Move Windows Live Spaces Blog to WordPress.com
ByIn September, Microsoft made a surprise announcement that they had been in talks with Automattic and that WordPress.com (the hosted version), was going to be the new home to 30 million Live Spaces users. Yes, I was surprised there were 30 million who had created a Live Spaces Blog—I was one of them.
Before I began blogging or even heard of WordPress, I had a Windows Live account. I found the Spaces feature of it and decided to build a site. It was a fun little project where I only had perhaps two ‘posts’. The site was mainly pictures and some videos and I was doubtful that the pictures and videos would transfer over. More on that later.
Since there are 30 million Spaces users out there, I thought it might be helpful to document the steps with illustrations to help those who haven’t migrated over yet. With my site, I wasn’t concerned about the results, I was curious about the steps. So here we go.
Steps to Migrate from Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com
1. Log in with your Windows Live ID and navigate to Spaces. You’ll see the above. You will have the opportunity to back up your Spaces site before you migrate. I’d suggest doing this because after the migration is finished, your Spaces blog is gone.
2. Decide if you want to connect your WordPress blog with Messenger (too much sharing for me).
3. WordPress prompts you to set up a new account. You will receive a couple emails from WordPress with your new account information and helpful links.
4. Then you choose what time zone you wrote most of your posts in ( this feature didn’t work for me. I tried to open up the drop down, but everything was blank. Not critical.
5. Then click on the migrate button and wait
There is a progress bar you can watch, or just close the window and you’ll get an email when the migration is complete. WordPress will also send you your API key, user name and password.
6. Log into your new WordPress blog by typing in your new WordPress url, then add at the end ‘/wp-admin’. This takes you to your login for your new blog. Upon successful login, you’ll see the below message
7. Then you’ll be in your dashboard, or ‘back-end’. This is where you’ll create your content, add widgets and configure your blog to look and feel the way you want. Lots of help is available to help you get going.
My Results
So, my Spaces site only transferred over two ‘posts’ that I had made. The photo gallery and videos did not make it. I read in a recent blog article by Ryan Markel that photo galleries, videos and other ‘module’ type items do NOT get migrated over. This makes sense because they aren’t posts and WordPress is for posting. Read the article as it explains things pretty well.
If your Spaces site has a photo gallery, the article I linked to has steps on how to easily move your photos over to WordPress. They also have suggestions about moving other modules.
WordPress has reported more than double the sign-ups the past few months as a result of the WordPress agreement, so it seems many people are moving over. If you don’t move your site over, it will be done for you. Microsoft is giving everyone 6 months to do the move.
Anyone else out there want to comment on your particular experience?
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