress powered blog smooth, WordPress provides a way to import the entries from your MovableType Blog.
This How-to assumes the following:
- You have already installed WordPress on your server, so if you have not, please do so before continuing.
- http://example.com/wordpress/ is the url of your WordPress installation.
- "admin" is the login you use to login as the administrator of the WordPress blog.
- "mtuserX" is the name of author X, in the MovableType blog.
Overview: We have to export all entries from the MovableType blog, edit a file in WordPress, import all the entries into WordPress, and then tie up loose ends, if any.
Note: You will see that the instructions are slightly different (after Step 3.c below) for WordPress versions 1.0.2 and older, and version 1.2 and newer. This is because with the more recent versions of WordPress, you can change the name of the authors of posts before importing your MovableType entries. If you use WordPress 1.0.2 or older, and you want to be able to use the author-mapping described in step 3.d., grab a copy of import-mt.php from 1.2.delta or later, and find the line that says $md5pass = md5(changeme); around line 151, and change it to $md5pass = changeme;. Now upload this new import-mt.php file to your wp-admin folder, overwriting the existing import-mt.php file, and then import the entries as described below.
- a. Login to your MovableType blog.
- b. From the main menu, click on the "Manage Weblog" link for the blog whose entries you want to export.
- c. Click the "Import/Export" button on the left menu.
- d. Click the "Export Entries from ..." link at the bottom of page.
- e. Now you should see readable text, split over several lines, in your browser. If the text in one long, running line, and if you are using any version of Internet Explorer, then you have a problem. Internet Explorer sometimes treats plaintext as html. To avoid this problem, use a Gecko-based browser, such as Netscape, Mozilla, or FireFox.
- f. Save the page you see in your browser, with all the entries in text, as a text file with the name "import.txt", on your computer.
Step 2: Editing import-mt.php
- a. Open the file "import-mt.php" which is the directory "wp-admin" in your WordPress installation in your favourite text editor. For this, you have to download it first.
- b. On line number 2 of import-mt.php, find
define('MTEXPORT', '');
and change that to
define('MTEXPORT', 'import.txt'); - c. Save import-mt.php and upload it to the "wp-admin" directory on your server, overwriting the existing "import-mt.php".
- d. Upload the "import.txt" file you had saved in step 1.f. to the "wp-admin" directory on your server.
Step 3: Importing the entries into WordPress.
- For versions prior to 1.2.x
- d. You will see a number of "Importing entry ...." in your browser.
- For versions 1.2.x
- d. You will be taken to the next step where you will see all the authors in the MovableType weblog, and for each of these authors, you can choose either an exiting WordPress user from the dropdown list, or a username for a new user to be created in WordPress. This is to allow you to change the authors' names before importing their entries into WordPress, and is intended to be useful in case the names of the author(s) are different in your WordPress blog, and you want to change the authors' names. Make the changes you desire, and when you are done, click the "Submit" button.
- e. You will see a number of "Processing post...."s in your browser to let you know that the entries and the comments are being imported.
Step 4: Odd Ends.
- a. The default password for the new users created corresponding to the MovableType blog authors, say "mtuserX", is "changeme". You can use this password to login as "mtuserX". It is recommended that you change the passwords for the newly created users , as someone else could login using "changeme".
- b. Drafts : If you had any drafts in your MovableType blog, you can edit them only if you are logged in as the author of the draft. Logout if you are logged in as admin, or some other user, and use information from step 4.a. to login and edit those drafts, or to publish them.
- c. Google/Other Search Engines : Search Engines will continue referring searchers to your old MovableType pages.To redirect them to your WordPress entries, you can use one of the following:
