Moving From WordPress To Movable Type

If are looking to convert your WordPress-based blog to use the Movable Type platform, you can do just that in just 3 easy steps. And once you have finished this quick tutorial, you will have a fully functioning and secure MTOS blog with posts, pages, publication status, comments, trackbacks, categories, tags, time stamps, and user accounts from your previous blog.

Getting The Content Moved

  1. Download and Install Movable Type wordpress-export.jpg
  2. Exporting WordPress Data
    • Login with Administrator Privileges into the Word Press 2.5 Dashboard
    • Browse to the Export section found under the Manage tab
    • Select "All Authors" to export the contents of the entire blog
    • Download the Export File and save it to your computer movable-type-import.jpg
  3. Importing Data Into Movable Type
    • Login with Administrator Privileges into the Movable Type 4.1 Dashboard
    • Browse to the Settings section found under the System Overview drop-down
    • Navigate to the Import page found under the Tools drop-down
    • Select the blog you wish to import the content into
    • Choose "WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR)" as the import format
    • Choose the previously saved Exported File and click Import Entries

You are all done! You can now start blogging, style your blog, or manage the imported data.

Please be patient and keep in mind that the importing process may take longer to import large WordPress blogs with many posts and comments since we've got to tidy up the data!

This page was last updated on 2008-07-14, 15:13.  

3 Notes

It is taking a long time for it to import... for about 70 entries. Any ideas for what could be causing this?

Do you have large images in your import. Movable Type may be trying to download them locally. It might also have hung.

You see, WordPress has a bug in which is doesn't produce valid XML for its WXR file. It has a problem with character encoding. We do our best to work around the bug, but sometimes MT's best efforts still fail. Try loading your WXR file into FireFox and see if it validates. If it doesn't you may need to try and fix the problem manually. Admittedly, that sucks until WordPress outputs valid XML.

WP bug report (Export generates invalid XML): http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7624

MT bug report (WXR Import fails due to WP's bogus XML): http://bugs.movabletype.org/default.asp?pgx=EV&ixBug=81747&=#414239

Each of those reports has a different workaround.

Leave a note

Have a question, please use the MT Forums. Notes sumbitted here should pertain to tips & hints regarding documentation. Your note may be removed once it's contents has be integrated into the body of the page.