gauden

Just for the record — I solved the issue by trial and error. I post what I did here so that others may benefit.

It seemed that Blogger was giving the import script an error message that halted the import. This had two effects (a) it left me stranded inside WordPress as I had no imported posts and (b) it left me stranded inside Blogger as my template and many settings were changed (yes, I had a backup, but the system could protect from the need to have one — I have a humble suggestion below for the development team).

SOLUTION

I logged into the Blogger dashboard and changed my publishing mode from SFTP to blogspot. This meant that when the import script would try to publish an intermediate version of my posts, it would do this on blogspot rather than on my ftp account. I logged out of Blogger, returned to the import script, and this time it worked like a charm.

I am not sure if this preference for Blogspot publishing versus FTP publishing during the import is documented anywhere — I apologise if I am being redundant.

SUGGESTION FOR DEVELOPMENT TEAM

When the import script fails, it leaves a number of changed settings in the user’s Blogger account. In paticular it leaves a message for visitors to check out a better blogging system — ironic, since at that point in time, the notice is up because the “better blogging system” has failed. The user has a responsibility to keep a backup, I agree, but I would respectfully suggest that there is a kinder way — before the import script makes any changes, it should read the relevant settings and make a local copy of the relevant ones in a text file. This would allow a graceful degradation — when there is a failure, there could be an automatic or a manual option to restore the original settings.

I hope this helps some users and contributes to making a great piece of software even greater.

Gauden
http://blog.slidebay.com
(at the time of writing still on Blogger as I retouch the imported posts)