Martin Notes

My wife asked me to migrate her gossip blog from Serendipity to WordPress. Since my coding qualities have nearly died I decided to build the migrator in PHP.

My approach was simple: connect to the Serendipity database, read the entries table, generate a WordPress export XML and import that into WordPress. The WordPress export XML format is really simple, it comes down to RSS deluxe.

The migrator is easy to use:

1. Fill the Serendipity database connection details in the script
2. Upload the script to the serendipity server
3. Request the script in a browser, or using wget
4. Save the result in a file
5. Import the file into wordpress

You can download the script: serrendipity_to_wordpressphptar.

That leaves you with a filled WordPress database. However the images are still missing. Serendipity stores the images in its upload directory. In my case this was in the root of the site: /uploads. Just copy the full directory to the root of the WordPress server solved the problem.

My wife still has to complete the new site, but the migration is a success. Which leaves me with a happy wife and the good feeling of having completed a bit of coding.

Ubuntu