Import HTML pages as Joomla articles in seconds!

Hi Hugues,

Tim Davis here, helping with support.

Thanks for your question. HTML2Articles is not the tool you are looking for going from J2.5 to J5. it is only for importing .html pages into Joomla.

To go from J2.5 to J5, I recommend you use our too MigrateMe Plus to go from 2.5 (https://www.php-web-design.com/migrate_me_plus/) and then use our tool MigrateMe 4 to go from J3 to J4 (https://www.php-web-design.com/Joomla-Components/fool-proof-migrations-from-joomla-3-to-joomla-4-x.html) From there it is a simple update to j5.

I know that is dumping a lot of info on you, but if you would like connect via a video call or further emails I would be happy to answer any further question you have in your efforts to get your site into the latest Joomla version.

Also, depending on the suitability of your site and privacy concerns, I am looking for a J2.5 site to use in a demo video. If you are interested and willing I would be happy to help with that stage for free.

God bless,

Tim
[email protected]

Hi Michael,

Tim Davis here, helping with support.

HTML2Articles only works with Joomla 3 at this point so it runs great on the PHP versions that J3 Requires. That provides a path to import your site into higher versions of Joomla as after you have your content in J3 you can simply run the migration to J4 and then update to J5.

God bless,

Tim

I am also checking to see if HTML2Articles is going to have a Joomla4 compatible version

Hi, any date for the new release?

Hi,
any Release Date? It isn't functional with PHP8 too....

Tim Davis here helping out with this one.

HTML 2 articles is not yet compatible with Joomla 4 with no firm date for when it will be.

However, in your search to import HTML pages into a Joomla site, I offer this somewhat clumsy work around:

1. Install a new Joomla 3 site, without any of the sample pages
2. Using HTML 2 Articles, import the html pages you want into the Joomla 3 site.

At this point, if the goal is to convert an entire html site into a new J4 site, simply migrate the J3 site to J4.

However, if you wish to add the imported articles to an existing J4 site, you could use one of the various methods you can find online that describe how to move articles from a J3 site to a J4 site. However, finding the best way - or even one that works is a bit of a minefield. The paid solution I would try is SPTransfer - https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/sp-transfer/ However I've not used that on a J3 to J4 export, so I am not guaranteeing it.

Another path to migrate content into an existing Joomla 4 site would be the Joomla 4 API. This video will introduce you to that method: https://youtu.be/ZH3a4MHB718

I hope that helps. I know it's not the answer you were hoping for, but hopefully the other ideas may help. Keep me posted on what you find and feel free to ask more questions if you have them - [email protected]

Yes, I need this too!

Hello,

This extension migrates HTML content to Joomla articles only, it is not able to migrate users, menus or categories.

You might be looking for MigrateMe or MigrateMe Plus if you want to migrate an existing Joomla install to an updated version?

There are no extensions at the moment to migrate users from *another* CMS system to Joomla.

Regards

Hello,

Thanks for your message.

1 - Yes you can import html files into Joomla using this software

2 - You will need to convert these files to HTML. Please be aware that the software will import the content, but the styling must be recreated if needed, generally you'd do that through adapting your Joomla template

3 - That's the only way yes

Thanks for your questions! Have a great day

Hi Rolf,

Likely possible, but I don't have an extension that will handle that sadly. You'll probably need a custom built extension, or maybe a one-off migration.

Regards, Barnaby

Hi there,

The article creation date is set as the date the article is created - it's not possible to import the date from the original HTML page.

Sorry about that!

Barnaby

Hey David!

You can upload HTML files to Joomla using HTML 2 Articles without any network access at all. You'd be uploading static HTML files, saved as .htm or .html , and uploading them to your local Joomla instance.

It's only if you want to automatically retrieve the original images that you'd need network access, and the Joomla server would need to access the original remote domain in order to save them to the new Joomla server. If no network access is available to the new server, you can still run the import, then upload the images manually.

Regards, Barnaby

Hi there Joyce

Thank you for your question.

Yes HTML 2 Articles can import your pages to Joomla articles for you.

I would suggest going slowly at first, to ensure your settings are correct. Once you're happy with the way pages are importing you can import all the pages, hundreds at a time :-)

The way to do this would be to import the 'internal' pages. So, for example, instead of importing this page: http://janvanhout.nl/brand/br_frame.htm you would want to instead import the inner frame, which is this: http://janvanhout.nl/brand/fam/adrichem.htm

That way you can import the content, without importing the extra menus.

And the way to reproduce the menus would be to create first a category structure that matches your existing website structure. Then create a menu that matches the category structure.

This way you can import the content to the correct categories, and you can use the Joomla menu and module manager to manage the menus, headers and sidebars.

I hope that helps!

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there,

Yes that is correct. HTML 2 Articles will find your original images, and import them to the new Joomla system. It will save each image in the /images/ folder. This means that when you turn off the old website, they'll still be available and visible.

I would suggest running a test import with just one page to check the image settings are correct and working well, before importing all pages.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

The images will

Hi Vincent

Thank you for your email.

Word is a bit of an edge case. It does work, but Microsoft adds a huge amount of its own proprietary invalid HTML, such as font formatting, spacings, things like that, which can't be used in Joomla. HTML 2 Articles can strip those out by enabling the W3C Validation option, so you have a correct HTML valid article.

