Jeff, This is what I've been looking for!  Thank you.  Awesome.  I will go back and watch the video,.

Nice! I'm working on a couple of WordPress sites, and I think this plug-in might save me a lot of time. Thanks for looking out for the Rainers, Jeff.

Jeff, I'm just in the process of turning my static website in to a wordpress blog so this should come in handy.

Awesome!  I'm letting all of my clients in on this right now!

Outstanding information Jeff.  Always learningsomething on Activerain.

Wishing you continued success.

Jeff - Thanks for the neat tool. I'll give it a try.  

Thanks for sharing. I'm sending this to my IT tech support (ie my husband).

Jeff

Great plugin!  Will definitely be adding this to clients' Wordpress sites!  Thanks for a great tool!

Great Post!

Jeff - We always expect you to find a way to make a tool thats really useful. Thanks.

I must manifested really well tonight. I was just thinking that I have to get all of my AR post to my wordpress, and viola, I see your post! Thanks for this great invention!

Fabulous Jeff! I did it the standard way last week for a client, so next time you'll save me the time..woohoo! Many thanks to you and Steve :)

Jeff,

looks like a fabulous tool. Very helpful.

Now it is time to tackle the Word Press.  Read about it, but did not do anything yet

Jeff, this is great!   I like using WordPress to write blogs, so this will really make it slick to import them to ActiveRain.

Jeff:  OK... so here I am... at 12:48am Friday morning... sitting here watching a wordPress video about plug0ins.  What is wrong with me ?  LOL

Jeff:  OK... so I sat here... for six minutes and fifty seconds... mostly shaking my head... and every once in awhile, when I see something that I understand... I kind of mumble "uh huh" or something similar.

I would think that when writing a tutorial post like this... one would consider who your audience might be.  I guess that CAN be a problem... when you are trying to write for everyone... at all levels of techie ability.  I am a non-techie... and, although I DO have a WordPress.com blog... I barely know what to do with it.  I was hoping to learn some stuff here... but much if not most of this was kinda sorta over my head.

What do you suggest I do ?  Where can I find some WordPress tutorials... well-written tutorials... that are on more of a beginner level ?

Also... would it be too much to ask... to perhaps make TWO versions of this tutorial ?  One like the one above, which assumes the reader has some experience and knowledge, and a second one... written for someone closer to being a non-techie ?  Thanks a bunch.

Jeff - I just found your post via a reblog.  I'm just commenting so I can find it in the future for my future WordPress blog.

Awesome plugin you created Mr. Turner. I will work on it this weekend. If I can't figure it out I will have my Dakno guys do it.

I would LOVE, LOVE to have that category on my Wordpress blog.

Thank you for the Christmas gift on AG and allowing me to use it in 2010 since I had already paid when the gift was offered.

LOL at Andy Kaufman.

 

Decisions Decisions...  I only would want to import my Outside blogs contents... I think.  I will have to look maybe I should just import it all.

Andy!

Hey man, good to see you here again and thanks for the update, i am working on a wordpress outside blog so appreciate the help!

Jeff,

Great stuff. This is going to be a powerful plug in to allow me to pick and choose what posts I want to include in my Wordpress blog. Much better than an RSS feed.

Rich

Jeff,

Obviously, this took a lot of work. Thanks for your efforts. I will use it. It should be a big time saver.

Brian

Jeff, this is good information. An ActiveRain plugin was needed for WordPress. Thanks.

Thanks for the great info.  I am bookmarking it now so I can work with it this weekend.  Thanks for all the help.  I am sure it will make it a lot easier.

Hmmm...right now becasue of where I am, I   can't see the video...shoot...

Point well made about importing Outside Blog material only, Maureen.

Does this work the same way as the Export AR blogs function?

Just watched the video.  Now to find the time to implement it.  Thanks for the great info.

Thank you, Jeff!!!!! GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!

But I get this error message ... "The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini."

