LiveJournal Migration Made Easy
In light of recent news, some LiveJournal users may be looking to move their blogs elsewhere. Lucky for you digital nomads, we’ve got a quick and easy way to build your new home on WordPress.com: the LiveJournal import tool.
Already we’ve seen a spike in LiveJournal imports in the past few days — something like 1000%. Welcome!
These folks are migrating to WordPress.com because we have a lot of the same options that you loved on LJ:
- Community. If you’re looking for something like your Friends page, our Subscription tools like Readomattic will help you keep track of your favorite bloggers and the topics you care about.
- Privacy options. You can password protect posts or make them private, or make the whole blog private or visible only to visitors you choose.
Plus a lot of other cool stuff that can’t be found anywhere else, like themes, stats, and spam protection.
To join your friends from LJ here on WordPress.com, just head to the signup page to make an account and blog name. Once you’ve logged in to your spiffy new dashboard, scroll down to Tools and click on Import. You’ll see the LiveJournal Import option there, along with other migration tools:
Click on “LiveJournal” and select the XML file that you exported from LiveJournal to upload. Click “Upload file and Import” and you’re all set! Your content from LJ will now be on WordPress.com.
Be sure you’ve saved images and other media to your computer so you can upload them to your new blog. Any links that have your old LiveJournal name in the URL won’t work after you delete that account.
WordPress.com News 
I used Live Journal a million years ago when I first began blogging. I have zero zero zero desire to import the trash I wrote over there, but it’s nice that y’all are making it easy for LJ refugees to find a home here.
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this is handy, when i looked for somewhere new to host my blog & i discovered wordpress, i really liked the fact you could import your blog from almost any other site 🙂
kudos
x
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you always are great at integrating other blogs into wordpress format! anything you can’t do? =D
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What about Yahoo refugees?
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Good question, I’ll look into that.
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Mmmm, a beautiful new avatar that.
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I’ll try importing my blogger blogs later.
I look forward to it!
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Thanks for all. I want new themes. Keep the good job, guys.
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[whats happening to livejournal? i had a secret blog on there ageees ago, lol]
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Woww nice feature! Thanks
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Indeed. I was a big LiveJournal user until recently… I didn’t know these options where available until now! Thanks so much! 🙂
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this is some scary news coming from Russia.
LJ has an incredible user base; one of the biggest on the web.
thanks for being so welcoming WordPress.com!
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i never use LiveJournal, because i love wordpress. 😀
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WP just keeps getting better and better : )
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LiveJournal bloggers welcome to WordPress! A very easy migration! Easy blogging experience! You are in a good and vibrant community! What are you waiting for? Come and join us now with easy migration!
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I have just arrived here, all breathless and panicky from LJ. I adore WordPress, and am delighted to have found a new blogging home. I’m not sure yet if I will totally migrate, since all my LJ stuff is backed up on my Mac. And I also need to say my goodbyes (if I can’t persuade anyone to jump ship too!) But thank you WordPress for being so welcoming and kind and helpful to us newbies. (1000% increase??? Wow!!)
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Thanks for offering this! I love it here and I hope my friends from LJ will move over too.
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I just moved from blogger to wordpress, and it was a breeze!
I love it here.
Thanks.
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The transition was easy && now I ❤ wordpress.
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I’ve only had my LJ for a bit over half a month, and now after the stuff about Russia etc. I decided to back it up here ^^
Just made myself an account, and everything seems to be in order~ The LJ import tool is amazing!!!
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Is there any way at all to import entry comments from LiveJournal?
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We support whatever they put in their file.
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I wish it were that easy. But for once, the LJ tool lets you export one month at a time, which with more than 5 years of entries becomes something of an impossibility. It also doesn’t let you chose what exactly to export, and when you have private, friends only and custom filtered entries, it is not something you want to do. Lj archive should do SOME of that, but it doesn’t work these days.
