what format to import links from OPML file

  • Can a list of links to other sites created in OmniOutliner and saved as an OPML file be imported into WordPress? If so, how should the info be entered in OmniOutliner ? e.g. 2 columns: one for the URL and one for the link text? and make each link a separate row?

    I read in the codex how to import OPML from other blogrolls
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Import_Links_SubPanel

    It doesn’t say how to generate the OPML yourself though.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    OPML is a standard format, like TXT and HTML. No matter which application you export the OMPL file from, all OMPL files are generated the same.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML

    Thread Starter ciryaquen

    (@ciryaquen)

    I understand the OPML filetype is like rtf, or html. What I don’t get is how to markup the link data in the Outliner. Let me give an example or three. My experiments aren’t working.

    I opened up a blank Omni Outliner and input the following links, one per row, single column. Exported it as OPML file and imported it into WP. The entire “a href link” text was imported into the “name” field as text. It wasn’t a live or working link. The URI field in WP was blank.

    <a href="https://www.podcastalley.com/">PodcastAlley.com</A>
    <a href="https://www.digitalpodcast.com/">Digital Podcast Directory</A>

    The next OmniOultiner file was 2 columns. First column was “name” and the second was the URL, and 1 per row. The name was imported into the name field and the URLs vanished.

    PodcastAlley.com https://www.podcastalley.com/
    Digital Podcast Directory https://www.digitalpodcast.com/

    The 3rd OmniOutliner file was 1 column with the info each in a separate row, with an extra blank row between the 2 links.

    PodcastAlley.com
    https://www.podcastalley.com/

    Digital Podcast Directory
    https://www.digitalpodcast.com/

    Results were very odd. There were 5 links created in WP with the following in the “name” field.

    Digital Podcast Directory
    Digital Podcast Directory
    https://www.digitalpodcast.com/
    https://www.podcastalley.com
    PodcastAlley.com

    OmniOutliner can easily import a whole page of links. How to layout the link data before exporting it to OPML is the problem. Is it possible to organize the link data the way WP wants it? It will be far far easier to organize in OmniOutliner than cutting-and-pasting individual links into WP.

    Is the example given in that wikipedia article the format it expects?
    <%radio.macros.directoryFrame ("https://www.myserver.com/gems/myDirectory.opml", "https://www.myserver.com/gems/myDirectoryStylesheet.css")%>

    Would importing the links into Safari, exporting the bookmarksm and converting it to OPML work? Or am I stuck inputting lots of links manually?

    Any method you can take to get an OPML file should work. Any decent application meant for handling links/bookmarks should have OPML import and export, so hopefully it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

    Thread Starter ciryaquen

    (@ciryaquen)

    Still can’t get this import links from an OPML file to work.

    I found what I thought was the correct format to enter the links into the Outliner.
    <outline text="link name" type="link" url="some_url.html" />

    Then I found what appears to be OPML specifications to use. So my test link file was prepared like this
    https://www.opml.org/spec

    <?xml:stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="opml.xslt" version="1.0"?>
    <opml>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
    <outline text="CSS Creator" type="link" url="https://www.csscreator.com/" />
    <outline text="W3C CSS Validation Service" type="link" url="https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/" />
    <outline text="W3C Markup Validation Service" type="link" url="https://validator.w3.org/detailed.html" />
    </body>
    </opml>

    which returns this error from WordPress

    Importing…
    XML error: no element found at line 1

    Inserted 0 links into category 1

    If I just export a list of links with none of the other elements, i.e. something like this
    <outline text="link name" type="link" url="some_url.html" />

    it tells me the same error.

    Shall I just give up now or am I missing something obvious? Neither of my browsers (Safari or Firefox) will export links as OPML.

    Thread Starter ciryaquen

    (@ciryaquen)

    I still can’t get any data from an OPML file of links to import into WordPress.

    Can a delimited text file be imported directly into the mySQL table using CocoaMySQL? If so, which WordPress table?

    I’ve also tried the instructions embedded in a script for importing links from this thread but can’t make it work.
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/26713

    Is there a specification to follow for importing links?

    c’mon guys stop answering his questions with nonsense un-thought-out answers. If you don’t know, don’t answer.

    OPML is not “standard” w/r to links… and he is correct there is a markup that needs to be followed. it’s on ething to see a good question unanswered, and quite another to see a good question asked over and over with increasing detail offered, and a community that just keeps saying it’s easy duh.

    (f.y.i. if I knew I would answer.. I am working thru it myself right now – looking at this
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/56624

    deleted

    I needed to get this working, found an OPML links file and played with it a bit. Works a treat (I’m sure you could add images etc. with a bit more modification). Here is what I uploaded successfully –

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
    <opml version="1.1">
    <head>
    <title>Kevin McKeown Portfolio Links</title>
    <dateCreated>Apr 13 2006 13:09:20 GMT</dateCreated>
    <ownerName>Kevin McKeown</ownerName>
    <ownerEmail>[email protected]</ownerEmail>
    </head>
    <body>
    <outline text="Paramedic UK" type="link" url="https://www.paramedic.org.uk" description="Community portal for pre-hospital care professionals"/>
    <outline text="zOpium" type="link" url="https://zopium.com" description="Intranet: Design|Develop|Deploy" />
    <outline text="SAS" type="link" url="https://www.surrey-ambulance.nhs.uk" description="My employers" />
    <outline text="x86osX" type="link" url="https://x86osx.net" description="Running OSX on a PC - he voices made me do it" />
    <outline text="McKeown.biz" type="link" url="https://mckeown.biz" description="The family blog?"/>
    <outline text="bigkev.net" type="link" url="https://bigkev.net" description="Opinion, intelligence, and heterogeneous self-aggrandizing procrastination"/>
    </body>
    </opml>

    Hope this helps…

    Hi BigKev,
    I’ve the same difficulties of you all
    what make me puzzled is that I’ve tried to import exactly the same opml file you reported but got the same error as usual.
    BTW your formatting is exactly the same of OmniOutliner.
    So, the question is: did you import from a file on your desktop? Which extension did you give to te file? .txt, .xml, .opml?

    Thx in advance

    M.

    I’ve been working with the OPML exported from NetVibes. Looks legit, but differs considerably. I can only guess that they used the format they did cuz it works for them, or somebody, somewhere … I guess.

    I’ve tried all the versions here, and variations of these and others I’ve found elsewhere. (Like the defunct Meerkat.)

    Dunno … this seems core to WP … nobody knows what the system was configured to expect?

    odd …

    p.s. OReilly’s Meerkat is here
    https://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/1247?x-mimetype=text/xml

    elainenelson

    (@elainenelson)

    I ran into the same error message (“XML error: no element found at line 1”) and in all seriousness, it was easier to just go into the database & add the links there.

    here’s the SQL statement I used:

    INSERT INTO tablepreface_links (link_url,link_name,link_category) VALUES ('https://example.com','The Example Site',2);

    a little find & replace rewrote my attempt at an OPML file into SQL.

    (this whole OPML thing was a PITA! I was trying to get a handful of links from an unordered list in html into WordPress, and OPML was a dead end.)

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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