Migrating from TypePad to Movable Type
From MovableType
This page is a draft version and a work in progress.
Contents |
Some history
Movable Type is actually a (by now) distant ancestor of TypePad, so they share many of the same features. However, over the years some differences have accumulated that require some special attention when performing a migration.
Moving Entries, Comments, TrackBacks and Categories
This is the easiest to do: TypePad can export in Movable Type's import format, so all you need to do is export the file from TypePad and into Movable Type. However:
- You can import the ownership of the entries (MT will create new authors if they don't exist in the system yet; note they will have a default password, not their old one).
- Alterantively you can make all the entries the property of the user doing the importing.
- Categories are imported, tags aren't.
- The full HTML content of the entries is moved, including links and image tags.
- If you are switching domain names and you have absolute internal links in your entries, use MT's built-in search and replace function to fix this
- If you are keeping the same domain name, don't forget to change the paths where the archives are published, as they are different in MT by default. See further down in this article...
Moving files/images
These are not moved automatically, so there is some manual work involved in this. In TypePad, go to your Control Panel and from there on to the tab with your file manager. From there you will need to download all the files belonging to your blog. Note that this can be a lot of work if you try to do it by hand, so I suggest using something like the GetRight extension for Firefox, which allows you to easily download all files linked on a page.
Next, upload all files to your Movable Type server. If you are preserving the URL and/or folder structure of your old blog it makes it easier to keep old links and image tags working.
Moving your design
This is by far the most tricky step. Up to Movable Type 3.x the default designs of MT were fully compatible with the CSS generated by TypePad and vice-versa. So if you were using one of the default designs or a design created with the design editor on TypePad, all you had to (basically) do was copy-paste the CSS from the TypePad blog into the CSS template of the MT blog.
Currently, with the 4.x templates, this is no longer 100% the case. You can still do it, but you will need to tweak the CSS later to make everything 'fit' again.
Alternatively, you can delete the default 4.x templates and install the 3.x template set, which still works as MT 4.x maintains reverse compatibility with older default templates. Once the 'old' set is in place you should be able to use the CSS from TypePad again. The 3.x templates can be found here: [http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/designer/movable-type-33-default-templa.html ]
If you have been using TypePad's Advanced Template sets: the tags used by Movable Type and TypePad are similar but not all of TypePad's tags occur in MT and vice versa. If you want to keep your designs you will have to re-implement your templates as MT templates in this case.