All in all, an option only for those with a) few months of entries to import and b) only public entries. Or, too many time on their hands (which I prefer to use for blogging).
Therefore, alas, as nice as the WordPress outfit is, for most LiveJournal refugees the LJ clones will be the only possible choice, as we can export our journals as they are, with LJ sec, including privacy and custom options…!
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I used to use wetpaint… elgh… then i looked around. wordpress is PERFECT!
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Sigh. I’d move if I could get threaded comments with notifications, and import all my old comments with the threading intact. I can do it to a self-hosted WP using some Perl scripts, but it doesn’t look like I can do it to wordpress.com yet.
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Notifications are here and threading is coming soonish.
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I’ve had blogs on diaryland, blogger, livejournal, you name it! And now that I’ve discovered wordpress, I’ll never go anywhere else!
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This is super easy and user friendly. Thanks 😀
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I had blogs on blogger, livejournal, wretch……
And wordpress is just the prefect one I want!
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I am so happy to migrate to WordPress. Thank you for making things easier.:)
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How can I get to LJ to make use of this 😉
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Threading coming soon? That and community aspect is most of what I miss of LiveJournal. Some of us migrated already when LJ sold their souls to gaudy advertisers. They totally disrupted Russian journals, especially. I am glad that you have facilitated the transition.
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Yes, lots of neat comment features are on the way! Welcome 🙂
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I’m a person who is escaping MyLog ( http://www.mylog.pl ). It’s a Polish blog site, so I don’t think that You’ll think about that :). Bu I’m moving everything from my 3 blogs, 4 years, into WordPress now. See You!
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lolwut donotwant
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Are you also going to have LJ’s “mood” feature? 🙂
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There aren’t any plans for a mood feature, no. Thanks for your suggestion!
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I was waiting for it. Its taken you guys a bit late to publish this but I am happy that this is final out 🙂
Thanks
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WordPress is a great place to be for all your blogging needs. 😉 ( Hey, that ryhmes! 😆 )
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Thanks for thinking about us!
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Interesting I will have a look at it. I am sure it must be a plus for a journal.
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Now that’s innovation. WordPress is probably the only one where you can import blogs from practically anywhere. Good thing Blogger still doesn’t have the import-from-anywhere feature, or I’d be blogging on Blogspot now (shudders) and never would have found out how robust (and great!) WordPress is.
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What if many of our posts that were on LJ were “private” posts. Will they be imported as private?? I made my LJ private years ago because I got sick of getting pestered by people I didn’t know. Only my friends can see it. I went even further by making some posts only viewable to some friends… and some posts just for me. Is this transition possible on wordpress??
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Those settings won’t be saved when you import, so I suggest making the whole blog private to start with. You can then change your privacy settings on a post-by-post basis and set it back to a public blog when you’re done.
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I just imported both of my blogs to WordPress… It’s so uch easier here and the overall look and feel is more “professional”
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Neat. Thanks for this. And I agree with an earlier poster who suggested a mood feature. It would add a lot to the blog, I think.
Goon
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Never try livejournal. my first blog is on blogsome which use wordpress engine too. Btw, nice feature.
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The “Live Journal Import Tool” link leads to “Page Not Found” on my browser. I was able to find it by searching, but I thought I’d let you know.
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All fixed! Thank you.
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Would this work for Vox entries too? Aren’t they somehow related?
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Vox and LiveJournal were once owned by the same company, but aren’t any longer. Anything that can be exported as an XML doc can be uploaded using the LiveJournal importer.
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Nice feature… this means we wud have a few more cross-over new members. cool!!
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hmm, like an earlier poster, I couldn’t even consider moving my livejournal blog to wordpress unless you could preserve the security not requiring us to do it.
I wrote many, many personal entries while my marriage was breaking up, they were all marked private. Then I write some friends only as I want my LJ friends to read but not the general public. Having had my LJ blog since 2003 I can’t imagine the time and effort it would be to manually reset all these before going public, and I’d hate to miss one or two.
