Converting from other Weblog Tools

Currently you can convert/import entries from the following other weblog tools:

• Blogger
• Blosxom
• Movable Type
• Wordpress
• Greymatter
• Nucleus
• web-log.nl
• Coranto

The latest version of the import/convert scripts can be found in our SVN repository. Download the correct script (as indicated below in the section for each tool) and ensure that the files starts with <?php (and ends with ?>). Upload this to your server in the same folder as your Pivot install (the one with the entry.php and pv_admin.php files in it). Then follow the instructions below to actually convert/import the entries.

Because Blogger does not provide a straightforward way to export your entries, we are going to do the following:

1. Set the template for blogger so it is an easy to parse format
2. Republish the whole shebang to one or more files
3. Import these files in Pivot.

1) Go to the screen where you can post new entries, and click on the Template tab. Change your main template to the following: (just copy and paste from below)

<blogger>
AUTHOR: <$blogitemauthor$>
TITLE: <$blogitemsubject$>
DATE: <$blogitemdatetime$>
-----
BODY:
<$blogitembody$>
--------
</blogger>

2) Click on the Settings tab, and then go to the Publishing page using the smaller tabs below the main tabs. Change your blog filename to something else so you don't overwrite your blogger log. Something like blogger_import.txt is a good name. Save the changes.

If you have less than about 500 entries you can try to import them at once. Otherwise you'll have to import them one month at a time. It's not much more difficult to do them by month, just takes a little bit more time. Follow the instructions in Section 2 or Section 3.

If you have less than 500 entries, do the following:

1) Go to the Formatting page and change the following:

• Show: 999 days
• Timestamp Format: 3/17/2004 08:36:49 PM (the actual time and date is used, but be sure to pick this format)
• Convert Line Breaks: No

2) Go to the Archiving page, and turn off archiving. Save the changes.

3) Go to the Site Feed page, and turn off the Site Feed. Save the changes.

4) Go to Publishing, and click Republish Latest. This will produce one big file with all your entries in a format suitable for importing in Pivot.

Skip to Section 4: Importing in Pivot.

If you do have more than 500 entries, do the following:

1) Go to the Formatting page and change the following:

Show: 1 days Timestamp Format: 3/17/2004 08:36:49 PM (the actual time and date is used, but be sure to pick this format) Convert Line Breaks: No

2) Go to the Archiving page, and set archiving to Monthly. Take note of the Archive Path and Archive Filename so you can find the files later. Save the changes.

3) Go to the Site Feed page, and turn off the Site Feed. Save the changes.

4) Go toPosts, and then to Publishing (between the input and the output screen), and click Republish Entire Site. This will produce all your archive files in a format suitable for importing in Pivot. Go drink a cup of coffee while blogger is working on your archives.

Keep reading in Section 4: Importing in Pivot.

Get import_genericmt.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly, and that it works properly. Importing entries from Blogger will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Place the Blogger file (or files) somewhere on the server that's running Pivot, if they're not already on the same server. Now you can get started on importing the entries. Open the script import_genericmt.php in your browser. The script has the name 'Movable Type' in it a few times, but you are looking at the right screen. It's just there because we are using the generic MT format for importing.

Now all you need to do is give the script the name of the file with your blogger entries. If the file is one level up from the pivot/ folder, it should be something like ../blogger_import.txt.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. If you used the method in Section 3 you have to repeat this step for all of the seperate archive files, but in between you can go to the Pivot entries screen to check if it's working as expected. After the conversion of one file is finished just click the back button, change the name and import it.

When you are done with converting go to your Pivot entries screen, and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Get import_blosxom.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly and that it works properly. Importing entries from Blosxom will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot, so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Open the script import_blosxom.php in your browser. Now all you need to do, is to give the script the path the Blosxom posts directory (and the username you want to be the author of the imported entries).

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. When you are done with converting, go to your Pivot entries screen, and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Because Movable Type does not provide a straight forward way to export your entries, we are going to do the following:

1. Set the template for Movable Type so it is an easy to parse format
2. Republish the whole shebang to one or more files
3. Import these files in Pivot.

For each of your Movable Type webblogs, click Import/Export from the menu at the left. Next (while holding the option or shift) click the link, Export Entries From 'whateverthenameis' and you can save the export. If you are using Internet Explorer, make sure you are saving text, and not saving it as html. You can verify this by opening the saved file in a text editor. If the file contains <!– saved from url=(…) –> somewhere near the top, you have to try it again.

Get import_genericmt.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly, and that it works properly. Importing entries from Blogger will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Place the MT export file (or files) somewhere on the server that's running Pivot, if they're not already on the same server. Now you can get started on importing the entries. Open the script import_genericmt.php in your browser.

Now all you need to do is give the script the name of the file with your MT entries. If the file is one level up from the pivot/ folder, it should be something like ../mt.txt.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. If you exported more than one weblog in MT, you have to repeat this step for all the seperate export files, but in between you can go to the Pivot entries screen to check if it's working as expected. After the conversion of one file is finished, just click the back button, change the name and import it.

