WordPress › Support » RSS import not working

neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I screwed up and deleted my wordpress database. I am unable to get a backup of this. I've had to resort to importing the RSS feed of my blog in order to get the posts, but the RSS feed import option isn't working. I upload the xml file from my computer, it take a while, then I get the "All done, have fun" message, indicating the import was successful, however when I manage posts, none of the imported posts are there.

I've searched the forums and cannot find an answer. I tried the solution suggested here - http://wordpress.org/support/topic/119093 - but that didn't help.

I'm importing two feeds, one from my old blogger account (which I seem to be unable to import directly) and the feed generated by wordpress since I changed over on the 13th of July.

The two xml files were generated from the feeds by Google Reader using this method: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/reconstruct-feeds-history-using-google.html (I love google)

The first feed is an atom feed, the second one generated by feedburner from the default Wordpress feed. I can post links to or samples of the feeds to provide examples if that helps.

I'm using wordpress v2.2.1.

This is driving me to dispair, and my blog is currently offline (I get quite a few visitors, so I'd like to be back up asap), so any help you can offer would be welcomed like a glass of water in the Sahara.

Thank you!!
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I hate to bump my post after only two hours, but this is really distressing me. I've tried everything I can think of, but I just can't get it to work! I really really don't want to lose six months of work, posting every single day.

Can anyone take a little time to have a look at this for me please?
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Help please?!
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Bump
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Come on folks! Can't someone PLEASE help me out here?! I'm on the verge of losing six months of work, this post has been here for two days, and not a single response?! I don't even know where else online I could post to ask for help! This is a wordpress problem, and these are the wordpress support forums.

I'm DESPERATE for help!

PLEASE!
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

bump
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I'm still working on this myself while I wait for a reply here. I've managed to get my old blogger posts to import, by fixing the problem described in another thread here (changing www2.blogger.com to www.blogger.com in the import scripts). So fortunately I now only have two months of posts that I need to recover, but that's still more than I can bare to do by hand.

I've been scouring the net for an answer to this problem and the best I can figure is that the rss file output by google reader isn't in a format that wordpress is happy with. The confusing thing is that wordpress SAYS it's happy with the file and tells me it's completed the import, even though no posts show up.

I tried looking for a way to convert the google reader output rss file into some other form of rss file, but I couldn't find anything. Does anyone know of any such converters?

Any other ideas why the import isn't working?!

Please offer any help you can!
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Ok, I tried installing wordpress on another web host,to see if the problem I'm experiencing was something to do with the host. I tried the RSS import and the same thing happened. I got notification of a successful import, but no posts show up.

This is getting rediculous. It's been 4 days since i posted this thread but I've yet to have a single reply. Isn't there ANYONE willing to offer support for wordpress?

I'm not going to give up. I'll keep bumping this till I get an answer.
HandySolo
moderator
Posted 8 months ago #

Ya know, I see a post with 8 responses, I tend to assume that they aren't all the same person. You can get upset and vow to bump forever, but ...

Moving along:

The first feed is an atom feed,

Atom != RSS. Can you get that feed as RSS instead? That's what WP can import.

neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Thank you for the reply!

I really hated bumping so much, and I hate it when others do, but I made my first post five days ago, and this is the first response. If I hadn't bumped, it would have been on the 10th page by now, and lost forever. I've tried to be constructive with my bumps, but I apologise for doing it as much as I did.

My old blogger page generated an atom feed. I've managed to figure out the problem with importing the old blogger entries, so that won't be a problem now, fortunately.

The blog, since I moved it to wordpress, was an RSS feed. I retrieved the backup of the feed archive by exporting them from Google Reader. I don't know if this is in atom format or rss. I did one export which only retrieved the rss archive from reader, after I'd stopped using atom. Could that still be a problem?

Here's the first bit of one of the xml files I'm trying to import:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<feed xmlns:gr="http://www.google.com/schemas/reader/atom/" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><!--
Content-type: Preventing XSRF in IE.

