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When You Import, Avoid "Automatically publish ..."

Every month in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, we see another blog owner, trying to import and publish.
Why is it taking so dang long? I started yesterday - it's just spinning, and getting nowhere!
This blog owner is not having a good time, importing posts.

A reasonable import takes a few minutes - if you don't publish, as you import.

I tested, using this blog. 30M took just over 2 minutes to download to my computer. And the comments and posts uploaded in just over 5 minutes, to my test blog - unpublished.

Using "Automatically publish ..." makes your computer run 2 tasks, simultaneously.

If you publish as you import, both your computer, your network, and every other Internet component is running two tasks simultaneously.
  • Extracting posts, from the "Export" file, one by one - and uploading each, "Imported", to the blog.
  • Reading each "Imported" page and post, one by one, and publishing.

You want to get the "Upload" task done, as quickly as possible.

Publishing, while you Import, makes the whole process take longer.

Publishing, as you Extract and Upload, makes both tasks take longer - and gives you more chance that a resource problem could hang or terminate the Publishing process.

If the Extract / Publish process terminates in the middle, how do you clean up what's published, so you can re run from the start?


This is where many Import problems start.


Don't do this - unless you like waiting, forever.



This is a much better idea.


Publishing, while you import, subjects you to daily publishing limits.

To control the ability of spammers misusing Blogger, there is a limit on new posts published in a day. If you must publish while you import, and the blog has any significant number of posts, you will trip the limit - and you will have to solve a CAPTCHA for each individual post.

If you import without publishing, you can get the posts imported, without tripping the limit Then, publish later, or selectively.

If you Import, then Publish, you can control the process.

First, get the upload done, as "Imported" pages and posts. That's a few minutes. Then, verify that everything uploaded, successfully - and start publishing.
  1. Export.
  2. Import.
  3. Publish.
That's safer - and quicker.

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