When you are done with converting, go to your Pivot entries screen, and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Get import_wordpress.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly and that it works properly. Importing entries from Wordpress will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot, so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Open the script import_wordpress.php in your browser. Now all you need to do, is to give the script the Mysql database details for your Wordpress.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. When you are done with converting, go to your Pivot entries screen, and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Get import_greymatter.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly and that it works properly. Importing entries from Greymatter will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot, so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Open the script import_greymatter.php in your browser. Now all you need to do is give the script the exact location of the folder with your Greymatter entries. If this folder is one level up from the pivot/ folder, it should be something like ../greymatter/archive/.

You can check the Remove old entries after conversion? option if you want to. If your server runs in safe_mode and you can't convert all entries in one go, use this option. This way the converted old entries will be removed. And you can restart the conversion to continue where it stopped.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. When you are done with converting, go to your Pivot entries screen, and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Get import_nucleus.php and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly, and that it works properly. Importing entries from Nucleus will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot, so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

Open the script import_nucleus.php in your browser. Now all you need to do is give the script the specifics of your Mysql setup, so pivot can import the entries from the Mysql database.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. When you are done with converting go to your Pivot entries screen and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

Get import_genericmt.php (or import_web-log.php if you have an old file exported in XML format) and make sure you've set up Pivot correctly, and that it works properly. Importing entries from web-log.nl will not overwrite the entries already in your Pivot, so you can import entries in a log that is already up and running.

First export your entries on web-log.nl to a file. Then open the import script in your browser. Now all you need to do, is to give the script the location of the exported file.

Check the Yes, do it checkbox, and click Convert! . If you don't get any errors, the conversion was succesful. When you are done with converting go to your Pivot entries screen and verify that the entries are converted correctly. Then go to Administration » Maintenance » Rebuild All Files, generating your entire site, and you are done!

There is a script for importing entries from Coranto, an excellent CMS. If you're moving to Pivot from Coranto, here are some things you should know.

Converting a Coranto system to Pivot is easy. You will need to do several things within Coranto:

1. Create a special News Style
2. Create a special News Profile
3. Edit your Time and Date settings
4. Build News one last time
5. Install Importer Script

Create a new News Style, using this template:

<item>
 <title><Field: Subject></title>
 <category><Field: Category></category>
 <text1><Field: Text></text1>
 <text2><Field: CustomField_more></text2>
 <pubDate><If: Field: Weekday eq "Sunday">Sun,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Monday">Mon,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Tuesday">Tue,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Wednesday">Wed,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Thursday">Thu,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Friday">Fri,</If><If: Field: Weekday eq "Saturday">Sat,</If> <Field: Date></pubDate>
</item>

Note: You may not have a second text field in your Coranto installation. If you do, replace CustomField_more with whatever your extra text is called.

Note: You may not have categories in your Coranto installation. If you do not, you can leave <category></category> empty.

Create a new news profile, with the settings you want. Be sure to include ALL the categories you want to move to Pivot, and you should leave all the 'filter by time' and 'filter by number' settings empty, to include ALL entries.

It doesn't matter what the file name is for this profile. Remember the location of it!

Note: the import script will create new categories in Pivot that match the names in Coranto, you do not need to create them in Pivot first.

Your time and date settings need to be adjusted. Click on Administration and then Date & Time Settings. Change the first two formats:

General Date Format

<Field: Day> <Field: Abbrev_Month_Name> <Field: Year> <Field: TwoDigitHour>:<Field: Minute>:00 <Field: Time_Zone>

Internal Date Format

<Field: Day> <Field: Abbrev_Month_Name> '<Field: TwoDigitYear> <Field: Hour>:<Field: Minute> <Field: AMPM>

Click on Administration, then select Full Rebuild.

This creates the file you specified in Step 2.

Download import_coranto.php and put the PHP script in your Pivot/ directory.

1. Go to http://YourURL/path_to/pivot/import_coranto.php
2. Enter the location of the file created in step 1
3. Enter the Pivot username. All imported entries will use this name.
4. If you do not have categories enabled in Coranto, enter the Pivot category the imported entries should use.
5. Check the little box 'Yes, do it!'
6. Press Convert!

That's it. After a few seconds your Coranto entries will be entered in Pivot. Easy!

Now you can spend the rest of the day editing the entries, changing categories, etc.

When migrating to Pivot from Coranto, there are a few things you'll need to relearn. Pivot handles things very differently, and much of the terminology is different.

Here's a Coranto/Pivot dictionary:

A subweblog is inserted into a Pivot template using [[subweblog:name]]

Subweblogs are defined in Administration / Weblogs / (weblog name) / page 2

Note that Pivot only allows you to define a subweblog when it's already used in a frontpage template. If you don't insert this tag, you can't define the subweblog. This also prevents you from using subweblogs in any but a frontpage. You can read more about this limitation on the bottom of the Working with Archives page.