How to import Posterous to self-hosted WordPress

February 17, 2013 By

With the news that Posterous will be closing on April 30, 2013, many people are now looking to export their content and start to publish on a different platform. We tend to always recommend self-hosting if your site is important to you and your business, partly because third-party services can close or change, and partly because it gives you a lot more control over backups.

WordPress is particularly suited to self-hosting, as it’s so widely used and most hosting services will offer a simple one-click install to get you up and running. The complications tend to come with adjusting the look and functionality to exactly what you require, and that’s certainly something we can help with.

So assuming you don’t want to move from Posterous to another third party service like WordPress.com, Tumblr etc, what do you need to do?

 

Setting up self-hosted WordPress:

To set up your site, you need 2 things. The first is your domain name, if you don’t have one already. The second is your hosting account, and for most sites this can be organised quickly for a few pounds per month.

If that is already filling you with fear, give us a shout as we run hosting a number of websites, including installing WordPress, setting up themes and plugins, and organising regular backups.

Once that’s in place, you’ll need to wait for the hosting to be up and running to allow you to install WordPress. Once that’s done, you can then transfer your content across. When that’s complete, the final step will be to change any existing domain names to point to your new site.

You now have 2 options for getting your content into your new site – one doesn’t require a Posterous export, but we’ll cover it anyway as it’s good practice to always keep a secure backup on your computer or an external hard drive.

 

Exporting from Posterous:

Log into your Posterous account, and you’ll see a bright yellow ‘BackUp’ button in the top right of the dashboard. Clicking on that will arrange for a backup to be created for export (You’ll need to wait a little while for it to be ready). Once it’s prepared, you’ll see a green ‘Download’ option which will export your existing content.

BadgerGravlingPosterousBackUp

This will let you download a Zip file which contains contains your content.

 

Importing into self-hosted WordPress:

Option 1: Using a Plugin:

There’s a useful Posterous Importer plugin available which will import posts, comments, tags, and attachments directly via the Posterous API. Simply go to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard, select ‘Add New’ and search for Posterous Importer and you should see it as the first result (Authors include Automattic, the company which runs WordPress).

Once this is installed and activated, you’ll then be able to go to Tools in your WordPress dashboard, select Import, and Posterous will now be a listed option.

Click on Posterous, enter the url of your current Posterous site, along with your username and password, and the import will begin when you click submit.

PosterousImport

Hopefully that will work for you nice and easily. You’ll then need to go through and check each post, amending author details etc as required.

If it doesn’t work for any reason, there is a slightly more complicated alternative.

 

Option 2: Importing via WordPress.com

If that doesn’t work, the other option is to use the importer created for WordPress.com, and then export from that version to your self-hosted site.

So you just need to sign up at WordPress.com (Which is the hosted version of WordPress). Once that’s done, look in the Tool section of your new site, and then click on the Posterous import option.

This method will now ask you to upload the wordpress_export_1.xml file from your Posterous export earlier. This will then be uploaded to your WordPress.com site. There’s a more detailed tutorial on the WordPress.com site, so I won’t repeat their instructions.

Once that’s done, you can then choose to export from WordPress.com. And then go to your self-hosted site, select Tools and the WordPress importer. Choose the .xml file to upload from your WordPress.com export, and you should be all set.

Obviously this version does include a couple of extra steps which are a bit of a pain, but could be useful if the Posterous API stops working prior to April 30.

 

Finishing off the process:

Finally, once all your content is in your new site, spend some time checking the author names, embedded videos and anything else which may have changed during the import process. If you’ve got thousands of posts, then start with any that you know are particularly popular!

If you’re mapping an existing domain name across to your new site, now’s the time to do it. If you want to keep the same url structure and avoid losing any links, you’ll need to go to ‘Settings’ and select the ‘Permalinks’ option. The default setting for Posterous appears to be ‘Post Name’, which displays as http://danthornton.net/sample-post/ for example.

