Importing your Blogger weblog to Movable Type (illustrated)

Mark Paschal <markpasc@markpasc.org>

  1. Install Movable Type per the instructions. (You might enjoy Kevin Lawver's Installing Movable Type in OS X or Installing MT on Windows from the Virtual Venus MT wiki too.) Make and configure the weblog into which to import your Blogger entries. You can also configure later, so don't worry about getting everything perfect before importing.
  2. Log in to Blogger.
  3. Select the blog you want to export.
  4. Go to "Template."
  5. Select the entire template, then copy it to the clipboard.
  6. Open your favorite text editor and paste the template in, saving it to a text file for safe keeping. If you use Word, make sure you save it as a Text (".txt") file.
  7. Back in the web browser, replace the old template with this: 
    <Blogger>
AUTHOR: <$BlogItemAuthor$>
DATE: <$BlogItemDateTime$>
-----
BODY:
<$BlogItemBody$>
--------
</Blogger>
  8. Click "Save changes."
  9. Go to "Settings."
  10. Change the Blog Filename to "mtimport.txt". (If you will want to keep your Blogger weblog, you may want to note all the old values for the settings you change, so you can restore them when you're done.)
  11. In the "Formatting" section, change "Show" to "999 days' posts."
  12. Change "Date/Time Format" to the format that looks like "6/5/2003 12:05:04 AM." The actual time shown will be different, but pick the one with the same format.
  13. Change "Convert Line Breaks" to "No."
  14. In the "Archiving" section, change "Archive Frequency" to "No Archive."
  15. Click "Save Changes."
  16. Click "Publish."
  17. After a few moments, click "status" to make sure the transfer was successful. If it wasn't, treat it just as if it hadn't published your regular weblog correctly. (First you probably want to try publishing again, or maybe publishing when the server may be less busy... You probably know more about it than I do.)
  18. Click "View page" to go to your weblog. At least for me, it took me to my regular Blogger weblog.
  19. In the address bar of your browser, change the final filename such as "blogger.html" to "mtimport.txt". If your weblog URL ends in a slash, simply add "mtimport.txt".
  20. Press Enter. Your Movable Type import file will come up.
  21. Save that file to your computer, somewhere safe. (Where you put your backup Blogger template would be a good choice.)
  22. Open your FTP client. I use LeechFTP. You probably use something different, perhaps WS_FTP or CuteFTP (or if you use Mac OS X you might use Panic Transmit, for which I envy you). If you aren't using FTP to transfer files to your Movable Type server, try your best to follow along, adjusting for method you're using.
  23. Connect to the server where you installed Movable Type.
  24. Change to the directory where Movable Type is. This is not (necessarily) the directory to which your weblog is published; change to the directory with mt.cgi in it.
  25. Create a directory called "import".
  26. Change your local directory to the one where you saved the "mtimport.txt" file. Enter the "import" directory and upload your "mtimport.txt" file there.
  27. When the file has finished, go to your Movable Type Main Menu, logging in if necessary. Click the "Manage Weblog" link for the weblog you're importing entries into.
  28. Click the "Import/Export" button.
  29. Unless you know you don't want to, check the "Import entries as me" box.
  30. Change "Default post status for entries (optional)" to "Publish."
  31. If you have used HTML in your posts to mark up what you consider the entry's title, enter the opening and closing tags for your title HTML in the "Title Start HTML" and "Title End HTML" fields respectively. I didn't, so I'm leaving them empty. If you don't know what to put in, leave them empty too.
  32. Click the "Import Entries" button.
  33. You'll get a screen of plain text as shown. Make sure it says "Importing entries from file 'mtimport.txt'" and "All data imported successfully!" If it doesn't, and you can't tell what's wrong, select all the text (with the Edit -> Select All menu option), copy it, and save it to another file in your favorite text editor. Try to research your problem with Google and Movable Type Support Forum searches. If you still can't figure out your problem, post to the Import Problems forum. Feel free to post excerpts from your saved file where it says what the error is; the whole file is probably too long to post, unless the error occurred very early.
  34. Click Back in your browser twice, to get back to the Editing Menu for your weblog. Reload the page to see that your Blogger entries did, in fact, import.
  35. Go back to your FTP client, open to the "import" directory. (If yours is like LeechFTP, you'll have to reconnect and change directories again.) Delete the "mtimport.txt" file. Disconnect and close your FTP client.
  36. If you want to keep your imported Blogger weblog, go back to Blogger and change your settings back to how you had them before.
  37. Have fun with your new Movable Type weblog! You can now continue configuring your weblog, setting up templates, etc. When you're done, do a "Rebuild All," so the entries show up.

References