Please Jiminy, I want to be a real blog!

September 14, 2007 8:01 AM

So in my reckless youth, i created a blog-style resource for gay/les/bi teens to get information on books to read on the subject. (self-link for the purposes of the question). Now i'd would like to convert it into an actual honest-to-god wordpress-backed blog. Is there any way i can make this a more automated process than having to copy and paste each pseudo-entry into an entry of its own. I guess i'm asking for some kind of screen scraper that can output XML or RSS that isn't superduper hard/expensive for this project. I'm sure this is laugh-out-loud simple, but I haven't had any luck finding worthwhile solutions that arent $1500 SQL-enhanced extravaganzae.
posted by softlord to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

It looks like you've wrapped the content of each entry in templatized bits of HTML, so it should be possible to just GREP the existing HTML, turn it into the Movable Type import format and import that (Wordpress recognizes this format, obviously MT does too).

There is a little trial and error involved in this approach, but if you can handle search and replace, you can handle this. If you have, or have access to a text editor with a nice GREP implementation (I like BBEdit), you can probably finish this in about 2 hours starting from scratch. I've successfully converted a couple of blogs from HTML (when the backend was not available) to this import format.
posted by adamrice at 8:18 AM on September 14, 2007

Assuming you have a bit of programming skill, you can do this fairly with a bit of Python, and some Beautiful Soup.
I could do it for you for a couple bucks on the side
posted by Mach5 at 8:20 AM on September 14, 2007

fairly EASILY
posted by Mach5 at 8:21 AM on September 14, 2007

You can also do this sort of thing with Ruby and Hpricot. (Again, assuming you know how to program.)
posted by chunking express at 10:47 AM on September 14, 2007

Response by poster: Program, yes...Ruby or Python, no... Any solution that doesn't require learning a new language over the weekend?
posted by softlord at 2:40 PM on September 14, 2007

A couple links from some earlier related posts:
Dapper, Teleport Pro, Warrick
Not exact fixes, but maybe one will work as an intermediate step?
posted by misterbrandt at 7:33 PM on September 14, 2007