Finally you can play around with the look of your site, and the additional extensions that are available to WordPress users.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , ,

Tumblr: Stats, the ability to add pages, and revenue on the way

March 8, 2010 By

I’m a big fan of both Tumblr and Posterous, despite not really having the time/project to make the best use of them at the moment. So the fact that Tumblr has released a new feature, some interesting statistics and signs of new revenue streams launching soon has reignited my thoughts on how I could use the service effectively.

The new feature is the ability to add static pages – which will aid companies and bloggers looking to keep content highlighted. Adding a page is simple, with three layouts to choose from.

And it will only build on some pretty impressive statistics released today – 1 billion page views in February 2010 for starters. It also has 2 million posts every day, 15,000 new posts daily, and 18 new posts and reblogs every second.

Incidentally, 1 billion page views in February equals 36 million page views per day, 25,000 page views per minute, or 400 per second. And Tumblr has put together a nice infographic to show off the info:

Tumblr statistics February 2010

And if that isn’t enough, apparently there are also plans to unveil two new revenue generating features next month, powered by the widget mysteriously pictured below:

For a personal or simple company blog, I’d definitely recommend checking out Tumblr or Posterous. They’re easier to update than a traditional hosted blog platform (whether Blogger or WordPress), and offer as many design options etc. Ultimately a full self-hosted blog platform such as WordPress (Which this site uses) offers some additional advantages, but if you don’t want the hassle or advertising, then go with the microblogging platforms.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

What are you using Posterous for?

October 28, 2009 By

I’m really intrigued to find out what other people are using Posterous for. The ease with which you can post by email, and send images and video which are automatically resized means I keep toying with it for various things but haven’t found something which has got me using in regularly (I’ve already got two self-hosted WordPress blogs including this one, and a pretty active Twitter account etc).

I know that Steve Rubel is using it as his main place to post in a lifestreaming style.

And the Austin American Stateman newspaper used it to crowdsource images from readers.

Plus more visually-creative people seem to be embracing it – e.g. Christian Payne.

But I need more inspiration – are you using Posterous, and if so, how are you using it? Alternatively have you seen particularly good or bad examples of people using it for a specific purpose or reason?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

PicPosterous – iPhone app for Posterous launches

August 20, 2009 By

image

Posterous straddles the bridge between microblogging and lifestreaming, and although founder Sachin Agarwal definitely prefers the latter description, I’m guessing it’s of interest to you – both as a place to post and aggregate content, but also as a method for sending content out to other sites, such as Twitter.

In any case, it’s first iPhone application is now available, and PicPosterous provides an alternative to emailing all your updates.

You can send content, particularly images and videos, before you’ve registered for an account, which will mean one is automatically created for you, and visual content can also be added to an album without starting a new post.

You can’t forward links or plain text to the site, which is potentially frustrating, and another niggle is that you don’t have any control over your autoposting settings via the app, besides turning them on or off.

But, as always with Posterous, the focus is on keeping things incredibly quick and simple, and then building on that, so I’m sure the feature list will improve fairly quickly over time.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A recap on the original three microblogging platforms.

July 13, 2009 By

Once upon a time, there were three prominent microblogging platforms, Twitter, Plurk and Jaiku. One became incredibly popular, one introduced a side-on view, and one was acquired and then released by the Google Fairy Godmother.

Others fell by the wayside, including Pownce, and Rejaw.

But how do they compare now, after the mainstream adoption of Twitter:

Obviously this doesn’t tell the complete story, as it tracks web visits only, but it’s safe to assume it’s proportionally correct. Twitter’s close to 25 million Unique Visitors, Plurk is holding steady between 250,000-300,000 for the past year, and Jaiku has dropped from 70,000 down to 30-40,000 for the last two months measured.

In fact, it’s not even winning the Open Source Microblogging Platform war – as Identi.ca has grown slightly while Jaiku declined.

