WordPress from WordPress: import problem

marklaflamme
(@marklaflamme)

17 years, 4 months ago

Hi. Like many of you, I’ve been trying to import a WordPress.com blog to a newly created one I’m hosting myself. And like many, I’ve been pulling my hair out. For me, the export process works well. The function spits out an .xml file which I download to my desktop. The import part of the maneuver is where things go wrong. In the new blog, I’ve tried both importing a wordpress blog and importing an RSS feed. No go in either case after numerous attempts.
I downloaded the plugin for the import process and activated it. I’ve
tried the various tweaks (Chmod to content folder, etc.), but invariably, the function seems to try importing for five minutes before giving me the following error message:
“The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request POST -admin/admin.php. Reason: Error reading from remote server.”
I’m desperate to get this new blog set up. Has anyone found a workable solution to this? If somebody can pass along a clue, you’ll have my eternal worship.

Viewing 11 replies - 46 through 56 (of 56 total)

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ccoupe
(@ccoupe)

16 years, 10 months ago
If someone is feeling lucky, here is a possible fix for the comment author CDATA problem.

WARNING. I have not tested this. It won’t fix a db with bad authors, just the import.

At line 334 of wp-admin/import/wordpress.php add one line so that it looks like this
```
$comment_author = $this->get_tag( $comment, 'wp:comment_author');
$comment_author = str_replace(array ('<![CDATA[', ']]>'), '', $comment_author);
```
microkid
(@microkid)

16 years, 9 months ago

This might have to do with the import tool tripping over weird M$ Word characters, but I found out that increasing the PHP memory_limit solved this for me. Even though I didn’t get an error, but just the page with the bottom half blank like several replies here describe, I tried it anyway.

Add

ini_set("memory_limit","24M");

all the way at the top of

/wp-admin/import/wordpress.php

Right after <?php of course.

Root
(@root)

16 years, 9 months ago

I will just add my 2 cents based on my experience in some commercial contracts. The export / import from com/org is definitely borked. And (2) All this CDATA stuff is a mess.

chfriley
(@chfriley)

16 years, 8 months ago

When I export an XML file from WP 2.2.1, and then go to import the categories are not handled properly.

I believe the (one? – at least from what I can see, that is all) problem is that RSS is exported from WP 2.2.1 like this:

…
<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
…

CDATA is also in other areas, obviously, but it is not handled exactly right as far as I can tell at least in category import:

The relevant section of the import function looks like this:
preg_match_all('|<category>(.*?)</category>|is', $post, $categories);

which is fine for selecting the category section.

The problem is regarding what happens next. When the import function hits a line like the one above:
<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>

It grabs all this <![CDATA[books]]>, but it doesn’t strip out the markup so when it goes to check a match and insert it things don’t work right.

In the rss.php file, in the
foreach ($categories as $category) { section, if you add the following line

$category = str_replace(array('<![CDATA[', ']]>'), '', $wpdb->escape( trim($category) ));

at the start of the loop, then the CDATA is stripped out of the section.

foxmulder87
(@foxmulder87)

16 years, 8 months ago

Has someone found a solution for the problem? It is really really annoying!

pad
(@pad)

16 years, 7 months ago

I have the same problem, it stops at about 140 posts when I have well over 2000!

commanderother
(@commanderother)

16 years, 7 months ago

okay, i’ve read through all this, and the other support site referenced on the first page, and i’m still lost. i did an successful export from hosted wordpress, and the import via my new wordpress server seemed to go fine. however, none of the files exist. the database got updated fine, and the images were all uploaded, but clicking on any single post, archive, or category 404’s. i’m not running the wordpress-to-wordpress plugin because the server versions don’t seem to need it, as someone else already noted.

if interested, compare the wordpress.com otherwhirled to otherwhirled.com ~ it looks like it’s all there, but it isn’t. looking via ftp, the files just don’t exist, and permissions to the normal install folders appear to be adequate.

your assistance is much appreciated.

Chris_K
(@handysolo)

16 years, 7 months ago

The files won’t exist — they’re in a database. You’re not going to see your posts in a directory.

Secondly, it sounds more like your problem is related to Permalinks. Check that link for more information and troubleshooting tips.

kerimfriedman
(@kerimfriedman)

16 years, 5 months ago

I’m having the same problem here. You can look at my RSS export file here:

http://www.box.net/shared/r5q7ivrfve

Textdrive wants us to migrate to their new Joyent servers, but since I have so much other crud in my MySQL database I need to move my homepage entries via WordPress export/import.

I uprgraded my current install to 2.3 and installed a fresh copy of 2.3 on the new servers, but I’m getting 500 errors every time I try to import this file.

Interestingly, it worked fine with another wordpress install I migrated, but not this one. No idea what could be causing the problem.

kerimfriedman
(@kerimfriedman)

16 years, 5 months ago

@chfriley Could you explain some more. Do you add this to the import file or to the export file? Did it solve the problem for you?

kerimfriedman
(@kerimfriedman)

16 years, 5 months ago

I tried installing a clean install of WP on my laptop and running the import locally to see what happened. The result was that HTTP crashed. The Crash logs indicate that the following thread crashed: libphp4.so

It seems to me that I’ve stumbled upon some kind of serious WP bug. Not sure how to go about reporting this to the WP folks.