imports great but stops at 251 posts

It’s kind of hard to say. These are tricky to troubleshoot. If you start the importer over, in theory it should grab the next batch of posts.

In any case, you should go ahead and use Posterous’s backup tool to fetch your content, as the service is actually going away in a couple of months. You can use the backup tool to import into your blog using the WordPress (not the Posterous) importer. The backup file currently has some bugs that the WordPress.com importer works around. So in a pinch, you can download the backup file, import into a WordPress.com blog, export from the WordPress.com blog, and import into your self-hosted blog from there.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but if you’re having trouble with the importer that uses Posterous’s API (as it seems you are), it may be worth trying.

I really appreciate the quick replies!

Unfortunately, when you start the importer over, it goes through the first 250 and skips them, appropriately (since they are already imported). It then stops after checking the 250th post.

As for the download, I have done that. However, it is a few hundred megabytes and the WordPress.com importer only allows up to 15mb.

Any other ideas?

The whole download may be a few hundred MB, but that’ll include photos, videos, etc., which aren’t part of what you upload to WordPress.com. See how big the wordpress_export_1.xml file is. There’s a good chance it’s small enough to upload. If even that is too big, open a support ticket from https://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ for help importing a large file.

You could also try editing the Posterous importer plugin to increase the time between connections it makes to the server. I doubt this’ll fix your issue, but look for the “usleep” command and change the first digit of the number it receives as a parameter to a 2, just to test and see.

Good call on the difference. For some reason the WordPress.com importer says it is complete, but actually does not import any posts. I hope one of these avenues will start working, but I’m not sure what might get them to start.

@arvind, please open a support ticket at https://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ and we’ll try to get you sorted out over there.

@dllh I posted it on WordPress.com here:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/posterous-importer-did-not-import-any-posts?replies=1

The public post was the only option it would give me. Is that what I should do?

Thanks again for all the help.

Yep, that’ll work. It’s flagged for staff attention now.

arvind (or dllh) – what version of WordPress are you using? The plugin fails (hangs at spinner with zero posts imported) for me on both 3.5.1 and 3.3.2.

thanks
jacob

I was using 3.5.1

Hmm. Did you have to do anything special with your username or password to get it to work? @dllh – any ideas? I saw a related thread in the forum with no obvious resolution.

thanks all

Actually, sorry, my spinning wheel issue was never resolved. The import was working before I upgraded to 3.5.1. I then went the route (see link above) to the WordPress.com import, which did seem to work once I redownloaded the newest Posterous export file.

I see. So which version were you using when it worked? I’m motivated to get it to work so that I can maintain the original images.

Thanks again.

Best
Jacob