Meanwhile, Google has listed the 46 official accounts it has on Twitter.

And in the meantime, we’ve seen the rise of Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, internal microblogging such as Yammer,  the blend of micro and macro blogging in Tumblr and Posterous, and video and audio blogging with the likes of 12 seconds and Audioboo. Not forgetting the lifestreaming element of the likes of Friendfeed.

And although we talk about forums, blogs and Web 2.0 social networks as if they’ve reached the endpoint of their evolution, there’s still a lot more to come from them – I’d say the social elements of the web aren’t even 15% of what they’ll become in the next 10 years.

The question is how you as a person, you as a company, or you as a developer can find clarity through it all…

(There is also the question fo what Google were thinking re: Jaiku, and how it’s managing to miss out on the rise of Open Source as much as it did on the rise of microblogging – after all, the platform itself doesn’t appear to be the cause)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Mashable misses something in the Posterous vs Tumblr showdown

June 30, 2009 By

I’ve long been a fan of Mashable amongst the top tech blogs, and this comparison of the Tumblr and Posterous services goes some way to explaining why.

They combine news with good in-depth analysis of services to show what exactly you might want to use them for – and in general this article is pretty good.

It does have one major, major, major omission, though, which is so obvious as to appear almost intentional.

When Jennifer Van Grive details the autoposting options Posterous offers, she writers:

‘a single Posterous video post could auto-post to Twitter, Facebook , YouTube and Vimeo and blog sites, while photo posts could automatically add images to your Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa accounts.’

What she doesn’t make clear is that Posterous will actually autopost to Tumblr.

That’s a major advantage to Posterous, and certainly a major element for discussion in a ‘head-to-head’ comparison.

And as you can see, it’s something I’m playing around with at the moment, with my Posterous blog, and my Tumblr blog linked.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is Posterous taking Tumblr’s easy blogging crown?

June 23, 2009 By

When it comes to 140 character microblogging, Twitter has established itself as the leader. In hosted blogging, Blogger leads the way. And if you’re hosting your own blog, then WordPress is the most common choice (as used for this blog!)

And until recently, the clear choice for someone who wanted more space and multimedia than 140 characters, but didn’t want a ‘full-on’ blog was Tumblr. I set up my own Tumblr blog fairly quickly and didn’t really develop it much, but good friend Angus has taken it a bit fair bit further.

But all that seems to have changed recently, as Posterous has launched a full scale attack of features, and has already inspired Steve Rubel to write about how the microblogging/lifestreaming approach has changed the way he blogs.

While Tumblr has introduced a popularity ranking system, Posterous appears to be everywhere. Recent updated include becoming an alternative to posting images on Twitpic and a way to turn email lists into group blogs.

Now you can import your blog to Posterous from any of the major publishing platforms – including Tumblr.

And upload video from the Apple iPhone 3G S to multiple social sites, including Twitter and Facebook.

Posterous seems to be benefitting from the ‘posting by email’ side of the site, which makes it an easy and effective way to get content online. Although Tumblr has a similar feature, it’s far less prominent when you’re comparing the services at face value. And Posterous is also targetting the distribution of that content, which is something Tumblr doesn’t seem to be doing as much. It’s very much in the vein of Twitter and Friendfeed in making it quick and easy to create, aggregate, and share.

(I’m also available on Posterous, but I’m only just starting to use it).

In fact, the only killer feature that both sites are missing is the one that I firmly believe has kept Blogger popular in the face of WordPress.com, and also Tumblr/Posterous – the ability to quickly and easily install Google Adsense adverts on a hosted platform. It’s not the sole reason for someone choosing to blog, as we always like to focus on the desire for self-expression, but it’s an important issue for a lot of people. Even if common sense suggests hardly anyone will make any significant revenue, the hope factor is as important as in buying a lottery ticket!

If I ran Tumblr right now, I’d be introducing a similarly quick and simple Adsense system to Bloggers as quickly as I could!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,