Invalid author importing single WordPress to Mulitsite WordPress

Many thanks Andrea, the database is indeed gone. I should have known better but I’m still stuck with this inability to properly assign posts to their authors. suggestions?

Update: something else to add to this is the image files aren’t getting assigned to their respective posts either. The site in question I’m working with is at https://www.insidethearts.com/scanningthedial.

Another FYI, so as not to be confusing to current readers, I manually assigned the authors for the first index page of articles.

Then this part is gonna suck.

Now you actually do have to go into the db,find what the ID is of each author and manually reassigning each of their posts to the right author.

Been there, it sucks. it’s grunt work but doable.

You might be able to find a plugin to help, but I did a quick search in the repo and didn’t find anything quite suitable.

Are the authors you added actually added as users to the main site? Cuz by default in a network, they aren’t assigned anywhere.

Well if I have to get some bad news at least it’s coming from you. ??

I did create the authors in the network and manually assigned them to their respective blog so that part is all done. Are you thinking of a shortcut where that step might help?

Overall, I’ve been pleased with WP multisite but it’s things like this that make me want to toss it out a window. I have no idea why there isn’t a tool or something to help with this as I’m clearly not the only one to encounter this problem with the import/export. As of now, I’m not even going to think about moving over the other multi author blogs, which sucks double because the whole point of going to the trouble to install and learn how to use multisite is to reduce the maintenance work.

Thanks in advance if you have any other ideas.

Well the importer may be having issues too. I haven’t had a chance to test it thoroughly. Remember, they ripped it out of core in 3.1 so it’s now a plugin.

I do recall when that switch was made and followed the initial discussion but never kept up with it. Does anyone know if these sorts of problems are more widespread since that decision and the advent of incorporating multisite into the standard WP version?

I cannot reproduce this issue. Here are the steps I took:

1. Export ‘All Content’ from single site
2. Created a new site on test network
3. Imported the export file letting it create new users (except for one)

This all worked as expected with my one of my users being mapped and the other four were created and had the appropriate posts/pages assigned to them.

4. Deleted all posts and pages from the import site
5. Re-imported but this time mapping to the users now existing on the site

Again this worked as expected. Let me know if you think I did anything differently. I will also try a couple of other setups when I have some more time later on.

Just to clarify the behaviour you are seeing: all users imported, all posts/pages imported *but* all posts are marked as authored by the current, importing user?

Also it might really help me to reproduce if you could send me a copy of the export file if possible. Email wp AT lionsgoroar.co.uk if possible.

[PS. minor note, the importers were pulled out of core in 3.0]

@jon:

It sounds like you’re catching just about everything. Here are a few other points that many have impact on the outcome:

1. Besides the author issue, it seems as though the image file names are imported but not the actual image.
2. I’ve tried creating the users in advance of the import and letting the import tool create, but both variations produce the same result.
3. To verify, all posts/pages are being attributed to “admin.”

I’m sending the export file now.

Thanks,
Drew

This problem should be resolved by the development version of the importer which will be released properly to coincide with WordPress 3.2. The development version is available from the Other Versions section here and here is a direct link to the zip.

For those interested the root of the problem was extra restrictions on user login names in place in WordPress Multisite, specifically enforcing lower case user names. See https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/17904.

Nice find Jon. ??

Nice find indeed, many thanks!

Do you think I am good to download and use the importer if I’m not running a dev version of 3.2?

I’ve encountered the no upper case issue on another site within this same network; a jobs board that processes new posts via creating a user account: https://www.adaptistration.com/jobs. I had to do a work around by adding some text to the account creation page telling users to only use lower case.

Drew

Do you think I am good to download and use the importer if I’m not running a dev version of 3.2?

Yes. The development version of the importer should be good to go on WP 3.0+. Be sure to let me know of anything to contradict that!

Great, I’ll upload that version and give it a shot today.

Update: mostly success!

After using the 0.4 version of the importer, the system did assign the authors correctly (and thankfully). The only thing that didn’t seem to work is assigning media to its respective post.

Likewise, I think the importer failed to import the actual media. Although I have an entry for it, if I try to access the URL directly, I get the following error mesg:

The image “https://www.insidethearts.com/scanningthedial/files/2010/10/[filename].jpg” cannot be displayed because it contains errors.

So that’s 70/100 and the biggest issue of author assignment is taken care of. Any suggestions on the media?

Drew

Manually copy the media to wp-content/blogs.dir/#/files/?