How to export Subtext to Wordpress
I finally got sick of Subtext and having played with Wordpress.com and enjoyed it, I decided to buy some hosting and move Wordpress.org.
Being a .NET coder I was a bit unsure about moving to PHP and MySQL but I didn’t actually have to get my hands dirty because Wordpress is dead easy to use.
However, trying to get my posts out of Subtext and into Wordpress was nothing short of a nightmare, and not an unusual experience as far as I can tell. This blog: http://www.ageektrapped.com/blog/subtext-to-wordpress-converting-blog-engines/ discusses one approach on how to fix it.
For what it’s worth, here is how I did it:
The main issue that I had was that the BlogML export function in Subext didn’t work for me. Upgrading to the latest version of Subext didn’t fix anything either. I delved into the code but, blimey, that is one complex piece of software. Is it really necessary to be so complex? I had a play with it but gave up. I tried this solution but gave up.
In the end I decided that since Wordpress imports from RSS feeds then I’d create my own RSS feed of EVERY blog post I’ve done and import it that way. It unfortunately meant losing my comments and I had to do a manual search and replace but it worked for me.
The code is here if you want to try it yourself.
http://www.websitemarketingblog.co.uk/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/ExportSubtext.zip
It uses the RSS feed generator from here: http://www.primaryobjects.com/CMS/Article67.aspx
I give no guarantees that it works or that it’ll produce anything usable for you. I purely wrote it for my own needs and it worked for me. I’d recommend taking a backup of the database and doing it on your local SQL Server rather than a production server.
Things to watch out for are:
- Wordpress got confused with the CDATA sections. You might want to try removing the CDATA markup from the code and generating your RSS feed with the new code. I didn’t notice the problem until after I’d imported into Wordpress so I had to export it to a Wordpress export file, delete all of the blog posts in Wordpress, do a search and replace of the CDATA open and close tags and then re-import it again. Hopefully you won’t have to!
- You’ll need to change the <img tags in the RSS to point to your new hosting. Hopefully a search and replace will be enough
Good luck! Leave a comment if you have success or if you have any experiences that you want to share.
Download the code for this article:
http://www.websitemarketingblog.co.uk/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/ExportSubtext.zip
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Comments
LOVE The new blog design – well done!
Sounds like it was really challenging to export from subtext though. WordPress is a great blogging platform – enjoy!
Jim Connolly
Jason,
I downloaded your Console App and tried it. Nothing happened and I did not get any descriptive messages either.
Your console App is a Dump and it does not work as advertised. Quit publicizing it and wasting other people’s time, unless you are able to provide a clean we documented app that does the job as it says it will….
Thanks.
@Tom
Are you talking to me or Jason?
I downloaded Jason’s app and couldn’t get it to work but he did explain quite clearly in his blog post that it was just some code he knocked up and he gave no assurances that it would work. I was glad that he put the code up!
Cheers,
Gregor
[...] have recently moved this blog from the Subtext platform to WordPress. (See this article for the hassle I had trying to move it!). However, I currently have huge amounts of useful [...]
Tom,
I explicitly mentioned in the post about my console app that it was a one-off application written only for me. Since others asked, I published it.
I made no guarantees.
What I intended with the post was to give someone determined enough to get all their content from Subtext a head start.
What you should do is focus your complaints at the Subtext developers to fix the BlogML exporter.
Interesting. Thanks for the information. I’m kind of new to this and this would help me a great deal. Jason’s link was really helpful too. Thanks
I located your blog on google and really appreciate your posts. I have added you to my Google News Reader. I really look forward to reading more posts from you.
I found your blog through a google search and have found some great info. Just thought I might post my thanks! So thanks lol.
When you are migrating from one web hosting company to another the bigger pain in the ass is by far the database export-import procedure. Most of the problems occur during this procedure. I bet that the first time you encounter this problem was when you tried to export subtext. Thank you for your detailed walkthrough, this information is really useful and should be added to the documentation of Wordpress. Many more users could benefit from this.
I have another post in which I go into even more detail about how I solved getting my data out of subtext here: http://www.ageektrapped.com/blog/exporting-blog-posts-from-subtext-in-blogml/
I kept getting requests for more detail on how to do it, so that’s why I posted it. I managed to keep comments, etc with it. Sounds like you got your posts out of there, but maybe it could help others.