It looks like I'll need to cut my blog_entries file into 2 or 3 parts .... since for some weird reason I am not seeing the "upload_max_filesize" line in my php.ini file.......

elsewise, I'd just change it in php.ini.........

Fantastic! I can't wait to try it!

Thanks Jeff, that looks great and I'll have to go and try to set that up.

Guess I better read watch the video before commenting but I hope this will create a unique page per post.

Missy emailed me if I'd watch the video I can do what I want to do... so I WILL watch the video and say thanks to Jeff and Co. now.  and Missy... I coulda missed this opportunity...

I am really excited NOW. 

I broke my WP blog the other day... again.  It was NOT down 24 hours this time.

oooh now I see Cheryl's comment and I am scared I will not be able to do this... watch the video first... take deep breaths. Don't break the blog...

Thanks Steve Zehngut!

 

Jeff,

Great plug in. I am sort of addicted to Wordpress these day. Been learning a lot to build our site. Thanks for the plug in. It will definitely save a lot of time. A suggestion, if you are going to improve on the plug in is to allow user to select posts to import. Hope I am not asking too much. Thanks again. Great stuff.

Jeff Now I know what I'll be doing tonight - thank you Karen

The neat option on stand alone word press blogs is tag sorted "capsules" with the end line of a short blog entry intro then with MORE on this.... to expand. Not just importing but christmas tree trimming to show case, park not just in a side bar widget. But to manipulate the size of the monitor screen real estate used, dedicated to this component to tie in with the over all feel, experience, impression. So many blogs look like that same Christmas tree analogy above with hand fulls of tinsel thrown in hurried fashion so the final WP blog looks like a Frankenstein amateur shoe string production. Memorable but in a Stephen King Pet Semetary back from the grave but not quite right sort of way.

Thanks Jeff, once again, you rock.

 

FYI for the rss feed comment: yes, you can use that BUT it only pulls a limited number of your AR posts (I think it was 25?) which isn't useful for those of us who have been here for years.  I researched for HOURS when AR was down weeks ago and there was no easy, straightforward solution available.  I am very appreciative that you created this and hope I can follow the tutorial!

Got it... In WordPress MU, the file size limit is set in wp-admin/includes/mu.php (not php.ini in the root)...

I changed 'fileupload_maxk', 1500 ) ); to 6400......   

Now it runs.....

Completely off-topic but very germane to what you've posted, Jeff: I can never see videos on AR blog posts.  Nothing comes up, no button, no link, nothing.  Just big blank space.  Any suggestions as to why this might be, Jeff?  -- Tanya in Montreal

Jeff-As everyone has previously stated Thanks for Sharing!!  Gotta go try this!

Very Cool Tool, will use for sure and suggest to others.

Thanks for sharing this Jeff.  Now I havve a new action item on my to do list.  Any thoughts on doing this in reverse?  That is, exporting your word press blogs and importing them into Active Rain?

Jeff,

We don't see enough of you but when you appear, it is ALWAYS something extraordinary!

Thank you so much for posting this information and creating the plug-in. This will be a big help for me since I blog on both sites.

AYe yi yi!  I am peddling just as fast as I can, trying to learn and keep up with the technology that is put in front of me each and every day.  I am gonna check out the video and see what all the chatter is about...lol  Have a great holiday weekend.

Thanks for this and looking forward to implementing it!

Great stuff!!  I really appreciated this information and creating the plug-in.  This will be so helpful too!!

Jeff, part of me wishes it did work on my .com (beginner site) but perhaps this will push me to get moving on the self hosted one!  I join the choir in saying thank you both! 

Very cool tool Jeff... thanks!

After importing the  AR posts, I restored the original mu.ini file, since it was throwing off header errors ... wasn't broken, just dumb .... but here we go ... a back up blog of all my AR posts back to the Dawn. Of. Time.  http://activerainimported.virtualrentparty.com/

Thank you for sharing! I'm downloading it now

Thanks for the info on the plug-in, I'm going to try it out!

