MT database import

  • I would like to migrate my 1000 blog posts and about 2000 comments from MovableType to WordPress, however there is a problem that I just cannot solve:
    My server always times out during the export of the data. When I’m lucky, I get about 400, most of the time, however MT just exports around 300 posts+comments. Is there no other way to get WordPress to import MT-data? Maybe directly from the database?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • Do you have access to a program like phpadmin on your server? You could then make a dbasebackup outside MT.

    Thread Starter royalts

    (@royalts)

    I do have phpadmin. How do I do the dbasebackup you are talking about?

    RoyalTS, could you try asking your host to change the time – out setting for you? The direct database option won’t work. The database tables are different, for one.
    The MT export script may be modified to work from the command line, if you have ssh access, and are good with perl.

    If I were you, I’d install a basic PHP/mySQL setup on my PC and do the import locally. That way you can change the timeout settings yourself.

    If you can’t do it locally, use the template, but unless you really need to export by category, it would be much easier to just use that template from the mt support templates without the category thing. Just change the first line and rebuild each time.
    First one: <MTEntries lastn=350″ sort_order=”ascend” >
    First one: <MTEntries lastn=350″offset=”350″ sort_order=”ascend” >
    First one: <MTEntries lastn=350″ offset=”700″ sort_order=”ascend” >
    And so forth. You just change the output file each time too (export1.txt, export2.txt, etc.) It’s a pain but should work..

    Thread Starter royalts

    (@royalts)

    Thanks, splitting up the exports via index templates worked just fine. Now, however I have another (probably newbie) problem:
    When I feed WordPress the first batch of data from my MT export it asks me to assign an author to the posts. I pick the only author in my WP installation, the admin, and then tell it to go ahead with the import. The import then works just fine, however instead of assigning the imported posts to the admin user account that I told it to use WP creates a new user with the exact same user name and assigns the posts to that user. What am I doing wrong?

    Do you remember if you deleted the pre-filled in text in the form to change the author names?
    This could be some problem with the importer, and we can solve it. No problem ??

    Thread Starter royalts

    (@royalts)

    that was the problem exactly. Deleted the contents of the form and it worked just fine. There seem to be some other weirdo problems with the import script though. I managed to work around them, but it may be worthwhile to fix them nonetheless: WP seems to think that some of my commentors are authors and treats them as such. Funky =)

    RoyalTs, could you post examples, or something more we could work with? Fixes in the source will help everyone who wil face the same problems in the future.

    rubyji, I noticed you left a comment (or two) at my post that describes the mt to wp move. Could you please email me, and I could help you sort this problem out.
    mail at carthik dot net is the address.
    If I could get some of the posts where the error happens, I could fix the importer for you, and for everyone else. Or I could suggest a solution.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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