Image urls in my imported posts point to wrong place; how can I fix that?

  • Unknown's avatar
    encodeit · Member ·

    Here is what happened:

    1. Had a blog on Xanga. Seemed that Xanga was going to go down the toilet
    2. Go hold of an export of the blog articles there (2400+) in wordpress XML format
    3. Image tags still pointed to the Xanga hosted photos!~!
    4. Downloaded and uploaded all 3GB+ of photos into new wordpress blog.
    5. “Massaged” the XML file to change all the image URLs to now point at the wordpress images
    6. Imported those blog articles
    7. A few weeks later discovered the image links still point to the old website – GAAAAAAA!

    I guess at some stage I accidentally imported the original wordpress xml file instead of the one where I’d “fixed” all the image URLs.

    What can I do now?

    If I import the corrected wordpress XML file will it:

    a) Overwrite the already imported blog articles
    b) Ignore the already imported blog articles,
    c) Duplicate all the articles?

    (a) would be perfect, (c) would be terrible.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    I’ll tag this thread for Staff assistance. Please subscribe to the thread so you are notified when they respond and please be patient while waiting.

  • Unknown's avatar
    jackiedana · Member ·

    Hi there,

    The Xanga export file automatically points all of your images back to Xanga, even though your images are imported into your WordPress.com media library. To our knowledge, the only way right now you can fix that is to manually attach each image to the appropriate post after you complete the import. We have been investigating a better solution but so far have not been able to make one available. I do not believe modifying the .xml file will work.

    If you re-import your content, in theory it should not interfere with existing content, but with limited experience with Xanga export files, I cannot say this with absolute certainty.

    If you’d like, I can empty your WordPress.com blog and you can try reimporting your Xanga content to a clean blog. (I’m not sure if that will help).

  • Unknown's avatar
    encodeit · Member ·

    If you’d like, I can empty your WordPress.com blog and you can try reimporting your Xanga content to a clean blog

    That may work BUT …. we don’t want to empty the entire blog as there is now a mix of imported blog articles and new articles.

    So we would want to remove all the blog articles published before a certain date (I would have to confirm that date).

    I would then reimport the modified WordPress xml file.

    Using a tool I took the Xanga export file I did a find and replace on all the image URLs, manipulating them to point to the image that has been imported into the WordPress media library.
    It does work.

    I think I must have accidentally imported the wrong file (e.g. the raw xml file rather than the doctored one).

  • Unknown's avatar
    jackiedana · Member ·

    Hi encodeit,

    I wish I could help you out, but we do not have the capability of deleting posts before a certain date. If you prefer to delete old posts, you can use the bulk delete option in your All Posts window.

    Would you mind sharing the tool you used to convert images? That may allow us to offer a better solution to our users in the future.

  • Unknown's avatar
    encodeit · Member ·

    No tool I’m afraid.

    I just whipped up an EXE that uses regular expression matching to go a global find and replace.

    Benefit of being a programmer :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    jackiedana · Member ·

    Hi encodeit,

    That’s a pretty good solution! :)

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