WOW - I love it! I am sure others will too

Jeff - Good to have you back.. Yay! Thanks for this great tool. Am going to re-blog as well.. Got a long weekend to play with this. Thanks and hope you have a great weekend as well... From all of us I thank you.

Thanks Paul -we just ran into a few issues yesterday and I was going to look into this today.

Thanks Jeff and nice to hear from you!

Well for some reason I can never see the videos that are posted, maybe I need to update my computer.

Jeff

Very cool, this is the kind of information we need. Definately worth a FEATURED post.

 

Have a great weekend

 

Jeff:  I forgot before.  Is Sarah Cooper still with you ?  If so, tell her I said hi... and huggs from Me and Mollie T. Cat.  Take care... have a great weekend !

Hi Jeff, Nice Post, now give me my 25 points :)

Wow, this is huge. I love wordpress and I always viewed Active Rain and Wordpress as incompatible platforms. If I can "marry" them that is a game changer. 

Hi Karen Anne!  I'm still here -- (((HUGS!!))) back to you!  Hope you have a great holiday weekend ahead, Beautiful!  :)

 

(Hi, Jeff!)

Jeff, this is great, as I just signed up for a wordpress blog. thank you!

Re comment #45:

Cheryl, as you pointed out, Wordpress MU lets you change the file upload size. It's under SITE ADMIN -> OPTIONS. Look for "Max upload file size".

If you are running into file size iimitations on a single user Wordpress site, the change must be made in the server's php.ini file. Look for the settings called "upload_max_filesize" and "post_max_size". Here is more info if you need it: http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php

If you don't have access to php.ini, talk to your ISP or system administrator.

-Steve

Very cool Jeff!!! Off to check it out.

Working on a WordPress site now. Do you guys do any theme installations?

Another great contribution to the AR community.  Thanks Jeff!

Fantastic! I can't wait to check this out. I have a Wordpress blog, set my clients up in Wordpress, and now I you have brought even more value to 2 great platforms. I'm going to let my clients know right now so we can get this moving more smoothly for them!

Ok, Jeff, I'm plunging in head first. .I got one hour. . 100%  committed to the task, I got Pandora in the background and some cool lemon water. . wish me luck!

It's 12:49 PM

Wait, did I just see Sarah here? Btw Jeff & Steve, didn't say this before, but awesome stuff you two!

Hi Jeff, this is great, thank you for posting it.  I have two questions:

1)  I know that there are supposedly "duplicate content" penalties that Google assesses when creating page rankings.  Do you think doing this runs that risk?  

2)  Is this an "all-at-once" deal, or if I export again, will it only pick up my new posts to export to my Wordpress blog?

I have pretty much stopped posting on Active Rain to concentrate on my own site, because it takes me so long to write blog posts that if I tried to write posts for two places I'd never get anything else done.   If I could use this technique, it would really encourage me to go back to posting some stuff on Active Rain/Localism.

Once again, really great, very understandable. 

 

Wow!  Thanks for the wonderful tutorial...you always have wonderful ones.....I think it's your voice that captures the audience :)

Jeff: I'm back. .

I tried exporting my blog entries but I don't seem to have the program to open up GZIP compressed files. 

I tried google  to download the  program and all of them charges $$$$ . . is there a place I can go and download it one time?

Thanks Jeff, Not sure what the (1) was linking to...all I got was a Twitter post (but I'm not a Twitter person so maybe I just didn't know where to look).

Anyway, I was reading meanwhile and here's a link to the official Google webmaster blog discussing this issue, if anyone reading here really wants to make their eyeballs roll up in their head from excess technical contemplation. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

The point is essentially what you just said but it was interesting to note that Google chooses the "best" site from among those that may have duplicative content, all the more reason to add more valuable other stuff as you point out. So in a sense I guess it would tend to penalize those folks who are behaving badly. Re: All at once, if I do it more than once I'll just nuke the old ones from the draft screen. Thanks!

