scriptygoddess

26 May, 2011

Moving from Typepad to WordPress

Posted by: Jennifer In: WordPress|WordPress: Lessons Learned

I recently had a client who wanted to move from TypePad to WordPress. An interesting procedure, let me tell you. The most critical help came from this post on foliovision.com. Of particular note, was the way they pulled down all the images from the Typepad site – using HTTrack.

My original plan was to use this plugin: Cache Images – to import the pictures. The reason being that I needed the images attached to their various posts for the template – which is what that plugin does in addition to loading all externally referenced images onto your own server. But the way Typepad is storing the images now, the plugin doesn't really work. The images are referenced without a file extension at the end – which is what that plugin specifically uses to search for images. So that is why I used HTTrack to pull down the images first.

After I had a folder of all the images for the site – I put that up on a DIFFERENT server. (I know, a little confusing but hang in there with me)

I then used the search regex plugin to change references to the images without an extension to the temporary location of those images on my other server – but this time WITH the .jpg extensions:

Search string (regex options turned on)
#src="http://www.MY-CLIENTS-TYPEPAD-DOMAIN.com/\.a/([^\s]+(?=))"#i
and replaced it with:
src="http://MYREMOTESERVER.COM/DIRECTORYNAME/$1.jpg"

Now with all the references using the appropriate .jpg extension and pointing to MY server, I was then able to go back and use the "Cache Images" plugin to pull down the images and attach them to their respective posts.

5 Responses to "Moving from Typepad to WordPress"

1 | Aarav

June 12th, 2011 at 2:33 pm

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FYI this approach works only up to WordPress 2.9.2

It craps out on versions beyond that.

2 | Jennifer

June 12th, 2011 at 8:18 pm

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Not really – I did this successfully on wordpress version 3.1.3

3 | Wes

October 11th, 2011 at 11:41 pm

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Is it okay to have sub-directories in the directory on the remote server?

I can't seem to get any of these images to cache. It says it's caching over a thousand, but then when I look in the Media Direcory, there's nothing.

Any ideas?

4 | Alec

November 28th, 2011 at 10:09 am

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Glad our Typepad to WordPress guide helped, Jennifer. For busy people or really big sites, we also offer a service dedicated to these moves (also Drupal to WordPress, Hubspot to WordPress, Blogger to wordpress). To be honest, even after hundreds of Typepad moves, we learn something new almost every time.

We recommend people start out on WordPress.com as it's a lot easier to migrate from WordPress.com as anything else.

5 | Cord Blomquist

October 9th, 2012 at 9:01 pm

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Jennifer, you may want to check out tp2wp.com, a new service my company just launched that converts TypePad and Movable Type export files into WordPress eXtended RSS, or "WXR," XML files. This means you can avoid all of the steps you've used above and just import the file as usual.

However, we've also created a custom version of the WordPress Importer, we call it the ReadyMade WordPress Importer, which will detect the MIME type of files without extensions, which are very, very common on TypePad.

If you ever need to work with a client migrating away from TypePad again, I hope you consider using tp2wp.com

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  • Scott: Just moved changed the site URL as WP's installed in a subfolder. Cookie clearance worked for me. Thanks!
  • Stephen Lareau: Hi great blog thanks. Just thought I would add that it helps to put target = like this:1-800-555-1212 and
  • Cord Blomquist: Jennifer, you may want to check out tp2wp.com, a new service my company just launched that converts TypePad and Movable Type export files into WordPre

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