Notions

The Blogger Image Import Wordpress plugin that I wrote some time ago is getting a bit old and has some issues with the newer blogger structure.

People have continued to use this plugin, and some have even made suggestions on how to fix it in the comments of that page.

I have collected some of that information here if anyone is still interested in using this plugin. I do not have time to update the plugin, but I am happy to include fixes that others have made to it.

There are two main issues that I know of now.

1. The domain on which the images are hosted is not constant. It has changed over time from blogspot.com to blogger.com
2. The links to the full size images are actually links to html pages that contain the image

Some commenters have pointed out some solutions. Those are

1. Run the script once with the image server domain set to blogspot.com and again with it set to blogger.com. Ultimately, it would be best if the script were updated to support both, or possibly any other domain as there is no reason to restrict it to just those two, but then it might import images that were intended to be linked.
2. If the name of the image contains “s1600-h” remove the “-h” and convert it to “s1600″ when importing. It seems that Blogger is currently storing the images at those locations.

Here is a link to a version of the script that was sent to me by JT and described on the comment page

blogger-image-import.zip

I have not tested it, so use it at your own risk, but it looks good and shows the changes that were made to the original. Look for “MODIFIED:” comments in the script for a description of the changes.

I welcome any updates that people make to improve the script. If you find any issues, or fix the existing issues better, please let me know and send a copy of your fixes so we can share them with others.

I’ve updated the Blogger Image Import plugin with the ability to find images with spaces in the name. I had never noticed before, but any images hosted by blogger with spaces in the name were simply ignored because the %20 in the URL was being excluded from my regular expression.

Heather discovered that there was a problem and reported it here. I did some tests and realized that the % character was not being accepted as part of the URL and so any files with space (%20) were being ignored.

After a bit of trial and error I have fixed the plugin so that it correctly copies the files with %20 in their name and puts them on the local server with a space in its place. I have lifted some of the restrictions of the URL matching but it hasn’t caused any problems yet. Please test each import carefully looking for bad conversions and let me know if you find any.

http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/blogger-image-import/

http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/from-blogger-to-wordpress/

I finally made the transition for Blogger to Wordpress for a family blog I operate. It took me a while to get up the courage to finally make the transition. I only had to publish two plugins to help me make the transition.

I still don’t like the image uploading/embedding functionality of Wordpress. All my posts have images, but I will cross that bridge with my next post. I will make sure to write up any useful details or plugins I use or write to make that easier. I want something as simple as Picasa+Hello+Blogger or as close as I can get it.

I have written my experience of doing the import using a local PC PHP server (using EasyPHP).

http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/from-blogger-to-wordpress/

I have updated the Blogger Title Fix plugin (revision 0.2) to include some configuration options. This release includes the following additions…

• An option to set the number of characters to use for the title. The default is 48, like Blogger, but I find that a shorter title is more appealing.
• An option to set whether the title is cropped at a word boundary, instead of the default character boundary.

http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/blogger-title-fix/

I have finally written a plugin to replace the ugly post titles that sometimes accompany a Blogger-to-WordPress import – the numerical titles that are added to Blogger posts without a title. This plugin replaces those ugly titles with an excerpt from the post body.

http://notions.okuda.ca/wordpress-plugins/blogger-title-fix/