An Improved Interface for Migrating to Jekyll

I’m a sucker for shiny new services, which means I’ve swapped out blog hosts around half a dozen times. This is the third time I’ve come back to Jekyll, and the importing system hasn’t really changed since I first migrated from self-hosted Wordpress.

My latest migration is from Posterous - a solid blogging system, but lacking in customisation, and with my recent move to self-hosting, I wanted to consolidate my stuff.

There is no easy export option for Posterous - the only method of getting your data out is to use their API.

I set about writing an importer for Posterous, then noticed this ticket asking for a better import CLI.

After a little hacking around, I present: A Blog import command set for Jekyll.

Usage

To import a blog from another service or export file:

CSV

jekyll import csv --file=</path/to/csv.csv>

Typo

jekyll import typo --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password>

TextPattern

jekyll import textpattern --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password> --host=<hostname>

MT

jekyll import mt --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password>

Mephisto

jekyll import mephisto --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password>

Drupal

jekyll import drupal --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password>

Wordpress

jekyll import wordpress --dbname=<database name> --user=<username> --pass=<password>

Wordpress.com

jekyll import wordpressdotcom --file=</path/to/export.xml>

Posterous

jekyll import posterous --user=<email> --pass=<password> --site=<sitename (default is primary site)>

Note that the Posterous importer is required for this to work.