Migrate Blogspot Posts to Your Own Jekyll Website

Migrate Blogspot Posts to Your Own Jekyll Website

If you’re moving from Blogger (Blogspot) to a self-hosted Jekyll website, this guide will walk you through the entire process.

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Step 1: Export Your Blogspot Posts

1. Log in to your Blogger Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Manage Blog.
3. Under “Download Content,” click Download.
4. This will generate an XML file containing all your blog posts.

Save this file as blog-export.xml.

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Step 2: Install Requirements

You’ll need Python installed on your system. Then, install the required dependencies:

pip install lxml

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Step 3: Convert Blogger Posts to Jekyll Format

Use the following blogger_to_jekyll.py script to convert the exported XML file into Jekyll-compatible Markdown files.

import os
import re
import html
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

def clean_filename(title):
    """Convert title to a valid filename"""
    title = re.sub(r'[^\w\s-]', '', title).strip().lower()
    return re.sub(r'[\s]+', '-', title)

def blogger_to_jekyll(xml_file, output_dir="_posts"):
    tree = ET.parse(xml_file)
    root = tree.getroot()
    
    ns = {'default': 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'}
    entries = root.findall("default:entry", ns)

    if not os.path.exists(output_dir):
        os.makedirs(output_dir)

    for entry in entries:
        title = entry.find("default:title", ns).text
        content = entry.find("default:content", ns).text
        date = entry.find("default:published", ns).text[:10]  # Extract YYYY-MM-DD
        
        if title and content:
            filename = f"{date}-{clean_filename(title)}.md"
            filepath = os.path.join(output_dir, filename)

            with open(filepath, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
                f.write(f"---\n")
                f.write(f"title: \"{html.unescape(title)}\"\n")
                f.write(f"date: {date}\n")
                f.write(f"layout: post\n")
                f.write(f"---\n\n")
                f.write(html.unescape(content))

    print(f"Converted {len(entries)} posts to Jekyll format!")

# Example usage
blogger_to_jekyll("blog-export.xml")

What This Script Does:

• Reads the Blogger XML export.
• Extracts title, content, and publication date.
• Saves posts in Jekyll’s _posts folder with YYYY-MM-DD-title.md format.
• Preserves post content and converts it into Markdown format.

Run the script:

python blogger_to_jekyll.py

This will generate .md files in the _posts directory.

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Step 4: Upload Posts to Jekyll Website

1. Move the generated .md files to your Jekyll project’s _posts folder.
2. Commit and push changes to your GitHub repository:

git add _posts/*
git commit -m "Migrated Blogger posts to Jekyll"
git push origin main

1. Deploy your site:
   • If using GitHub Pages, the changes will be reflected automatically.
   • If self-hosting, rebuild the site using:

   bundle exec jekyll build
   bundle exec jekyll serve
   

Your Blogger posts are now successfully migrated to your Jekyll website!

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By following this guide, you can seamlessly transition from Blogger to Jekyll, keeping full control over your content. 🚀