Migraine...I mean, migrating between Movable Type blogs

Migrating between two Movable Type blogs is deceptively easy. I say it's deceptively easy because it seems easy, but doesn't work the way you'd expect.

You export your entries from the one MT blog to a file, then import them into the new system by placing it in a special directory. Surprisingly, MT does not support web-based importing, and it does not clean up the imports file after it has finished with it, nor does it support restricting imports to a single blog (the import directory is MT-install wide).

But all seems well after you do the import. Except for one tiny detail: your custom templates are not included in the export file! D'oh! There goes your cool custom look...there goes any MT hackery you've done. That really sucks. I wish exporting the templates was an option in the software.

My suggestion is to always link your custom templates to files, then copy all those files to the new install when you move (you have to do this for your image files anyway). After you import your entries, edit the templates in the new install to link them to the files.

I just learned this the hard way.