I know theres always the chance to ljjournal going under, in which case I’d start over. I’ve taken regular 6-month backups of my livejournal blog using ljbook which takes your LJ userid/password and produces a PDF including private and friends entries. At least I have PDFs.
The other thing about moving is obviously the availability of wordpress usernames. I’m often introduced and referred to by my lj name. triman.wordpress.com is already taken by someone who posted once back in March 2008 😦
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Oh yeah, how would WordPress handle Livejournal image libraries? While I don’t have thousands of pictures there, I do have a reasonable number that are used in posts that I’d want carried over.
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You need to save images and other media to your computer and then upload them to your new blog.
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d’oh and thats another thing, livejournal allows editing of comments, not found here. Otherwise I could have corrected my lj blog in the above post.
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Only blog owners can edit comments on their WordPress.com blog using comment actions.
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and not withstanding the barrage of comments, I actually much prefer almost everything else about wordpress. Dashboard, stats, editing, multiple pages, multiple editors much, much better. Sorry for the multiple posts.
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I have never had to make use of any of the handy import tools so far. But I’d love to recommend my friends over at LJ to get their ass to WPcom and have a much happier time blogging here 🙂
ps: How could I have the need to make use of any tools when from the start of my blogging career, it’s been WordPress that I heart? :p
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I think it’s important to note that the uploader works with any site the used the LJ script.
This would include Scribbld.net, GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, DeadJournal — I might be missing some but you get the point.
xo
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Yes, that’s true! Thanks for the note.
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I agree that I wouldn’t import the random stuff I wrote on my old LJ, but I love that WP makes it easy for people who do want to move their old ramblings over here. These developments, plus the WP community, reassure me that I made the right decision by joining WP. 🙂
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How about themes? Are there any choices?
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Yep, there are tons of themes, and our designers are working to add in new themes for you. Check out the Themes page in your blog admin pages to find all the current theme options.
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Nice feature .. I like it
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uhhhhh
sangat very good
good luck ok…
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How about the Community feature like LJ has, where you can create a group where multiple people can post?
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You can add other WordPress.com users as a Contributor, Author, Editor, or Administrator.
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I’m an LJ user too, so I find that this sort of option makes the transfer process for a lot of other people more bearable, setting aside the hassle of copy-pasting.
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Is there a blogger import tool? If I just copy paste to move my blog to wordpress will it create duplicate content issues?
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There is! You can find the Blogger import tool under Tools > Import. It’s the speedy, recommended way to import your posts.
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I would love a spell checker in the comment section.
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Thanks for this! Is it possible to have a “friends only” kind of setting on WP posts? I’ve been on LJ forever so I feel like I’ll have to put aside a huge chunk of time to export then import it all.
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Yep, you can make your WordPress.com blog private and share read access with your friends by adding their WordPress.com username to the Settings > Privacy page. If your friends don’t have a WordPress.com account yet, no problem, they can setup a username only account at the WordPress.com sign up page.
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WOW!! That is cool that will probally come in handy.For sure!
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Gah, there was no importing function for Windows Live Spaces! (yeah, that’s how out-of-date I am. :D)
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I may be annoying and technically illiterate (and five years behind) asking this, but is there a way to do the same with a Xanga, perhaps?
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The importers shown on the Tools -> Import page are the only ones we support at the moment. See the Import support page.
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Heather and Matt are downloads; special formats imported from a different solar system. They represent the ideal version of a human being. To have them on board the WordPress mothership is a special grace. Heather and Matt, in fact ALL of you other worldly digital wizards at WordPress who help us earthlings to Blog, you never cease to impress me with your talents and kindness. Glad to have you with us. Hearts beat for you.
Greeting
Exuvia
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There’re just growing numbers of blog sites to import to WordPress … and (perhaps) luckily not the other way around… Well, I’m not trying to read in-between the lines but … that’s one pretty clever trick!
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