--><generator uri="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</generator><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://neil.creek.name/blog/feed/</id><title>Neil&amp;#39;s Place</title><link rel="self" href="http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/http://neil.creek.name/blog/feed/?r=n&amp;n=500"/><link rel="alternate" href="http://neil.creek.name/blog" type="text/html"/><updated>2007-09-07T02:24:06Z</updated><entry gr:is-read-state-locked="true" gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1189131846356"><id gr:original-id="http://neil.creek.name/blog/?p=3">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d6922edc079e8ae8</id><category term="user/08677544345365840733/state/com.google/read" scheme="http://www.google.com/reader/" label="read"/><category term="Uncategorized"/><title type="html">Technical problems</title><Publish>2007-09-07T01:50:05Z</Publish><updated>2007-09-07T01:50:05Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://neil.creek.name/blog/2007/09/06/technical-problems/" type="text/html"/><summary xml:base="http://neil.creek.name/blog" type="html">Regretably I have encountered some sever technical problems, and my blog is currently unavbailable. It will take some time to restore the blog, and unfortunately comments at least have been lost. Please bear with me while I attempt to restore the blog.
I will still be taking daily photographs for Project 365, but I will have [...]</summary><content xml:base="http://neil.creek.name/blog" type="html"><p>Regretably I have encountered some sever technical problems, and my blog is currently unavbailable. It will take some time to restore the blog, and unfortunately comments at least have been lost. Please bear with me while I attempt to restore the blog.</p>
<p>I will still be taking daily photographs for Project 365, but I will have to catch up once the blog is back in working condition.</p>

I note that both "atom" and "mrss" are mentioned in the header. Is this a problem? If so, does anyone know how to choose the format that Google Reader can export to? This is the method I usedto get the feed history: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/reconstruct-feeds-history-using-google.html

Thank again so much for your reply. With a little direction I'm sure I can figure this out.

neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I've done some more research. It turns out that the method I used to get the feed archive from google reader DOES output an atom file ( http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/reconstruct-feeds-history-using-google.html ) not an RSS one.

I've just spent a couple of hours of frustration trying to find a way to convert the atom file into an rss file. Just about every page I could find online would only convert live atom feeds, rather than a locally stored xml file. There is no atom feed, just the archive that I have. A little more searching turned up an xslt file that supposedly will transform an atom xml file into an rss xml file ( http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/atom03rss1.xsl ). After much further searching I found an app (with a 10 day free trial) that will to xml transformations with an xslt file ( www.xmlblueprint.com ).

Finally having success at transforming the atom xml viat the xslt, I try importing the file...

Nothing.

Same problem as before. So I'm now at a loss what to do again. Anyone got any ideas?
Poco
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I don't know much about the RSS importer, but if you put your atom file anywhere on your server then it becomes an atom feed that you can reference anywhere. If there is an online tool that takes an atom URL and generates an RSS feed, you could post the atom file to your server and use that as the atom url, no?

I'm not saying that will help much, but maybe they are better a converting the file than the tool you used. Perhaps you could also post a link to that file once you upload it so someone could suggest what might be wrong with it.
neilcreek
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Thanks for the reply Poco. And good suggestion!

Unfortunately I had tried it, but the converter gave me an error.

Here's the file: http://www.orionvisuals.com/temp/july-13-sep07.xml

Here's where I tried to convert it: http://www.2rss.com/software.php?page=atom2rss

This is the error I got:
XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.orionvisuals.com%2Ftemp%2Fjuly-13-sep07.xml
Line Number 1, Column 1:
^

Any suggestions?
neilcreek
Member
Posted 7 months ago #

I'm still hoping for some help on this one. Any ideas?
neilcreek
Member
Posted 7 months ago #

Bump
neilcreek
Member
Posted 7 months ago #

Please?
Bantik
Member
Posted 6 months ago #

Neil,

I was helping a friend migrate a Blogger blog (which uses Atom) to WordPress. I couldn't use the Blogger importer, as I couldn't reach her for the account password, so I found myself in the same position as you. Here is what I did, and it worked for me:

1) You need to find an XSLT processor. If you're on a Mac, you're in luck: download TestXSLT from entropy.ch at http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/welcome.html. If you're on a PC, you should be able to find something similar.

