Introducing TP2WP: Convert from TypePad or Movable Type to WordPress for just $99

Odds & Ends /

We’re happy to announce the launch of a new service from ReadyMadeWeb to help bloggers convert their TypePad or Movable Type sites to WordPress.

Moving your site shouldn’t mean losing your data.

tp2wp.com solves a pretty big problem: TypePad exports don’t include your permalinks, comments, images, and other files. Starting a WordPress site using this export file search engine ranking, hurt the community you’ve built up around your site, and leave you with little more than text.

Before we launched tp2wp.com, the only way to solve this problem involved countless hours on a tricky 17-step conversion process, or paying a developer hundreds or thousands of dollars to perform that process for you.

But with tp2wp.com you can transfer all of your data, not just some of it, quickly and affordably. For $99, tp2wp.com will convert your TypePad export file into a valid WordPress eXtended RSS, or “WXR” file. This conversion, combined with our free custom version of the WordPress Importer, allows you to easily drop your data into WordPress, while preserving all of the content from your blog.

But why move to WordPress?  There are about 60 million reasons.

“WordPress Rules The Web” —Forbes

Making the move to WordPress simply makes sense. With nearly 60 million sites running WordPress today, it’s become the single most dominant platform on the web. Forbes estimates that WordPress currently powers 17% of the web and has described it as ”the promised land—a standard, easy-to-use, multimedia-friendly platform.”

It’s clear why WordPress has become so ubiquitous. WordPress allows bloggers to truly own their content and it provides greater flexibility, security, and perhaps most importantly, visibility—search engines love WordPress sites!  WordPress users also benefit from an army of tens of thousands of developers and designers who create an amazing array of plugins and themes allowing WordPress to adapt to nearly any purpose.

TypePad & Movable Type Languish

While WordPress has prospered, TypePad and Movable Type have stagnated, especially after the company that owned them, Six Apart, was acquired by an advertising network in late 2010. Since then, their new owners shuttered VOX, its free blogging service, and sold off MovableTyle to a Japanse IT firm.

Giving bloggers the best technology isn’t the primary goal for an ad-focused company. That’s probably why image quality on TypePad continues to lag behind the rest of the web. Customization, like editing CSS files, remains limited. Traffic data is lacking. Tech support continues to decline in quality.

All this adds up to a pretty poor experience. So poor that Mashable, the popular social media and tech news site, polled its readers and found that 87% prefer WordPress to TypePad. This lead Mashable to later declare:

While Movable Type and TypePad were among the first of their kind, WordPress has clearly won the battle for blogging platform supremacy.

Making the Move to WordPress Easier

Before we created tp2wp.com, the only way to move a TypePad blog to WordPress was to use the export file provided by TypePad, and they don’t make leaving easy. Using the export file provided by TypePad means lost images, broken permalinks, disappearing comments, and file uploads you’ll never see again.  That’s because the export data provided by TypePad is a plain .txt file that doesn’t include the information necessary to preserve your data.

The tp2wp.com conversion process solves this problem by parsing TypePad’s Movable Type Import Format (MTIF) .txt file to create a valid WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) file. This converted data includes complete permalinks, comments, and references to images and other file attachments. With tp2wp.com moving to WordPress means moving all of your data, not just some of it.

A Better WordPress Importer

To make the process of moving to WordPress as seamless as possible, we’ve also created our own custom version of the default WordPress Importer plugin, which is now available as a free download in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Our custom version of the WordPress Importer plugin helps with some odd issues with TypePad sites, namely that many images are saved without file extensions. It also includes some IP and DNS magic to make sure that imports go smoothly even if you’re using a staging site instead of your site’s final URL.

All of this adds up to make the process of moving from TypePad to WordPress as easy as possible.

The Three-Step Move to WordPress

1. Upload & Test
Export from TypePad or Movable Typeand upload your file to tp2wp.com. You can see what your data will look like when converted to WXR, the WordPress import format.

2. Purchase & Download
After reviewing your data, you can purchase and download a complete converted copy of your blog’s data for only $99.

3. Upload to WordPress
Upload your data to WordPress.com or your own self-hosted version of WordPress using our free custom version of the WordPress Importer plugin.

Help If You Need It

Even with converted data and an enhanced importer, the process of moving from TypePad to WordPress can be daunting for non-technical and technical folks alike. If you need help, ReadyMadeWeb offers full-service WordPress migration assistance.

We’re happy to provide you a quote for any part of the migration process. We can facilitate your data migration for you, recreate your TypePad sidebar elements as WordPress widgets, or create a custom WordPress theme made to order.

ReadyMadeWeb is a full-service WordPress shop and we’re ready to make your vision a reality.