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Export / Import Of Comments And Posts, In One Blog

Occasionally, some blog owners will get the urge to clean up the comments and posts in a blog,

Maybe the idea is to make the blog easier to read, or to make it easier to find important posts.

As in "spring cleaning" where we move everything out of a room in our house, so to clean the room completely, a blog owner may try exporting then re-importing all comments and posts.

Even deleting everything, then importing what was just exported will cause problems.
I exported to an XML file, deleted all my blog posts and then imported - but this process has added additional digits to all of my URLs and this will break all links to me. I've switched back to my blogspot.com address but all the URLs have additional numbers like this:
http://myblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/one_blog_post_579.html

As I've noted earlier in advice about deleting posts, you cannot delete then re publish a post using the same URL. When you re publish a post, it will get a new URL. You will need to redirect the old URL to the new URL.

Similarly, you cannot export comments and posts, delete everything, then re import and re publish - without seeing the URL of every comment, and every post, published under a new URL.

If you are really determined to make this change, your "spring cleaning" plan will have to be expanded slightly.
  • Create a new blog.
  • Copy the template, and all accessories, gadgets and tweaks from the current blog to the new blog.
  • Import the comments and posts to the new blog.
  • Finally, swap blog URLs between the two blogs.

You can do this - but note, if you do, the complications of renaming your blog. Carefully assess each issue, decide if any issue is relevant to your blog, and decide how to handle each one that is relevant.

If you have a substantial Followers community, you should think twice. Followers will stay with the old blog - whether you swap URLs between the blogs, or not.

Look, before you leap.

Comments

Tammy Frost said…
Yikes...I am afraid of all the consequences of blog cleanup. I have been wanting to make new pages on my blog but I don't know how to import the posts that was made on the original blog. I was told I have too many urls on my blog. Is there any solid advice for cleaning up extra urls on a blog? For an example my help blog: http://helpwithyourwebsite.blogspot.com has way too many urls and I want to fix this. Any suggestions? My other blog: http://ehowevents.blogspot.com has the same problem.

Thanks for any re-direction or help you can provide to me.
Nitecruzr said…
Tammy,

These would be good questions for a discussion in BHF: How Do I?.

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