[wp-hackers] Keywords to tags

[Scot Hacker]

> From: "Lloyd Budd" <lloydomattic at gmail.com>
>

> On 6/14/07, Scot Hacker <shacker at birdhouse.org> wrote:
>> WP's Movable Type importer currently ignore the Keywords field in MT
>> export files, which is unfortunate when you want to convert a client
>> who's been on MT for years and wants to switch, but isn't willing to
>> lose their tagging system.
>>
>> I've modified wp-admin/import/mt.php to successfully convert MT
>> keywords to WordPress postmeta  as a "keywords" field (UTW then does
>> a good job of converting these fields to tags).
>>
>> Is there enough demand out there for something like this that I
>> should consider submitting a patch? If there's no chance of it being
>> accepted, I'll just post the patch in some forums.
>
> Yes, please submit a ticket with a sample import file (and a patch
> against trunk using the new tagging system ;-)). This is very relevant
> with the tagging being added to trunk.

The reason I've  got them  going into  postmeta  keywords rather   
than straight  to  tags is  that people use  MT keywords for all   
sorts of things, not necessarily tagging systems.

For example: On one MT system  I run, a small  handful  of  students   
posts stories on behalf of a  hundred  others.  But the bylines  of  
those stories need  to be those of the authors, not the posters. So  
we enter:

name=John Doe
email=john at doe.com

in the MT keywords field and a plugin/template change takes  care of  
the byline. If  I  were to convert  that  site to WP, I wouldn't   
want  those items to become tags, but would  want them  kept as  
metadata.

Maybe that  system is an extreme minority case, but I  suspect a lot  
of people are using  MT keywords for all sorts of non-taggy purposes.  
So I'm inclined to keep  my importer modification as it is and not  
go  straight to tags. Agree  or  disagree?

It would however  be a good  idea for WP's tagging system to emulate  
UTW's ability  to convert  postmeta data, so the admin has  the  
option to  convert  to  tags  after  initial  import.

Scot