Blogger Beta to Hosted Wordpress Import

Update April 11, 2007 - This post is pretty much obsolete. It was written before their were any viable methods to import into Wordpress, and was really written just to answer some of the calls that Blogger was holding people's data hostage, and to show how easy it was to get at it. As predicted, it was just a matter of time for WordPress folks to setup new import procedures. WordPress.com has a new Importer for New Blogger now, and I suspect the next release of the hosted version will as well. Also check out the comments for a couple of other ways to go about it. Closing the comments on this one now.

I have seen a few people wanting to flee Blogger in Beta to Wordpress. One of the things they quickly find is that the current Wordpress import for Blogger is broken for Blogger in Beta. This isn't a grand scheme by Blogger to hold anyone hostage (I've seen that conspiracy theory floated), but rather just the fact the the Wordpress import needs to be modified to work with the (probably) small changes needed to access the Beta. And considering Old Blogger is on it's last legs, I would assume someone will do that shortly.

In actual fact, Blogger in Beta should make it easier to import to Wordpress, Movable Type, or any other platform , or to make a backup of your current Blogger in Beta blog. That's because one of the features of the Beta is your data, it's all yours. Now supplied in a choice of 3 (count 'em three) formats. RSS, ATOM, or JSON. In beta your entire site and comments are available as a feed in the flavor of your choice.

I have run across this workaround to get all posts and comments to import into a hosted Wordpress installation. How to Move from Blogger Beta to WordPress and I assume it works. But you might see it is a bit...um, involved. :-)

Here is a quickie if you want to import from Blogger in Beta to a hosted Wordpress install and don't mind that it won't import your comments as this will only work for posts. Also note this does not work for the free host Wordpress.com only because I don't believe they offer the import from RSS feature of wp.

Step #1 : Verify that your posts site feed are in full format (if not change them to full) then download your entire Blogger in Beta via the feeds. If you have a large blog it may be best to split it up into a few different files. The format you can use to access them is

http://X.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/
default?start-index=1&max-results=50&alt=rss

Of course change X to your blogspot url. Also the url of course shouldn't have any line breaks, I just did that so the whole url would be visible.

Note: with this format it will grab 50 posts at a time. You can grab more by changing the max-results= number. I'm not sure if there is an upper limit on the max-results. I have grabbed up to 100 at a time. You can do it with a browser by entering the url then choosing save file and name it something like 1.xml to your computer. If you have additional posts to fetch, then just increment the start-index= number by whatever the max-results number is set to, then go again. Example, using the above format for the 2nd file the start-index would be start-index=51 (1 + 50). The next would be 101, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have all your posts.

Note #2: After you save the file, give it a quick check by opening it in a text editor to make sure it looks right. If it's right, it will be a mess of rss tags. I've found that occasionally using Firefox 2 when saving the file it screws up somewhere, and if that happens you will see this at the top of the file

This is a “*feed*” of frequently changing content on this site.
You can subscribe to this feed to receive updates when this content changes.

Error Processing Feed

There was an error processing this feed. It's our fault. :-( You can still subscribe to the feed if you know what it is. For reference, the error was:

If you see that, then it didn't work and try saving the file again. Usually within one or two saves it goes through. I am not sure if the fault there is with Blogger or Firefox, probably Firefox. I don't think it's ever done that to me in IE7.

Step #2: Login to your wordpress admin and follow the instructions for your version on importing an RSS file. For 2.x installs from the admin menu goto Import>Choose RSS> Select the first file you downloaded. Wait for it to run. If it goes through successfully, then move on to the rest of your files.

Step #3: Enjoy wordpress.

Like I said this is only for hosted wordpress and WILL NOT import your comments. It also does not tranfer any Blogger labels into Wordpress Categories, but for posts it seems to work well, and is fairly quick and easy. I'm no wordpress expert, so I may have missed something in those steps, and there may be an easy way to import your Blogger comments since they are also available as an RSS feed, but I haven't seen that. But they are available in the same way via the format

http://X.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/
default?start-index=1&max-results=50&alt=rss

if it helps. I'm sure someone will work up a proper complete import into Wordpress soon. And if not, you can try this fairly simple method to get your posts, or if you need it all you can try the first procedure.

And somewhat related, check out the now powered by Wordpress (and zo) humorlessbitch. And yes, that's how I know this method can work. I also used it to backup Phydeaux3 to a local copy of wordpress. Not that I'm leaving Blogger in Beta. It's been very nice for me.

What about an import INTO Blogger in Beta? Well ya never know.