One of the great things about switching to WordPress is that you can very easily import your old blogs. This post will cover how to import blogs from three platforms: Blogger (blogspot), TypePad, and WordPress.com. Together, these three types of blogs probably make up 95% of the blogs that people want to import into self-hosted WordPress blogs.

(If you’re wanting to import from a blogging platform other than these three, see this WordPress tutorial here for more information:  http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content)

NOTE: after successfully importing an old blog, DO NOT delete that old blog. Just let it sit there. Your photos from your old blog are not actually moved over to your new blog, they are simply referenced by your new blog and must be left in place to display correctly.

For all three types, you start by going to “Tools” –> “Import” in your WP Admin area, which looks like this:

Importing a Blogger Blog:

If the blog you are importing is a blogger blog (i.e., ends with a .blogspot.com), follow these steps.

1. First, open another tab of your browser, or a new browser window, log in to your Blogger account. Make sure you are logged in and not just visiting your blogger blog.
2. Open up your blog’s WordPress Admin area, and go to “Tools” –> “Import.”
3. Click, “Blogger”.
4. If you don’t  already have the Blogger importer plugin installed, you will be prompted to install the plugin.  Click “install”

5. If you did step 1 right, you should see a screen that looks like this:
6. Click to grant access, and then you will be able to click an “import” button for the blog you want to import, shown below:
7. When it is done importing, the “Magic Button” will change to saying “Set Authors.” Click it and map your blogger users to WordPress users. If you haven’t created any WordPress Users except the default “admin” you can navigate away from this page and click on “users” in the upper right of your screen, create some users and come back to this screen to map them correctly. That’s it. You’re done!

If your blogger import got stuck somewhere along the way (or just didn’t work), click here.

Importing A TypePad (Movable Type) Blog

1. Log into TypePad and go to the Blogs > Settings > Import/Export.
2. Click on Export. TypePad begins creating your export file. A progress bar displays.
3. When the export is finished, TypePad will display a download link. Click the link. The export file will display in your browser.
4. Save the export file somewhere you’ll remember with an obvious filename.
5. Log into WordPress and go to Tools > Import. A menu of import formats displays.
6. Select Movable Type and TypePad format. You might have to download the plugin if you haven’t already.
7. Click Browse and locate the TypePad export file you saved to your hard drive.
8. Click Upload and Import. WordPress begins the import process. When the import is completed, WordPress displays a success message.

Importing a Tumblr Blog:

Tumblr doesn’t have an export feature but there are still options for uploading your posts.  Warning!  For either method, do not delete you tumblr blog! Unlike WordPress to WordPress import where media (video, pictures) which are in the input blog’s media library are also imported into the new blog’s media library, images in posts exported from Tumblr and imported to WordPress will be “hotlinked”. This means they won’t be copied into the new WordPress blog’s media library, and will actually continue to link to the Tumblr media library.

As long as you keep your old Tumblr blog alive (don’t delete the Tumblr blog nor any of the posts), that should not be a problem, even though it is a bit of a drag…

The workaround is to automatically import hotlinked images to your local media library using this plugin for instance.

Option 1: Create a WXR file

Check out this blog post for a detailed description of this method:

1. Go to Tumblr2wp to create a WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS) file from your tumblr site which can be imported into WordPress.
2. In your WordPress admin area go to “Tools” > “Import”.
3. Select, “WordPress”. If you don’t have that plugin, you’ll have to install it first.
4. Click on “upload file and import.”
5. The rest should be simple

Option 2: Use the Tumblr importer plugin

1. Go to “Tools” > “Import” and click on “Tumblr”
2. You will be prompted to download the plugin. Download and activate it.
3. Enter in your tumblr login information.
4. Follow the instructions.

Importing a WordPress.com Blog:

If you have a free blog through WordPress.com and are switching to a self-hosted WordPress installation on your own domain and webhost, the steps to import are pretty simple.

1. First, log into your old WordPress.com blog admin area and click on “Tools” –> “Export” and then click on “Download Export File.”
2. Next, log into your new, self-hosted WordPress blog, and click on “Tools” –> “Import”. Click on browse and locate the file you just downloaded, and then click “Upload file and import.”
3. Finally, map your old users to existing users in your new blog or create new users to map to and click submit.

If you are having problems with your import, or just don’t want to do it yourself, we are directing ProPhoto customers to the folks at BlogCrafted for this service.  Just contact them with the info below and tell them you are a ProPhoto blog user:


BlogCrafted

Contact them on this page and tell them ProPhoto blogs sent you.