Awesome, just started using wordpress today. May move completely away from blogspot. Thanks for the information.

Steve,

You would have to point out the easy way.  :-)  Never even thought to look in the admin options.  LOL!

Great. Thanks so much for the help.

Fernando, if you are on Windows, try http://www.bitzipper.com/  You can download it for the 30 day free trial....  I ended up paying the 24.95 for it a while back since I found it was pretty useful....

Jeff - I'm definitely going to give it a try after I read your post and Brad's a few more times, and muster up the courage to plunge in. Thanks for making it seem easy.

Jeff -- Another great tool I need to add to my to-do evaluation/setup list.  Thanks so much for taking the time to create valuable shortcuts. Appreciate it!

This is great. I'm a total wordpress junkie and this plugin is a great way to incorporate these too social networking platforms.

Hi Jeff -- I don't have a wp blog, but I bet this tool will get a TON of use, thanks for creating it.

Jeff this is awesome - now off to figure out HOW to do it.

 

Question - if you have a wordpress blog -- and AR can now export to it -- is there a need for an AR outside blog?  Don't want to kill AR, just having a hard time balancing all my sites.

Thank you....  this saves me time from copying and pasting!

Jeff - Thanks so much for providing this.  This has been on my "to do" list for awhile now.

Thanks for the idea, I'll check it out.

Patricia

Jeff - This is AWESOME! I just started a Wordpress blog a couple of weeks ago and this widget dealio plugin thingy will be a WONDERFUL thing to have! Unfortunately my brain is all topped over with excessive knowledge gained today, so I have bookmarked this post and will come back to read it after my hair stops hurting.  THANKS SO MUCH for doing this!!!

Very cool stuff.  Thanks for sharing and making AR even better.

Jeff: I wll bookmark this post and look into doing this later, after I set up my Wordpress website.

I love your instructional videos because I can pause them, do what you just demonstrated, and then start it up again.  Repeat 'til I get it done right.  Good job, Jeff!

Love the idea. think it is wonderful that you did it. I have to smile though . . I think I will just leave my posts where they are. :)

Jeff,

 

Love it, I will re blog to my readers.  Just what I have been looking for.

 

Michael

Hubba....

Will this work on a private WordPress and AR Members Only Content? I need to know :)

And do you know I took a whole lot of shit for even suggesting folks export their content in case of emergencies. I bet if I were, say you, the shit would not have heat the fan. Damn it I hate it when that happens. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a Man with balls of steel :)

TLW...ROAR!

Jeff:

I am in the midst of working on a WordPress blog and will come back to this useful tool.  If I cannot figure it out (which I probably will not) my technical person will.

 

Jeff, Thanks for the post. We can always count on you to bring value to the table! Awesome.

Thank you, thank you, thank you...no more cutting and pasting!!!  This is good information!

Great idea! Thanks for adding this tool. Always looking for ways to simplify. :-)

Hi, Jeff,

Loved the post and the video.

Is there something that will automatically post any new ActiveRain posts automatically to whatever blog we've exported to?

Thanks so much for making all this so easy for us.

I was wondering how to do that.  Now I will have to give it a go.

Thank you for sharing.

 Jeff-

This is going to be very helpful.  Including your last comment.  Thanks for geting me off the dime on the Wordpress angle.

Jeff, I'm sure you answered this somewhere in the 116 comments but does it bring over all the members only posts too? Is that why you are recommending draft mode? Do you have to go back through them and edit? And will the original dates appear on the posts? Thanks:)

Crap...

You've made it so easy that I know I can do it. That sucks though. It means I have no more excuses. You Ka Ka Head :)

TLW...ROAR!

Jeff,

I got the following message when I tried to activate the plug-in in my WP blog ...

