OPML Description Field for Link
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I’m hoping maybe somebody knows how to do this. I have a large set of links I want to import into wordpress. They are in a csv file with title, link, category, and description fields.
To see the necessary OPML format, I exported the links currently on my website. It appears straightforward enough, and I can write a script to convert the csv file into this. However, the export failed to include the hover text (“description”) field, so I have no idea how to include this in the OPML file.
For example,
<outline text=”Foo” type=”link” xmlUrl=”” htmlUrl=”http://www.bar.com/” updated=””/>
is the exported OPML line for a link which appears as “Foo” on the website, and links to “http://www.bar.com” (fyi, the category appears as a separate XML line preceding this). I assume there is some additional field like maybe ‘description=”foodescription” which would appear in there for the hover text, but I don’t know what the correct field is. It needs to be imported as the “Description” field in wordpress, since that’s what informs the hover text.
Any help would be appreciated!
Cheers,
KenThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hello, I’m sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your website. However, your site is not hosted with WordPress.com. It is a site using the open-source WordPress software (from WordPress.org) but hosted elsewhere.
Because WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two entirely separate entities, we cannot access files or data for sites that are hosted elsewhere, so WordPress.com staff can only assist with sites that are hosted on our servers. You can find more information here about the differences between WordPress.org software and WordPress.com: https://wordpress.com/support/com-vs-org/
https://wordpress.org/support/ is a great resource for sites using the open source WordPress.org software, and you can find support for that at: https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
Your hosting provider’s support team may also be able to assist.
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Hi Macmanx,
I’m glad you feel my hosting provider’s support team may be able to assist — becasue YOU are my hosting provider’s support team. As my credit card can attest, the site listed above is in fact hosted on wordpress.com. It hardly inspires confidence that you were unable to ascertain this.
This isn’t a wordpress.org vs wordpress.com issue, nor am I having “trouble with my website” (I have no idea how you got that from my question). As clearly stated, this is a technical question about importing a specific type of information into my wordpress.com blog.
Please trouble to read my question before replying.
Cheers,
Ken -
Sorry about that, looks like I had a typo when loading your domain earlier.
We do not currently have a way to import OPML files here.
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Um, you mean like… this: https://wordpress.com/support/blogroll/import-export-links/ ?
You do have a way to import/export OPML links. In fact, the example I gave above is FROM an OPML file you generated. However, the problem with OPML is that it relies on undocumented vendor fields. You’re the vendor, and this field is whatever you chose to call it and … you guessed it… undocumented. So I need to know the specific answer to this. Please consult with tech support if you’re unfamiliar with this sort of thing. I need the name of the field in the outline object which corresponds to the description field (the hover text) in your wp-admin link object.
Cheers,
Ken -
We have a way to import OPML into our Links feature, yes, been a long day, sorry about that.
The features is specifically intended to allow you to export/import links from one WordPress site to another.
So, for a good comparison between what we accept as an import, I recommend creating some links of your own https://wordpress.com/support/blogroll/ and exporting that to compare.
Please keep in mind that the Links feature was discontinued quite a while ago and is considered replaced by Menus https://wordpress.com/support/menus/ which can include custom links and be used either for navigational menus or widgets, though there is no export/import for these.
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That’s exactly what I did. However, the hover text was not exported, only the title and url. This is why I don’t know what the correct fieldname for the hover text (description) is.
I have hundreds of links and cannot type them all in by hand, and there is no scripting facility since I can’t directly execute against your backend DB. So the menus features do me no good.
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Hm, yes, when exporting a Description field is not included:
<outline text="Name" type="link" xmlUrl="" htmlUrl="https://wordpress.com/" updated=""/>That’s definitely not right, but also I don’t think there will be a fix, as mentioned, that was discontinued years ago.
But, on to the import, according to http://dev.opml.org/spec2.html and the importer itself, that should be
description.So, I manually edited that to:
<outline text="Name" type="link" xmlUrl="" htmlUrl="https://wordpress.com/" description="Description" updated=""/>and it worked as it should, properly importing a description of “Description”.
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