2) Download this Atom to RSS XSL template: http://atom.geekhood.net/atom2rss.xsl

3) Use your Atom file as the source XML file.

4) Use atom2rss.xsl as your style sheet.

5) Process. The result is an RSS file that you can import into WordPress.
neilcreek
Member
Posted 6 months ago #

Thank you very much for your reply!

That has taken me a huge step forward! I can convert the xmp, import it and all the entries are there with the correct links and the correct dates. Unfortunately, the full entries are not imported. All links to images (inline within the posts) have been stripped, and only the summary of the post text is shown.

I assume this is by the design of the XSL sheet you linked for me. Is there a version that preserves the images and the full post text?

If you can help me get this working I'd be happy to help you out in whatever way I may be able to, somehow! I wish I could buy you a drink :)
Otto42
Moderator
Posted 6 months ago #
Looking at that XSLT file, I see this:
```
<x:choose>
	<x:when test="atom:summary">
	<description>
<x:apply-templates select="atom:summary" mode="asHTML"/>
<x:if test="atom:content"> (...)</x:if>
</description>
</x:when>
	<x:when test="atom:content">
	<description>
<x:apply-templates select="atom:content" mode="asHTML"/>
</description>
</x:when>
</x:choose>
```
Note that it's using description for both the summary and content there. Try changing the content (second piece) to use <content:encoded> instead of <description>. Then convert your feed and import that. Might work better given the way WordPress's import works.

neilcreek
Member
Posted 6 months ago #

Thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested, and this is how the xsl in question looked after the change:

<x:choose>
		<x:when test="atom:summary"><description><x:apply-templates select="atom:summary" mode="asHTML"/> <x:if test="atom:content"> (...)</x:if></description></x:when>
		<x:when test="atom:content"><content:encoded><x:apply-templates select="atom:content" mode="asHTML"/></content:encoded></x:when>
	</x:choose>

Is this correct?

Unfortunately, the same thing seems to have happened. The images are stripped and only the summary is shown in the post.

Otto42
Moderator
Posted 6 months ago #

What does the resulting RSS feed look like though? It's really hard to tell you what to do when we have zero information about the results of what we tell you are.

BTW, that's why you had such a hard time getting any responses in the first place. Not enough information. You have to spill your guts, the more info you give, the more likely somebody will understand what you're talking about, and the more likely you will get some help. I read through your first 8 posts and kept saying to myself "why did he keep bumping without actually giving any useful information to work with?"

When you need help in the future, tell the whole story. Every little detail. Post everything that is tangentially related. We need to see the details, because details matter.
neilcreek
Member
Posted 6 months ago #

Sorry I didn't give the link, you're right, it should have been obvious to me to give you an example. Here is the converted rss feed:

http://www.orionvisuals.com/temp/blog.xml

I'll try to provide as much information as possible in the future. I was completely lost and not sure exactly what would have helped. I just need to look arder and deeper I guess.

Does the xml file give any further clues? Looking at it myself, I can't see the full content of the posts anywhere. The <description> tag only seems to appear once per item.

Otto42
Moderator
Posted 6 months ago #

Okay, I see. It's ignoring the full content because of the choose construct. So, just get rid of the choose entirely.

Change this:

<x:choose>
<x:when test="atom:summary"><description><x:apply-templates select="atom:summary" mode="asHTML"/> <x:if test="atom:content"> (...)</x:if></description></x:when>
<x:when test="atom:content"><description><x:apply-templates select="atom:content" mode="asHTML"/></description></x:when>
</x:choose>

To this:

<x:if test="atom:summary"><description><x:apply-templates select="atom:summary" mode="asHTML"/></description></x:if>
<x:if test="atom:content"><content:encoded><x:apply-templates select="atom:content" mode="asHTML"/></content:encoded></x:if>

That will put the summary bits in the description and the normal content in content:encoded, which is the usual way WordPress does things.

welswebmaster
Member
Posted 1 month ago #

I've been looking for a solution as well. Here's what I've recently found and am about to try:

http://y360users.multiply.com/journal/item/7/How_to_Save_Your_Yahoo_Blog_To_Disk

Firefox to the rescue!

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