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /.../wordpress-2.7/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 205

Any thoughts?

This would be an excellent addition if I can figure out what's wrong!!!

Thanks!!!

Jeff - thanks for the link! I have been looking for this info and your post came so timely.

Thanks Again!

Wow Jeff!  That's great! Now I need to see if I can figure it out.  Thank you so much!

Jeff, thanks for this post. I'm going to set it up on my wordpress blog. Very grateful for the How To. :)

Thanks Jeff. I have this on my to do list now.

We need a Wordpress plug-in for your brain Jeff, I appreciate what you share and although I don't get to blog much these days, I get inspired by reading about your technexploits ( a phraze I developed just now for what you do...) from sunny Benson, Arizona and the only assisted living home out here at this time serving the wisdom of the ages.

We need a Wordpress plug-in for your brain Jeff, I appreciate what you share and although I don't get to blog much these days, I get inspired by reading about your technexploits ( a phraze I developed just now for what you do...) from sunny Benson, Arizona and the only assisted living home out here at this time serving the wisdom of the ages.

We need a Wordpress plug-in for your brain Jeff, I appreciate what you share and although I don't get to blog much these days, I get inspired by reading about your technexploits ( a phraze I developed just now for what you do...) from sunny Benson, Arizona and the only assisted living home out here at this time serving the wisdom of the ages.

WooHoo...Thanks Jeff! This will be so easy for those of us who blog on AR and Wordpress!

Awesome info! Thanks for creating the video...a little beyond me as I don't have a Word Press site yet...but I've been looking into it, and I am thrilled that there is a tutorial to do this now.

Well Jeff, it's always a "good" thing to stumble upon something you have created or found to share with all of us. Thanks, as always.....;-)

Would be nice if you could publish from your Wordpress Blog to your Active Rain account ... 

This is fantastic.  Will watch the whole video later.  I already have my WordPress site set up to auto post to Posterous to auto post to blogger, facebook, etc. Currently I write in WordPress or AR then copy paste into the other.  I love one more time saving plugin!

Kudos Jeff,   But now I guess I need to move up from my free wordpress.com blog (http://officetenantadvocate.wordpress . com ) to take advantage?  Drats!

The tools for my wordpress blog have 11 different types of blog "systems" that you can import from, but doesn't show rss or ActiveRain.

I just want to be able to write on my AR blog and have it magically appear on all my other sites. A great start would be my Blogger blog (http://BostonOfficeSpace.blogspot com) and the wordpress blog above.   Ideas?  Thanks All.

This will be a great help!

thanks Jeff. It works. I installed it and uploaded the archives. I found a free unzip program Zip7 that would unzip the gz file. After I did this, it came in beautifully. I like the idea to save as drafts, because it helped me decide which post was actually appropriate for my public blog. I know it will not send these on an ongoing basis, but if I manually do this once a week, I will keep good content on my wordpress blog and be able to post more frequently on AR.
Thanks again.

This is great, thanks for sharing and informing everyone. Nice job.

Jeff (& Steve)

I was surfing for this outside The Rain and your smiling face showed up. I watched the WP method elsewhere and you are so correct. This is the EASY way.

Many Thanks,

Steve

I keep getting an error message :

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/blog_entries.xml_.gz.txt:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: � in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: ^ in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 121

 

have you seen this before?

I keep getting an error message :

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/blog_entries.xml_.gz.txt:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: � in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: ^ in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/content/33/6917033/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 121

 

have you seen this before?

I can't believe it! I write a "Help" comment previously and now it's working! Yeah...I guess I just needed to vent first.  Thank you for this great tutorial!

Jeff...Psych! I did it and it worked! That's a huge step for me!

Now, getting some 550+ post organized.....OMG....freak out!

Thanks for an awesome video and showing me how to make this happen!

Jeff,

Great blog. Is this the same as the outside blog I got through activerain? I am not a tech person. Not that your blog was too technical, I did get lost around 3:20 though. 

