How to move a large blog to Webflow?

Migrate blog with more than 200 posts to Webflow

In this tutorial, we will go over the steps to migrate an existing blog to Webflow using a custom CSV file. This method is especially useful if you cannot find a plugin or extension to export your blog posts to a CSV file in your old CMS.

To begin, you will need to create a custom CSV file with all of your blog content. This can be a time-consuming process, but it is worth it to avoid having to manually transfer each post individually into the CMS.

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How to create a Webflow CSV for blog import

If you don't have a plugin that allows you to export your blog's content to a CSV file, you can create the CSV file yourself using information from your MySQL database and your blog's RSS feed.

To export information from your MySQL database, you can use a tool like PHPMyAdmin to access the database and export the desired data.

You can also use a website like scooterlabs.com/hacks/rss2csv.php to convert your blog's RSS feed to a CSV file. This will give you the title, date, and summary of each post, but it may not include the absolute links to the teaser images.

To include the links to the teaser images in your CSV file, you will need to add them manually. Once you have your CSV file ready, you can use it to import your blog's content into Webflow as described in the previous responses.

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Import SEO Meta Descriptions

To export a CSV file from your MySQL database, you can follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the blog section of your database and filter the table to show only the published posts or only posts in a certain category, if desired.
2. Use the export feature of your database management tool to export the data as a CSV file.
3. Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet tool like Numbers or Excel. If you encounter coding errors with umlauts, you can upload the CSV file to https://www.convertcsv.com/csv-viewer-editor.htm and download it again with utf-8 encoding.
4. In the spreadsheet tool, sort the posts by publication date and copy the meta description column, if desired.

By following these steps, you can export a CSV file from your MySQL database and prepare it for importing into Webflow.

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Get the absolute path to all blog teaser images

To extract the image paths from your blog's RSS feed, you can follow these steps:

1. Copy the complete RSS feed code and paste it into a table. You can use a spreadsheet tool like Numbers for this.
2. Filter the table by <enclosure and copy everything. This will show you all of the image paths in the RSS feed.
3. Paste the image paths into a website like https://www.convertcsv.com/url-extractor.htm to extract the URLs. This will allow you to copy only the URLs and not any other code.

You can then use these image URLs to update your CSV file and include the absolute links to the teaser images. Once your CSV file is complete, you can use it to import your blog's content into Webflow as described in the previous responses.

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Search and delete empty rows in Numbers

When transferring data from one table to another, it is common to encounter formatting issues such as blank lines or text that starts in the second line. One way to fix this is to search for \n in the table and replace it with nothing.

To do this, you can use the find and replace feature of your spreadsheet tool. Simply search for \n and leave the replace field blank, then run the replace function. This will remove all instances of \n from the table, which should fix any formatting issues.

Keep in mind that this solution may not work for all formatting issues, but it can be a helpful troubleshooting step if you are having difficulty transferring data between tables.

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Reverse the order of importing posts

If you want to reverse the order of the rows in your CSV file so that the posts are created from old to new in Webflow, you can add a column with numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) in front of the existing data in the table. Then, you can use the sort feature of your spreadsheet tool to sort the entire table by this new column, from largest to smallest.

This will reverse the order of the rows in the table, so that the first row in the table becomes the last row in the CSV file, and vice versa. When you import this CSV file into Webflow, the posts will be created in the reversed order, from old to new.

Keep in mind that this solution will only work if you have a consistent numbering system in your table, with no gaps or duplicates. If your table has missing or duplicate numbers, you may need to use a different method to reverse the rows in the CSV file.

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Creating a Blog CMS Collection in Webflow

To create a Blog CMS Collection in Webflow, follow these steps:

1. First click on the "Collections" tab.
2. Then click on the "New Collection" button.
3. Give your Collection a name (e.g. "Blog Posts")
4. Choose your required fields for the blog collection or choose a collection template from webflow
5. Click on the "Create Collection" button to create your new Blog CMS Collection.
6. Webflow will automatically create a set of fields for your Collection, including title, body, date, author, and more. You can customize these fields or add new ones as needed.
7. Once your Collection is set up, you can start adding blog posts to it by clicking on the "Add Item" button. You can enter the content for your blog post in the fields provided and use the Webflow Designer to customize the layout and styling of your post.

That's it! Your Blog CMS Collection is now set up and ready to use. You can repeat these steps to create additional Collections for any other types of content you want to manage in Webflow.

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Read out an existing sub-page structure on a website

Using a tool like https://www.xml-sitemaps.com can be helpful when determining which 301 redirects you may need to create in your Webflow project. This tool can generate a list of all the URLs on your website, which you can then use to identify any changed URLs that require a 301 redirect.

By setting up the necessary 301 redirects, you can ensure that your website visitors and search engines are able to access the correct pages on your website, even if the URL has changed. This is especially important if you have made significant changes to your website structure or have migrated your content to a new platform.

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301 Import redirects into Webflow

While creating a CSV file for import into Webflow, you may decide to change the titles of some of your blog posts. This can have unintended consequences, as the slug (alias) of the post will also change and the post will no longer be accessible under the old link. To prevent this, it is important to create a 301 redirect for any changed posts in the Webflow project settings.

To avoid having to create all of the 301 redirects individually, you can use a trick in the browser console to import them into Webflow. This can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you have a large number of changed posts.

By following this process, you can ensure that your changed blog posts are still accessible and do not return a 404 error for search engines.

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