medium_to_ghost 0.0.4
Convert a Medium blog export file to Ghost 2.0 format (including images)
License: MIT license
Keywords: Medium

Medium to Ghost 2.0
===================

Feeling locked into Medium.com? Instantly move all your content
(formatted posts + images) to an open source `Ghost
2.0 <https://blog.ghost.org/2-0/>`__ blog!

.. figure:: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/896692/44764117-0c097c80-ab03-11e8-8925-bcc4c584059c.png
   :alt: Migrate your data out of Medium to Ghost

   Migrate your data out of Medium to Ghost

This code converts all your Medium.com posts to a Ghost 2.0.x import
file. With that, you can import all your content into a
`Ghost <https://ghost.org/>`__ blog (hosted anywhere) in seconds. Your
posts keep the same formatting and all your images are migrated over
too.

Why?
----

Medium.com is a nice platform for creating blog posts. I use it and
enjoy it.

But you should never feel like your content is locked into someone
else’s privately-owned platform. This gives you the option to move your
content to your own blog if you want to do it. It’s also a quick way to
back up all your Medium.com content (especially your images which they
don’t export) in case the site disappears someday.

I hacked this together quickly to move my blog, `Machine Learning is
Fun! <https://www.machinelearningisfun.com/>`__ from Medium to a
self-hosted Ghost site. Hopefully it’s useful to someone else too. More
options is always good, right?

Requirements
------------

-  A blog running Ghost v2.0.3+ (*NOT Ghost 1.x*). Both Self-hosted or
   professionally hosted Ghost instances are both fine.
-  A Medium.com account where you’ve previously written content.
-  Python 3.6+ to run this program

Installing this program
-----------------------

After you’ve `installed Python
3.6+ <https://www.python.org/downloads/>`__, you can install this
program by opening up a terminal window and running this command:

Mac / Linux
~~~~~~~~~~~

.. code:: python

   pip3 install medium_to_ghost

Windows
~~~~~~~

.. code:: python

   pip install medium_to_ghost

How to use this to export your Medium content
---------------------------------------------

1. Install `Python 3.6+ <https://www.python.org/downloads/>`__. Lower
   versions won’t work!
2. Install this program (See “Installing this program”)
3. Go to https://medium.com/me/settings and find
   ``Download your information``. There’s a button to export your data
   and email it to you.
4. Wait for the email from Medium and download your zip file. This will
   give you a file called ``medium-export.zip``
5. Run ``python3 -m medium_to_ghost.medium_to_ghost medium-export.zip``
   which will produce ``medium_export_for_ghost.zip``. This new zip file
   contains all your converted Medium posts and images from your posts.
   Make sure to put the full path to the zip file if it’s not in the
   current directory. This may take a few minutes if you have lots of
   images in your posts since they all have to be downloaded.
6. Go into Ghost 2.0.3+, navigate to /ghost/, click on ‘Labs’, and
   choose to import that zip file.
7. That’s it!

What gets moved over
--------------------

When exporting content from Medium, the following features are
supported:

-  Both published articles and drafts are moved over. So even if you are
   in the middle of writing a new post, it should be a seamless
   transition.
-  Most Medium.com content is replicated perfectly in Ghost, including
   text formatting, embedded Github gists, image cards with captions,
   Upscribe mailing list signup forms, etc.
-  If your Medium posts have a featured image, that will come over
   automatically too.

What is lost when moving over
-----------------------------

-  Comments are not moved over to Ghost
-  Story highlights are not moved over to Ghost
-  I tried to make the Ghost output as similar to Medium as possible.
   However, there may be bugs or types of Medium content I haven’t seen
   before, so always check the results in Ghost carefully. I just made
   sure it worked for all my articles. No warranty! :)

Warnings!
---------

-  Hopefully this code will work for you, but it may have bugs and cause
   your computer to explode. Make sure you test everything out on a test
   Ghost instance before you import anything into a live blog.
-  Starting with Ghost v2.17, you can set the canonical url of a post.
   This tool will attempt to automatically set up the imported Ghost
   posts to point back to original Medium URLs to avoid any SEO impact
   of switching blogging platforms. If you don’t want your posts to
   point back to Medium, you will need to go in and remove the Canonical
   URL setting for each imported post.
-  Ghost 2.0.3+ has `a bug with image paths in import
   files <https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9821>`__. This tool
   may need to be updated when that bug is fixed in order for it to keep
   working, but it works for now (Checked up to Ghost 2.18.3).