Importing self-hosted site while preserving links

  • Unknown's avatar
    ddubuy · Member ·

    Is there any way to bring in my self-hosted site and update self-referential links (i.e., to my own blog posts)?

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    There’s no way to update those from within the importer.

    If you’ll be using the same domain name for the site on WordPress.com and are already using the same permalink structure that we use here (domain/year/month/day/post-slug), it shouldn’t be a problem – those links should just continue working.

    But if you’ll be using a different domain/a free WordPress.com subdomain, I’d suggest using a search and replace plugin to update those internal links to the new domain before you create your export file.

    Permalink structure is more complicated, and I’m afraid I don’t know of any way to automatically convert those to the format we use on WordPress.com if you’ve been using a different format thus far. On that one I’d recommend asking in the WordPress.org forums – if there’s a way to do this, the folks there should know.

    https://wordpress.org/support/forums/

  • Unknown's avatar
    ddubuy · Member ·

    Thanks for your prompt and thoughtful response and suggestions. After reading them, I did look into the search-and-replace possibilities, but realized a happy outcome is unlikely, given my skill level and 1,300 blog entries.

    In fact, after going from Blogger to WordPress.com to WordPress.org, it’s quite amazing that the whole thing’s intact at all at this point. Let sleeping dogs lie… ;-)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Haha, indeed.

    One suggestion: try exporting your posts from the current site, and then just import it as a test to a new WordPress.com site. It might be our importer is clever enough to update those links automatically – as far as I know it does do that for free WordPress.com URLs. I’m not sure about custom domains, but it’s worth a shot, and if it doesn’t work you’ve only have lost the time needed to download and then upload the export file.

    If it’s not successful, you can then just delete the WordPress.com site, or we can empty it for you without completely deleting if you prefer.

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