Export/Import Rapid Weaver Blog?

Elements
1

My Rapid Weaver Classic site has a blog page with posts dating back to 2008 (Lander Theme). Mike Freeman Blog

I’m trying to rebuild my site in Elements but none of my blog posts imported to my blog page.

Is there a way to export those posts from Classic and or import them into Elements?

If not, any suggestions on how to recreate my blog post history in Elements?

2

What you need is to use the CMS in Elements. Unfortunately, it requires Markdown files.

So what you do is:

  1. Find the MarkDownload (MD) plug-in for Safari.
  2. On each page of your blog site, use MD to create a Markdown file of the page.
  3. Using a Markdown editor, such as One Markdown, strip out any non-post text, and save that file in a folder somewhere.
  4. Go through every markdown file in that folder and add the appropriate header information to it at the top. This can typically done with a macro/key substitute, though you may have to manually enter dates.
  5. Drag all the edited Markdown files in that folder to a CMS folder in Elements, and then use the CMS components to display them. Warning: there are some tricky bits to this that you might need help with (I know I do from time to time).

@dan if you’re reading this, what would you give me if I wrote a “How to make an Elements Blog” ebook (based on the site I sent you via email that I created with the Microblog project)? Not looking for money, but the CMS is such a pain point for so many it really needs a good step-by-step, point-by-point, explanation-by-explanation resource.

3

Let’s find a way to make this E-book happen.

4

Thom, thanks so much for this detailed info.

It does sound quite involved!

I’ll give it a try and see where I end up, but this may be above my ability/comprehension.

As you suggest, it would be great if Rapid Weaver created a quick easy way to make this happen without major surgery.

Thanks again for your reply.

5

I’d say that it’s a little convoluted, not involved. Once you have the right tools, it’s really just a matter of using them in the right order.

6

Thom, speaking of the right tools, I can’t get past step 1 so far. “Find the MarkDownload (MD) plug-in for Safari.”

Where do I find the Safari Markdown plugin? When I search for MarkDownload (MD) plug-in for Safari in the App store, all kinds of apps show up that have nothing to do with saving a page as a markdown file.

I’ve downloaded Mark Down Editor but it’s not a plugin. I downloaded Single File plugin that saves the page as html and I downloaded Copy Link in Markdown that copies only the link.

It’s also unclear to me if this method will maintain photos associated with my posts.

7

assume this one?

CleanShot 2025-11-30 at 15.36.00@2x
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8

Correct.

9
  1. Open the macOS App Store.
  2. Search for MarkDownload.
  3. Buy and download it.
  4. Once in your Application folder doubleclick on it and follow instructions to add as an extension to Safari.
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10

I prefer One Markdown to Markdown Editor.

Also note that some of the Markdown things described in Markdown Editor don’t work in the CMS.

As for images, you should get them when you clip the page with MarkDownload. But it’ll be an inline reference. One of the things that just needs more step-by-step documentation is how to handle external image references in the CMS properly.

As I noted, the process is convoluted for the moment. It involves a lot of steps for each blog page you want to move from an existing site to an Elements CMS one. But if you do the process right a few times, it starts to become second nature. For sites with a ton of blog posts, you’ll be cranking for awhile. For that I’d recommend just staying in your old site and strip all your pages into Markdown with MarkDownload into a folder somewhere, then use One Markdown to clean them all up, and only then move them into Elements.

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