Scoop0901

See http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/WP_Query

@ ramblingmoo and others having the problem:
Yes, this is a serious problem. For some reason, many on this forum dismiss everything as “you’re doing something wrong” and forget about it. Some go so far in dismissing everything, saying things such as, “Read the instructions.” D’oh.

Yes, it is an issue. the easiest — and faster resolution I can suggest is for you to go through the actual exported file you have, strip out all the garbage WP puts in it during the export, keep the keywords, categories, original posting date, and the post/page content, and repost it using a local editor, such as Windows Live Writer, Dreamweaver, Nvu, BlogDesk, w.Bloggar (seems it is no longer being maintained, has a few issues on WinXP, is not compatible with WinVista), or similar products. That way, in case you have the issue ever again, you will have a local copy that you can simply open in the editor, upload, and voila!, the entire site is restored. Sure, it will take awhile, but don’t rely on the WP export file. It seems it is still a beta — despite what some say while beating their drums. Too many have had issues for it to be a “your problem” issue.

I have about 60 percent of my site reposted. All of it could probably have been posted, but I’ve been busy with other things. Just be sure to keep a good backup of all content from your server, something I have WS_FTP download daily. That way you have the complete directory structure, as well as all files you attach, embed, or insert into posts or pages, with the structure already set for you.

This isn’t anything new. There are many people that I’ve spoken with since the introduction of WP WXR export/import feature that have this same issue. In fact, search the forum on my username and you will find the thread.

I’ve talked with one of the WP developers via email about this, sending the exported file, yet haven’t heard anything back.

I lost one of several blogs to the feature. Now I use a variety of methods for backups. I am still in the process of manually ripping out the garbage from the WXR file and manually reposting everything, or at least what I opt to repost.

MichaelH:
The permissions on both those directories you pointed out in your reply have been set to 777 since this issue began. That was one of the first things I checked.

I have the same problem — that I go to http://www.DomainNameHere.com/wp-admin/admin.php?import=wordpress, select the 5.35meg XML file to import to WP2.12. This is an xml file I exported from WordPress 2.1.2.

After 45 seconds of working on the import, everything on the page, below “Import WordPress”, disappears and there is no option to map fields or such, as others have told me **should** appear once the file is successfully imported.

I’ve tried entirely **new** installs of WP2.1.2 each time I tried importing the file. I’ve created new MySQL databases to try the import. The wp-content and wp-content/uploads/ directories were manually chmod’d to 777. During install, they were automatically set to 755. Perhaps, if they need to be at 777, that’s something that ought be looked at for future releases.

Since March 12, when I exported the file, I’ve had **no** luck at getting the file to import, even after stopping in #wordpress to see if anyone had ideas.

The issue is also discussed at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/97032, but it still is not resolved. Has ANYONE figured out how to fix the WordPress-to-WordPress import?

The old database is gone, and this is not a test.

When I attempt to do the import — which doesn’t import to the MySQL database — as others have mentioned, the xml file does show up in the “uploads” tab in the WP’s admin area — renamed so that the extention (*.xml) is no longer an extension, rather a part of the name, such as FileNamexml.

The problem remains: WP2.12 just isn’t doing with the imported file what it should be doing, according to the documentation.

I had the same problem when I moved four blogs over to WordPress from Blogger. It was a nightmare, and still is, actually.

When I moved everything over, I did make full copies of everything, including saving the actual coding from all the pages in the blogs as text files. Yes, it was a pain, but after seeing things weren’t importing properly, at least not from my perspective, I took to fixing the issue in a radical way.

What I did was nab the actual code for each post, dump it into a text cleaner, eCleaner, and strip out all the links, coding, and just ending up with the raw text for each post.

In WordPress, I simply went in, pasted everything one-by-one, editing the date to display the original (actual) date of publication, as well as time, and uploaded it to the new blog.

No, it shouldn’t be that had to do something, but it seems it is. That’s what happens when everyone doesn’t follow the rules, when there is “proprietary” and “custom” coding involved, and you try to move to a different platform.

As far as eCleaner, it’s a great tool. It’s freeware, was developed by someone named Steve Chin, according to the copyright information, and he had a site at Tripod.com where he hosted it when I found it back around 2001 or so. I have been using eCleaner 2.01, but just found that the last version was eCleaner v.2.02, and you can still download it from PC World.

To use it, simply go into the preferences section, tick off the things you want stripped out, such as all the “>” if you are wanting to use something from an email that’s been forwarded at least 15 times, if you could all the “>>>” in the email that you received. Then, in the GUI, simply paste in the text you want “cleaned,” hit the smily face, which is the clean now command, and voila, it’s all done. Copy and paste to your new application, or save it to a text file. That’s all the training anyone I’ve told about it over the years ever needed.