Importing from Typepad

[orblivion]

Hi,

I am migrating a blog from Typepad to Serendipity. Serendipity allows an "rss import", but I don't think that typepad supports this. (I would think that one could theoretically import pretty much everything via basic RSS feed, but it sounds like "RSS Export" is something other than a basic RSS feed.) TypePad seem to have their own export format (whatever it is, it's not XML). Wordpress, on the other hand, does explicitly support importing of Typepad (I think they may be owned by the same company or something). The best and maybe only solution I can think of is to export from TypePad, import to WordPress, and then RSS Export from Wordpress. Is there a better way?

Thanks!

[yellowled]

I am migrating a blog from Typepad to Serendipity. Serendipity allows an "rss import", but I don't think that typepad supports this. (I would think that one could theoretically import pretty much everything via basic RSS feed, but it sounds like "RSS Export" is something other than a basic RSS feed.)

Actually, no. It's meant to import an RSS feed. However, this option is supposed to be kind of a "last resort" if there's no better option available. I'll get to that later. The problem with RSS Import is that an RSS feed usually does not contain the same data a "real export" does, so you might not be able to import parts of the old blog like i.e. categories.

More importantly, S9y's RSS Import does not "destroy" anything in the original blog, so you could always try the RSS Import in a S9y test installation, it's not supposed to do any harm to your TypePad blog.

The best and maybe only solution I can think of is to export from TypePad, import to WordPress, and then RSS Export from Wordpress. Is there a better way?

That sounds pretty clumsy to me.

Let's see -- TypePad is based on Moveable Type, and we do have an importer for MT exports. It might work just fine with TP exports, depending on how much has changed from MT to TP. Also, the MT export format is known to be a bit "tricky", i.e. prone to error. Again, you should be able to do a "test import" in S9y without losing your TP blog's content.

Bottom line: I'd wait for someone with deeper knowledge of the import process (we call him Garvin, you might have met him already ) to weigh in on this, but there should be no reason not to do a test import, i.e. in a local test installation using xampp.

YL

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I second YellowLED - MT export would be a good way. If you can export to WordPress, we should surely be able to write an importer for it. The importers are not that hard to create, but it heavily depends on the complexity of the exported format.

If you can maybe provide a sample export (maybe only with a few entries, and only a few comments) we could see to get this thing quickstarted.

Regards,
Garvin

[orblivion]

Well I just tried importing calling it MT, and it ostensibly worked. I do still need to scrape the images somehow though. I don't think I'll need to go the WordPress route then.

Thanks!

[orblivion]

Hmm, I noticed that (tm) symbols turn into "„¢". Is this a result of the import process? Or is there anything I can do after the fact to fix these characters?

[yellowled]

Hmm, I noticed that (tm) symbols turn into "„¢". Is this a result of the import process? Or is there anything I can do after the fact to fix these characters?

Smells like iso-* to utf-8 conversion or vice versa. Does the new blog and/or DB use the same charset the old one used?

YL

[orblivion]

Well, s9y is UTF-8, I didn't change the default. And just using Linux's "file" tool, Typepad's export file looks to be UTF-8 as well. And just to confirm it, I took a line with a (tm) symbol alone. It was UTF-8. I removed the (tm) and it was ascii. So I'm pretty sure I'm looking at UTF-8 -> UTF-8.

[orblivion]

Woah, it asks you about the format when you import! Oops, forgot about that! Guess I should pay attention to such things.

Thanks a lot.