How to Import and Display your Tumblr posts on WordPress

Self Hosted WordPress can’t import directly Tumblr Posts as it does with LiveJournal or Blogger. However, Importing and Displaying Tumblr posts on WordPress can be done indirectely through different methods, lets check each one of them.

We have a list with a series of options to move your Tumblr posts to WordPress, whether they have 10K posts or just a dozen. You basically have to first export your Tumblr posts, and then migrate the Tumblr posts into WordPress.

STEP 1. Option 1. How To Migrate Tumblr Posts?, Try tumblr2wordpress

1. Go to Tumblr2Wordpress Site. An identical alternative would be this.
2. Enter your Tumblr blog subdomain, not the full url.
3. Choose HTML as the exported content format
4. Choose Self Hosted WordPress Installation and finally EXPORT the xml file

STEP 1. Option 2. How To Migrate Tumblr Posts?, Try tumblr2wp

1. Go to Tumblr2Wordpress Site.
2. Enter your Tumblr account, just as shown in the example
3. Check the most convenient permalink option, that would be using the title in the url
4. Export the file as XML

STEP 2. Cleaning Up Your XML File with the Tumblr Exported Posts

You will probably want to clean the XML file with the exported Tumblr posts, because if you have hundreds of posts, it’s highly likely you will end up with dozens of different useless categories. You need to erase some unnecesary date warnings as well and finally, and only if your exported tumblr file is too big, you should create several files from the single xml file, to avoid processing errors.

A notepad will be enough to edit the XML file. Just remember not to change the extension when you save it.

1. Erase the following code to avoid having categories:




<category><![CDATA[link]]></category> <category domain="category" nicename="link"><![CDATA[link]]></category>

2. Now, delete the Date Tags and replace it with a code string that makes sense, follow the example below, the first is the code you might find, the second is the actual string you need to replace it with, notice that the only thing that should remain is the date tag for wordpress and the actual date:




<wp:post_date><br /> <b>Warning</b>: date() [<a href='function.date'>function.date</a>]: Be Careful...Etc, Etc 2009-05-09 10:00:31</wp:post_date>

<wp:post_date>2009-05-09 10:00:31</wp:post_date>

3. If, and only if you have a file bigger than 8mbs, you need to divide it into smalller files.
4. Create brand new XML files, maybe 3 is the right option when dealing with a huge tumblr migration and include the following header and closing tags. Where it says POSTS, you should include just a part of the exported tumblr posts, that are always contained within the item tags mentioned below (remember when creating these new files that you should avoid pasting header code again.)

The XML file header starts with




<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

And ends with:




<wp:category> <wp:category_nicename>uncategorized</wp:category_nicename> <wp:category_parent></wp:category_parent> <wp:cat_name><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></wp:cat_name> </wp:category>

Each new XML file should end with:




</channel> </rss>

When looking for the posts to split and paste….




<item>... </item>

Import your Tumblr Posts to WordPress

1. Once in your WordPress installation go to Dashboard >> Tools >> Import
2. As the input source, check WordPress
3. Wait, and that is it, you have just learnt how to move your Tumblr posts to wordpress.

Newer WordPress Versions have a built-in Plugin That Allow to Import Tumblr Posts