Converting from Wordpress to ExpressionEngine

Some of the sites I convert to ExpressionEngine (EE) are made using Wordpress. I really like Wordpress. It’s super easy to use and set up, but for more complex sites it’s just not up to the task. EE is the soulution, but how do you migrate the old content into EE? There’s several possible solutions, but they all seemed cumbersome or outdated so I figured I’d make something better and easier.

Adobe AIR makes it a breeze to make utility applications like this and the result is “WP2MT”, a small app that reads the XML file you can export from WordPress and saves the contents to the Movable Type Import Format that EE can import from. Click the Badge at the bottom to install the application.

How it works

Start by exporting the Wordpress content to the WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR format. Depending on what version of WordPress you use, you’ll find this under the Tools or the Manage menu in your WordPress control panel.

Install and start the app. Click the “Open File” button at the bottom and browse to the XML file you just exported. The app will now show a summary of the XML file, showing the number of posts, pages, comments and discarded items (revisions of articles or attachments). You’ll also see how many of these that are unpublished and you can choose if you want to include these.

Next hit the export buttons to create a text file containing either the pages or posts. That’s it.

One thing not included in the MovableType format is the original URL of the entry, so I’ve added a custom field for EE that’s called ‘EXTRA FIELD-1’. By making an extra field for this, you’ll be able to look up what url entries had before and you can also check against this field to see if an entry was added after the export.

Feedback is much appreciated and if you have WP files that won’t import, send them to jenschr [at) gmail [dot) com and I’ll see if I can fix it.

You can also download the .air file directly from here. If you don’t use the Badge above, you may need to install the AIR runtime as well.