Has anyone out there tried importing/exporting with a BIG blog? I have over 9000 comments and 5500 entries...It also hangs whether I try the old MT option to import or the new one. I have created a new 4.01 blog template that I want to import my old Entries/comments/authors/categories into. I am importing from a 3.2 system from before and it just hangs. Also, do you need to create the categories in the new blog first?

Another idea I have but I'm not sure would work, since this isn't working, is to copy all my new 4.01 templates/code into my 3.2 site, replacing the templates with the new ones and then rebuilding. Would this work? All I've changed in the new 4.01 build is integrating the design, so now I want to bring it back into my 3.2 site. Please let me know if this would work...or somewhat work.

thanks!

why not just point your MT4 installation at your current blog DB (or a copy of it if you're paranoid) and have MT update the DB schema. you will want to make sure to save copies of your new templates and copy them over after the update, but it seems like it would be less painful than trying to import a large file.

The likely culprit to the problem of the import process hanging is the webserver timing out the operation because it's taking too long.

Hey imabug, thanks a lot for the response.

I think you misunderstood. I've already updated from 3.2 to 4.0 for the database, but am still using the old 3.2 templates. So I created a new blog, ported over the design content to it and am now trying to either import the entries/comments etc into the new blog or find a way to get the new 4.0 templates into the 3.2 design.

So with importing/exporting being an issue because of size. My question is can I just copy/paste the 4.01 templates into the correct places in the 3.2 templates (which is all in the same "movabletype" database of course) and then rebuild?


Thanks,
Shane

Does anyone know why importing hangs half way through? Could it be a matter of adjusting the time-out time in my server settings? I even tried importing from the server and not a text file.

I just recently did an upgrade on a blog (actually an installation with 3 blogs) with more entries and comments than you have there so it can be done.

I also made a backup of my database and experimented on the process first. Yes, I installed MT4 and pointed it at the backup database and let it do the upgrade. It did hang on upgrading one of the blogs, but a refresh on the upgrade screen kept it going and let it finish. It did not do this the second time I tried it (from scratch).

Indeed, once the upgrade was complete and I was in to the new interface it was a matter of copying over the template and publishing scheme from an experimental dummy blog I had set up for the purpose and rebuilding. I wanted my new blog to be as close as possible to the MT4 standard. I'll give this to MT 4: rebuilds are much faster.

It did work, though I've been working through some niggling problems. I do wish I had waited for some of the bugs in MT 4.01 to be worked out, though.

I have run into this with clients and my own on larger sites. One way I have done it is to break up the import file into smaller chunks.

we upgraded from 3.2 to 4 (20+ blogs on system). but as we had several errors, we had to make a new install with a new dbase and restore backups from old installation. backup restoring always 'hangs' for us, but the blog was sucessfully imported - except without any comments. so after a backup restore, I had to erase all entries and import the txt file (from 'export/import' functions) so entries would come with his comments.