exhume

README

Exhume - Dig up and export your dead LiveJournal

Importing your LiveJournal into the Hugo site generator

If you're like me, you can no longer use LiveJournal given their latest terms of use.

I wrote this tool to import my LiveJournal into a new blog. I chose the Hugo blogging engine, as it is super fast, runs on any PC, and you can host the output on AWS or a bunch of free hosting sites.

You should dump your blog with LJDump which will produce a file for each entry named (eg.) L-99 and a file for each Comment.

Comments (in files C-99 etc.) will be read and processed if present. Threading is not implemented. Spam, Banned and deleted comments will be ignored by default (use exhume post --help to see how to change this).

If you run this script on the entry files, it will output markdown files.

Example of use

First install and configure Hugo and LJDump from their authors.

You should read about how to install themes for hugo.

Next, install exhume

   go get -v github.com/unixbigot/exhume

The main event, dump and convert your LiveJournal:

   hugo new site exhumed-journal
   mkdir exhumed-journal/import
   cd exhumed-journal/import
   ljdump.py
   exhume post L-*
   mv L-*.md ../content/post
   cd ..
   hugo server
   # Now open http://localhost:1313/ to see if it worked

Once you've done the above, you can install a theme for Hugo, and upload your blog.

   # Generate a static website
   hugo --theme my-chosen-theme
   
   # Upload the files in public/
   rsync public/ my_hosting_server:/my/hosting/path
   # or
   aws s3 sync --acl public-read public/ s3://name.of.my.s3.bucket

For an example, here is My old Livejournal now preserved under my own control at Amazon.