Comments on: FG to WP: Can It Be Done?

By: Justin Koh

Justin Koh — Thu, 19 May 2005 03:53:04 +0000

Well since most of the technicalities have been pointed out already, I’d just like to say that TXP looks pretty and all, but WordPress is better developed. You’ll definitely find more (core and plugin) features and documentation.

By: Carthik

Carthik — Thu, 19 May 2005 03:11:25 +0000

All the help you need should be at http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_From_Movable_Type_to_WordPress . Should you need additional help, please do not hesitate to contact me.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 19 May 2005 00:39:25 +0000

I have a feeling that all of this stuff can also be done with Textpattern. Since neither program is exactly the same as MT, you will have to use “plugins/hacks”, anyways.
Textpattern uses “-” by default but I’m sure there is a way to use “_”. Also, TXP has a MT importer. The “extended entries” part will have to be dealt with the same way- either “exerpt/body” or “body + plugin”.

http://www.textpattern.org might be a good place to check stuff out.

By: XeroCool

XeroCool — Wed, 18 May 2005 21:04:36 +0000

Hey Scrivs,
I can help you with the move to WP If you like. My site (r0x0rz.info) is set up like the old FG. I can convert this template to WP If you like, and the “Visit Site” url is quite easy to add to your post with a plugin. Let me know dude. Check my site out. See the old design? It was converted by James W. and the 9rules WhiteSpace design, I converted it to WP but then deleted (I wanted to see If it would look sexy, which It did).

Let me know. I can help you with the underscore permalinks, etc..:).

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 18 May 2005 20:38:26 +0000

You can use to break up entries easily. A site with the numbers you mentioned should be no problem for the importer, the last one I did personally had over 65k comments. Ideally you could have the old underscore URIs redirect to the new hyphened ones, since hypens perform better in search engines anyway.

By: MacGeek

MacGeek — Wed, 18 May 2005 16:51:03 +0000

I’ve been porting from MT to WP for all my sites and had no problem importing posts and comments from MT. The WP doc is pretty good on covering that subject.

The trick with WP permalinks is that while MT uses “_” to separate words, WP uses “-”, but there’s a plugin or two to deal with that.

http://www.orderedlist.com/articles/wordpress_underscore_plugin/

As long as you keep the directory structure the same, I think all will be well.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:55:17 +0000

When I imported my MT blog entries into WordPress, it imported all extended entries correctly. As someone said above, you should be able to manipulate the permalink format however you wish.

Perhaps you could do a small test run with a subset of the entries?

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:52:36 +0000

Whatever gets put into the ‘Body’ field.

By: James

James — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:44:46 +0000

So what gets put on the homepage? Is it ‘X’ amount of letters/words? First paragraph? What?

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:38:15 +0000

But homepage isn’t excerpt, they are introduction paragraphs and the rest gets put into the extended entry field.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:32:31 +0000

Underscore permalinks plugin for wordpress

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Underscore_Permalinks

I use the ‘excerpt reloaded’ plugin to just show sections of a post

http://guff.szub.net/the-excerpt-reloaded

You specify the number of letters and it cuts things off at the end of the nearest word at that length.

The ability to add excerpts is pretty easy without the plugin (more info here http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_excerpt) but I like the extra functionality the plugin gives me.

AFAIK you can import things easily, I doubt templates will be so straight forward, but they aren’t hard to do.

By: Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint — Wed, 18 May 2005 14:30:04 +0000

Sorry, I meant to link those URLs. http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_from_Movable_Type_to_WordPress http://wordlog.com/archives/2004/07/29/importing-large-movabletype-text-files/

By: Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint — Wed, 18 May 2005 14:28:33 +0000

Speaking on the subject of Permalinks and Extended Entries:

You can set up the permalink structure just about any way you want to in WordPress. Should be easy to set it up as /category/post-title.

WordPress has a field labeled excerpt, and you can use this to tease an article, then link to the full text. Works similar to the Entry and Extended Entry functions that we have here on FP now using MT.

As for the import capabilities, I can not say for sure. Check out this page in the WP Codex Wiki:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_from_Movable_Type_to_WordPress
That should cover the basics. Since you are dealing with lots of entries, check this out also:
http://wordlog.com/archives/2004/07/29/importing-large-movabletype-text-files/

If anything, you could always try to get in touch with Matt and see if he had any tips to offer. Check out the WP support forums as well.