Blog Migrations

Most methods listed on this page require read access to the database to generate posts from your old system. Each method generates .markdown posts in the _posts directory based on the entries in the DB. Please make sure you take a look at the generated posts to see that information has been transferred over properly. Also, the majority of the import scripts do not check for published or private posts, so please look over what Jekyll has created for you.

How to use

These migrators are part of the Jekyll gem.

1. Add an _import directory to your project
2. Open a terminal
3. gem install sequel mysqlplus
4. Run the respective commands below.

WordPress

Using Jekyll + Mysql server connection

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/wordpress"; Jekyll::WordPress.process("database", "user", "pass")'

If you are using Webfaction and have to set an SSH tunnel, make sure to make the hostname (127.0.0.1) explicit, otherwise MySQL may block your access based on localhost and 127.0.0.1 not being equivalent in its authentication system:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/wordpress"; Jekyll::WordPress.process("database", "user", "pass", "127.0.0.1")'

Using Jekyll + Wordpress export file (works with wordpress.com)

If hpricot is not already installed, gem install hpricot. Export your blog: https://YOUR-USER-NAME.wordpress.com/wp-admin/export.php. Assuming that file is called wordpress.xml:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/wordpressdotcom"; Jekyll::WordpressDotCom.process("wordpress.xml")'

Further Wordpress + alternatives

While the above methods usually works they do not import very much of the meta data that usually is stored in wordpress posts and pages. If you need to keep more of pages, tags, custom fields, image attachments and so on the following resources might be of interest:

• Exitwp is a configurable tool written in python for migrating one or more wordpress blogs into jekyll/markdown format while keeping as much meta data as possible. Also downloads attachments and pages.
• A great article with a step by step guide on migrating an wordpress blog while keeping most of the structure and meta data.
• wpXml2Jekyll is an executable windows application for creating Markdown posts from your Wordpress XML file.
• WordPress to Jekyll Exporter is a one-click WordPress plugin that converts all posts, pages, taxonomies, metadata, and settings to Markdown and YAML which can be dropped into Jekyll. Fires the_content filters to export what users see, not what's in the database.

Drupal

Note: This was written for Drupal 6.1. Please update it if necessary. Thanks!

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/drupal"; Jekyll::Drupal.process("database", "user", "pass")'

Movable Type

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/mt"; Jekyll::MT.process("database", "user", "pass")'

Typo 4+

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/typo"; Jekyll::Typo.process("database", "user", "pass")'

This code also has only been tested with Typo version 4+.

TextPattern

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/textpattern"; Jekyll::TextPattern.process("database_name", "username", "password", "hostname")'

Run the above from the folder above _import in Terminal. i.e. If _import is located in /path/source/_import, run the code from /path/source. The hostname defaults to localhost, all other variables are needed. You may need to adjust the code used to filter entries. Left alone, it will attempt to pull all entries that are live or sticky.

Mephisto

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/mephisto"; Jekyll::Mephisto.process("database", "user", "password")'

If your data is in postgres, you can do this:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/mephisto"; Jekyll::Mephisto.postgres({:database => "database", :username=>"username", :password =>"password"})'

Blogger (Blogspot)

See Migrate from Blogger to Jekyll

kennym created a little migration script, because the solutions in the previous article didn't work out for him.

ngauthier created another importer that imports comments, and does so via blogger's archive instead of the rss feed.

juniorz created another importer that works for Octopress. It is like ngauthier's version but separates drafts from posts, imports tags and permalinks.

kcargile created a Windows-based command line converter that uses Blogger's XML archive format and XSLT to generate posts, tags, and permalinks.

Posterous

For your primary blog:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/posterous"; Jekyll::Posterous.process("my_email", "my_pass")'

For another blog:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/posterous"; Jekyll::Posterous.process("my_email", "my_pass", "blog_id")'

An alternative Posterous migrator that maintains permalinks and attempts to import images lives here

Tumblr

Importing from Tumblr also requires nokogiri: gem install nokogiri

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/tumblr"; Jekyll::Tumblr.process("http://www.your_blog_url.com", true)'

A modified Tumblr migrator that exports posts as Markdown and also exports post tags lives here

It requires the json gem and Python's html2text:

$ gem install json
$ pip install html2text

Once installed, simply use the format arg:

$ ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/tumblr"; Jekyll::Tumblr.process("http://www.your_blog_url.com", format="md")'