As you may know, the crew behind BlackBlogs has announced that they will be shutting down their WordPress service after years of dutiful service to liberatory movements. BlackBlogs users have until June 30th, 2025 to migrate their blogs to new sites. Migrating to another WordPress host like NoBlogs is relatively easy, but you must migrate before BlackBlogs goes dark.
You can migrate your site to another WordPress host like network23.org or your own self-hosted site, but NoBlogs is what we use and like.
1 – Setup Your New Site
Head over to NoBlogs.org and register for an account.
Much like BlackBlogs, you can only register an account from a whitelist of invite-only movement email providers, such as Riseup. The same email you registered your BlackBlogs site should work for NoBlogs. You can always go in and change the admin email later.
Pick you site URL and site title. If you doing a 1:1 migration from BlackBlogs, you can pick the same URL and site title as your current site. In this example, we are moving from patriotfail.blackblogs.org to patriotfail.noblogs.org.
Once your site is created, you can login and you will be greeted with a familiar WordPress interface.
Great! Your new blog is setup. Now we need to make sure our settings match and move our posts over.
2 – Match Settings
Before we move our site content over to the new site, we should make sure some key settings match our BlackBlogs site.
We recommend going through the settings menu to ensure that all settings match, but at very least check the following:
- Settings > General > Timezone / Date Format / Time Format
- Settings > Reading > Your homepage displays / Site visibility
- Settings > Media > Image Sizes
- Settings > Permalink > Permalink Structure (very important!)
You can always tweak your settings after you get your new site up and running, but we recommend making sure everything matches for a smooth landing.
3 – Export from BlackBlogs
Now we’re going to export our content from our BlackBlogs site onto our NoBlogs site.
Login to your BlackBlogs WordPress panel (an easy way to get there is to go to mysite.blackblogs.org/wp-admin)
From the left hand menu, go to Tools > Export
The export tool will automatically select “All Content”. You can try this option, but it did not work for us when migrating to NoBlogs, so instead we created exports of our Posts, Pages, and Media separately. It’s possible the database of our specific site is corrupted and yours will work with the All Content export, so give that a try. If you get an error when importing that file, you can split up the exports as we demonstrate:
You will be offered options to filter the content you wish to export. Leave these settings as they are if you don’t want to filter out any content.
Click Download Export File at the bottom of the page and save the XML file somewhere safe on your computer.
You can change the name of the file to indicate what type of content it is, and to ensure the other exports do not overwrite each other, as they will have the same filename.
Please be aware that these export files do not contain the full contents of the posts on your BlackBlogs sites, just links and excerpts that NoBlogs (or whatever WordPress host you use) will use to scrape from BlackBlogs. This is why this process must be done while BlackBlogs is still live.
4 – Import to NoBlogs
Now that we have our data from BlackBlogs exported, we can import it using the same tool in NoBlogs.
Over on NoBlogs, go to Tools > Import
Click Run Importer.
Select your Media export file and then click “Upload file and Import”
You can assign post authorship to users on your NoBlogs site. Make sure to select “Download and import file attachments” and click Submit.
NoBlogs will now scrape all the media from your BlackBlogs site and import it to your NoBlogs media library. This may take several minutes depending on how much media you are importing. Let it run. If you get an error, try again. It took a few tries to get everything imported over for us.
An error doesn’t mean content was not imported!
Eventually, you should have all your media files moved over. You can check by go to Media > Library.
Now, go through the same process but for your Posts and Pages. This import should be faster.
If the imports were successful, you will be able to view all of the posts from you BlackBlogs site, complete with images, on your NoBlogs site. Check to see that all your posts & are on the new site, they should load with images.
5 – Set the Theme
Now that all of our content is migrated over to NoBlogs, we will want to configure how the site looks.
From the sidebar, go to Appearance > Themes.
NoBlogs and BlackBlogs both have their own set of themes, but there is some overlap. If you want to keep your site looking exactly the same, try to find the theme you are currently using on your BlackBlogs site in the NoBlogs theme library. In our case, we are using the theme Twenty Seventeen, which is available on both platforms.
Find the theme you want to use and click Activate. This will publish the new theme to your site. Some of these older WordPress themes look good on desktop, but do not allow for easy reading on mobile, so we recommend testing your theme on mobile to make sure that it works across devices.
Now click Customize.
Now we just need to get our site designed how we like. If you are trying to make a 1:1 copy of your BlackBlogs site onto NoBlogs, you can open both theme editors next to each other and make sure all the images and settings match. Otherwise, play around with the options available until your site is laid out and has the functionality you need.
Before
After
That’s it! Make sure to browse through your site to make sure everything is working before you sign out for the day.
If you have any questions, Contact Us.
We want to thank the BlackBlogs crew for the years of service to the movement!
We also want to thank Autistici, who runs NoBlogs, and encourage you to donate to support their work. If you have ever wanted to donate to our project to support our work, please donate to Autistici. They provide us with platform and we need them to stay online to continue our work.