—Ingrid

Hi - can anyone help with these error messages - the person working on my wordpress site keeps getting these errors. I tried it and get the same. I asked her about the bealsds in the error because that is not my active rain sign on - can you help me so I can fix this myself... Thank you Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: /home/bealsds/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/blog_entries.xml_.gz.txt:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found in /home/bealsds/public_html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: ¬� in /home/bealsds/public_html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: ^ in /home/bealsds/public_html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 119 Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/bealsds/public_html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import/activerain-import.php on line 121

should I delete the plug in and reinstall it.   I did not install the original plugin and think she may have used a wrong log in because bealsds is not me. Thank you

system says we are up to date with 3.03 - the reinstall didn't work - I still think the web person has the account ID in there someplace but I can't figure out where.... When I reintalled it did not ask me for any passwords and I exported from active rain within my account. Thank you.

Here is what I got:  

Import Active Rain

Sorry, there has been an error.

File is empty. Please upload something more substantial. This error could also be caused by uploads being disabled in your php.ini or by post_max_size being defined as smaller than upload_max_filesize in php.ini.

 

Do you think I have to many posts?  (over 1,300)  Is there a way to break them down?

Thanks so much for this, Jeff.  BTW, I don't expect an answer right away--I KNOW it's Christmas!!

Hugs...

Flie size if 13.3 MB; max is 7.  Is there a way to not import the AR-focused posts?  That should probably eliminate a good number of the posts.  Can you believe, all is done for the morning and I'm SUCH a geek that I'm still up this late on Christmas Eve working on my WP site?!  Oh the insanity!

I just tried this and uploaded the AR importer file OK (while following along with your video - LOVE the video!) but when I try to implement it, I get an error message: "Before you can upload your import file, you will need to fix the following error: Unable to creat directory /var/www/domains/blog.thechoiceforme.com/docs/wp-content/uploads/2011/02. Is its parent directory writeable by the server?" I am not really technical at all, so of course I have absolutely NO idea what this means. Can you tell me what I've done wrong or maybe some setting I need to change? I just updated WP today to WP 3.0.5. Thanks so much for creating this plugin, and thanks for any help you can give me.

Jeff, this is a life-saver and I bookmarked this post to read and try the plug-in later this week. 

I searched "export activerain to wordpress" this morning and this popped up.  I followed the tutorial and bang! all done with a few clicks.  Since I have a PC, I had to download a WinZip program to properly extract the xml but you made this easy by suggesting that that might need to be addressed.

Thanks for the easy to follow instructions.

Hey Jeff - just wondering if this is working still?  Is the plugin current and running properly with WP 3.1?  I was reading some comments over on Zeek blog that made me stop back here to ask?  Let me know when you have a chance, Thanks.  :-)

Answered my own question...  this was the error message I received:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: simplexml_load_file() in /home/content/b/r/a/bradsdomain/html/wp-content/plugins/activerain-import.php on line 119

Everything worked fine up until I hit the submit button.  :(

Brad: Yeah... I've got a girlfriend who knows a few guys like that.

@Karen - Haha~ 

Thanks Jeff, no luck.  Oh well.  :-)

Hi Jeff,

Try, try, try as I may, I can't get this to work on two of my WP sites.  I have the xml file (which I had to break into several sections because I have over 1,500 posts!) and the plug-in installed on both sites.  I have PHP5 on both as well.  The entire process works beautifully until I click on the 'Have Fun' and go to my posts--there's nothing there at all--full file, mini-files, neither work.  I've checked pages, categories and posts and nothing is there--in draft or published.  Any suggestions?

I'm going to give this one a whirl in the next week or so - so glad it was re-blogged!

It worked great for me...

 

Thanks

I wish some one would build a wordpress plugin to auto update activerain with wordpress blogs. If someone is doing this I would love to hear from them.

 

Telmo Bermeo

kstrealty.com