How to Move Your Blog from Tumblr to WordPress

Tumblr is an awesome micro-blogging platform, but there are some obvious limitations to it. Tumblr users who want to do more with their blogs usually seek refuge in self hosted WordPress. We have helped numerous users transfer their tumblr blog to WordPress. Having done it enough times, we thought we should outline a step by step guide on how to migrate your tumblr content over to WordPress. In this post we will show you how to properly move your Tumblr blog to WordPress, so you can do it on your own without hiring a developer.

Things You Need Before You Start

You will need to have a domain name and a good WordPress hosting company. We highly recommend that you use Bluehost because they will give you a free domain and 50% off their hosting plan (special for WPBeginner users). Not to mention that Bluehost is also an officially recommended hosting provider of WordPress.

You will need to install WordPress on your site. Lastly, you will need to have your Tumblr account access on hand.

Migrating Content from Tumblr to WordPress

Once you have installed WordPress, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and click on Tools » Import:

On the import screen click on Tumblr to install Tumblr Importer plugin.

Once the plugin is installed click on Activate Plugin & Run Importer. This will take you to Tumblr import page. In order to import your Tumblr blog to WordPress, you need to create an app using Tumblr API. This is a fairly straight forward procedure. Tumblr import page has instructions on how to do that. Most importantly it will show you the URL you need to use as the default callback URL in the next step, so copy this URL. Now go to Tumblr Applications page and click on the Green +Register Application button. 

On the app registration form the only required fields are Application name, Application Website and Default CallBack URL. Rest of the fields can be left blank. In the application name you can use your WordPress blog’s name. In Application Website URL field, you can enter your WordPress blog URL. For Default Call Back URL, enter the URL provided by your Tumblr Importer plugin. Register your application and on the next screen Tumblr will show you OAuth Consumer Key and Secret Key. Copy these keys and paste them on Tumblr Importer plugin page on your WordPress blog. Once you have done that, then press Connect to Tumblr button.

On the next screen, click on “Authorize the application”. This will take you to Tumblr, and you will be asked to allow this application read-write access to your Tumblr account. Click on allow to give the importer plugin access to your Tumblr account.

Once you have granted the application access to your Tumblr account, you will be redirected to your WordPress site’s Tumblr importer plugin page. Tumblr Importer will now be showing blogs associated with your Tumblr account. Click on “Import this blog” button next to the blog you want to import. 

The importer will then start importing your posts from Tumblr to WordPress. The duration of this process will depend on the number of posts you have on your Tumblr blog. During the process it will show you the progress. Once the importer is done it will show you the status as “Finished”. The Tumblr Importer plugin attempts to import your posts using the correct post formats. For example a text post in Tumblr will be imported as a regular post, an image will be imported as gallery, quotes will be imported as quote and so on.

Now you are done migrating your content from Tumblr to WordPress, however we are not done with the entire process. We have a fairly huge problem at our hands which is redirecting our old Tumblr users over to our new blog.

Redirecting Tumblr URLs to WordPress

If you were using a custom domain on your Tumblr blog (like mysite.com), then this process is going to be rather easy. If you were using mysite.tumblr.com, then the process is going to require a few extra steps. Let’s look at both steps one by one.

Redirecting Old Tumblr URLs to WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Redirection plugin.

Once activated, go to Tools » Redirection. Create a single redirection using regular expressions like so:

Source URL would have: .*/post/\d+/(.*)

Destination URL would have: /$1

Click on the “Add Redirection” button, and you are done. Now all of your old Tumblr blog URLs like this:

www.yourdomain.com/post/2610988231/my-post

Will redirect to your WordPress post URL that looks like this:

www.yourdomain.com/my-post/

Note: In order for this to work, your permalink structure must be set to Post Name. You can do this by going to Settings » Permalinks and check the Post Name checkbox.

If you had a custom domain on Tumblr, then you are done here. If you were using the tumblr.com subdomain, then please continue to the next step.

Redirecting Tumblr.com Pages to WordPress

You would need to edit your Tumblr theme. Go to your TUmblr Account settings, and click on your blog. Next to theme, there should be an option to Customize. 

Click on Edit HTML on the left hand side, and paste the following code inside the head element:

//Inside of <head>
<meta name="description" content="this is a legacy blog page">
<script type='text/javascript'>
   var new_slug = window.location.pathname;
   var new_root = "http://your-new-url.com";
   var new_url = new_root + new_slug;
   document.write("<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"" + new_url + "\">");
</script>

Then paste the following code inside your body element:

//Inside of <body>
 <script type='text/javascript'>
    window.location = new_url;
</script>

This should do the job for you. Now you have successfuly moved your tumblr blog to WordPress.

We hope that this article helped you import your Tumblr blog to the powerful WordPress platform. Once you have imported your Tumblr blog to WordPress you might want to familiarize your self with the new blogging tool you are using.