I have to admit, the main reason I was reluctant to switch my blogging software of choice before was because I didn’t want to get rid of the old blog entries I’ve collected from 3 years ago. I searched for tutorials on how to import posts from Tabulas to Wordpress when I started this blog, but, apparently, that kind of query wasn’t as popular as Blogger-, LJ-, Motime-, or MovableType-to-Wordpress imports, hence no one bothered to come up with a tutorial for it (or maybe I just wasn’t looking enough :D). To somewhat give justice to my archives, I resolved to just place a link from here to my old blog. For months, I wasn’t thinking about moving my old entries anymore until today when I was helping a friend move hers from Blogger to Wordpress. :)
I’ve known for a while that posts in Tabulas can now be syndicated through RSS but I don’t know why it never crossed my mind to use that to migrate my previous weblog. So yes, I used the RSS feeds of my old blog in Tabulas to move my archives here. It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? However, there is one catch: this will allow you to import journal entries and categories, but not the comments. Oh well, better than nothing, right? :D
If you’re familiar with how to import posts from an RSS feed, then I’m sure you’ll know what do from here. But just in case, you’re not, and you would like to know more about how I moved my posts, then please read on. I have to warn you though, the task is very tedious! :blank:
Before we start, the following are assumed:
- You have an existing account with Tabulas. (duh! :P)
- You have a running Wordpress blog. If you don’t, you may want to install Wordpress first before continuing.
- You have made up your mind to migrate your posts to WP! LOL. :P
Now that you’re ready, follow the next simple steps:
- Open http://xml.tabulas.com/username/rss.xml in your browser.
- Once you’re seeing the xml version of your posts, click File in the browser’s menu.
- Choose Save As and specify a temporary location in your computer (eg: your Desktop).
- Open the file you just saved (eg. rss.xml) in Notepad.
- Go to Edit and select Replace (or simply press ctrl-H).
- Type <![CDATA[ in the Find What textbox, and leave the Replace With textbox blank. Hit Replace All.
- Repeat Step 5.
- Now enter ]]–> in the Find What textbox, and leave the Replace With textbox blank. Hit Replace All.
- Save your file.
- Now log in to your Wordpress Blog.
- Click on Manage and choose Import.
- Choose RSS (import from an RSS feed) from the list.
- Click on Browse and choose the rss.xml file you saved earlier.
- Hit the button Upload file and import. By now, you should be able to see some posts imported to your WP blog.
Incidentally, since Tabulas only displays 10 RSS feeds at a time, it also goes without saying, that moving your posts from Tabulas to Wordpress will also just be 10 posts at a time. :D
To get the next batch of (10) RSS feeds, you need to login to your Tabulas blog and set the first batch of (10) posts to Private/Draft. (Do not delete them!) The idea behind this is you need to prevent the 10 posts you’ve just moved to WP from appearing in your RSS xml file. Once you’ve set them to Private/Draft, the next batch of (10) posts should be the one to appear in your RSS feeds. Repeat steps 1-10 over and over again until you’ve reached your last post (which is your first entry ever) in Tabulas.
I know it sucks. It requires so much time to finish importing. I, even, haven’t moved all my posts yet! :D For now, I guess this is a good enough solution for you and me. Hopefully somebody will come up with a plugin for this soon! :)
[EDIT: 2/9/07]
The owner of Tabulas has answered my question regarding the comment RSS. Sadly, he says that Tabulas has none. :(
Here’s a screenshot of the e-mail. Click image for larger view.
[/EDIT]
waah!turuan mo kong mag rss feeds! haha..gusto ko meron din ako…;))
Don’t you just love RSS feeds? I know I don’t, lol. And I’ve never used Tabulas either. Hurrah for successfully importing your posts! :D
wah, ang galing!!!! isa kang henyo!! ang tagal ko na rin iniisip kung pano to.. wehhe. amazing. i just might do this too :)
kayalang, nde kaya maging duplicate content ang labas? baka pag nalipat na yung mga posts, baka kelangan idelete na totally yung tabulas account so you won’t get penalized for having duplicate content? grr, nanghihinayang talaga ako sa tabulas na yan grr. i know it’s not PR5, pero still, haay, yanoe, mas marami parin traffic ko dun eh. haha.
maybe i can just choose my favorite posts and have them rss-ed. :P good idea, indeed. :P
teka, asan na yung mga posts na naimport? i wana see :P
Aba ang ganda nang bagong layout kakainlove :D daming nag violet ngayon ha in fairness hehe
hey joni :) i tried doing this, but haha I failed. and since di rin ma-import yung comments, I’ll leave it as is nalang. pero this is great tutorial btw. :)
Hey, thanks for this great tutorial. :P I wish I’d thought of it. :lol:
I’ve set up my friend’s blog on my domain, and it has worked well for her first eight posts. I’ve set all the imported posts to Private/Draft right after I’ve successfully imported the latest eight, though Tabulas isn’t cooperating too well. The RSS feed won’t update. :(
Thanks for this great tutorial, though. I wish someone could write a plugin for this. For now, I guess this will do.
PS: For my case, by the way, I had to look for
]]>>and not]]-->. This might help other people. :PpamQ: Yeah, I realized too that the rss feeds don’t update, so I just manually imported my posts from tabulas to WP one by one. I used the rss.xml file and modified it to fit a post, then I imported that file to Wordpress. It was taxing! But I only imported the important posts (most of my posts in tabulas are nonsense, lol), so it’s all good. hehe
Hey thanks so much for posting this! It’s just what my friend needs, ’cause she has a tabulas account and she wants to move to wordpress. Thanks thanks!! :)