Images are a bit of a problem, if I remember correctly, Word saves the images in the document as something like image1.jpg, image2.jpg and so forth - for all documents, in individual folders. As you can imagine, this causes a bit of a problem with name conflicts.

So, will the file upload into HTML 2 Articles? Yes it will, but it's not perfect.

You might find it's easier to create the article directly in Joomla, but make the access for Administrators only, so the public can't see the new article until it's been approved.

I hope that helps! All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Thank you Guy!!

Barnaby

Hi there,

Thank you for getting in touch.

Unfortunately, without an ID or some way to identify the content area, it'll be impossible to strip out the content you want with any accuracy.

The best solution for you would be HTML 2 Articles, but I'd recommend first going through each page and adding 'id="mycontent"' or similar to the section of the page that holds your content.

Similarly you'd want to change the tag to hold the title you want as your Joomla article title - HTML 2 Articles needs this to be able to identify the title.

This might be possible with a mass Search & Replace tool such as Funduc Search & Replace.

I hope that helps.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there,

Thank you for getting in touch.

HTML 2 Articles allows you to upload HTML files directly into your Joomla system, and will convert them automatically to Joomla articles. You will need to select HTML files that are stored on your local harddrive.

After import, you can find your new articles in the HTML 2 Articles log screen, or in the Joomla Articles Manager.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there,

Thank you for your question. The basic answer is yes, it will work - but please send me a sample word document along with its image files, and I will send specific recommendations on which settings to use. You can reply directly to this email.

Thanks! Barnaby Dixon

Hi Patrick,

I'm afraid not - the MS Word format can only be translated by MS Word. Your documents will need to be in HTML format to be understood by HTML 2 Articles.

You could try this: http://word2cleanhtml.com/

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi Colin

No, not automatically - although you can define where to put the intro / main text split with a little editing of your HTML file pre-import. You just add at the point where you'd like the split in your page.

I hope that helps.

All the best

Hi Steve

Thank you for your great question. Your situation sounds perfect for HTML 2 Articles. Yes you can use HTML 2 Articles to import all your locally stored HTML code, which is the recommended usage anyway.

All uploaded documents will be parsed and saved as Joomla articles, and all metatags and document information will be saved correctly to the database.

I hope that helps. All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Barnaby;
Thanks for the quick response. Just what I needed to hear. This should turn into a huge time saver, allowing the old articles to take on the style of the new site with minimal editing. Look for my order shortly.

Steve M.

Barnaby;
I have the HTML-2-ARTICLE doing a pretty good job of reading sub-webs off my local backups and moving the HTML code. There were some specific tricks I had to pull beyond using H2A for the FP conversion I will be glad to pass along.
But I am still perplexed in trying to get the images moved. In the log I get an error:

Unable to access your old website URL at \\NRSERVER2\documents\biketech/ Error icon 2014-03-22 21:49:36
Aborting image and document import - your references will be updated so you can upload your images and documents manually

Interesting thing is I can click on the same file I want to convert by H2A in my browser, and the file will display w/images.
It did take me a while to figure out the configuration parameter for images in H2A (images/biketech/), so I am relatively sure I got that correct.

The only thing that I have noticed is in qualified name listed in the error msg is that the "\" and "/" used in the qualification for the file name do not appear compatible with the MS file system.

Hope you can give me some insight or ask me the right questions so I can get the proper information to you so moving the images is not a manual task.

Thanks.

Hi Steve

Unfortunately this is the product of some very excellent security in your browser. The images I'm guessing are on your local or networked computer? Fortunately our browsers aren't able to directly access files on our computers without jumping through some pretty good security hoops, and in this case the browser can't read the images from your local store.

There are two options here. The first is to upload the images to a directory online so you can point the original image location to http://www.yourserver.com. The second option (which will probably be faster) is to set the Import Images option to 'Just update references'. Then use FTP to upload the images to your new Joomla images folder, and they should be picked up by the new articles as you upload them.

I hope that helps. All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Barnaby;
Thanks for the info. Since I have full admin rights on the server and know a few tricks with the Browser, I may try to beat it into submission just to see if I can do it.

But I suspect I will end up having to do it the way you described. I will just update the reference and FTP images into the directory.

I appreciate the help and should be able to move forward quickly again.

Steve M.

Hi there John

Thank you for your question. By using Joomla, you're actually forced to use the Joomla technology and navigational methods. I would suggest that you try to set up a simple article to try to achieve what you need as a test. HTML 2 Articles copies the content of your old site, but not the functionality - it will populate the Article Manager with your old HTML content.

Yes, it can preserve the structure of each page, but you will probably want to use the new Joomla menu manager, and modules functionality that is included with Joomla.

I hope that helps. All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Good afternoon John,

My apologies - I have been snowed under the past 24 hours! I have just reviewed your site. Although it has HTML markup, the content appears to be dynamic, so I would recommend that you use NetSukii, which will be fully capable of discovering all content, and then importing it to your Joomla system along with all images.

I hope that helps, and again my apologies for a slow reply.

All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Sorry, I tried to enter the html so you could see it but it did not show up.

Thanks for your question.

No, they are separate products. NetSukii is good for dynamic sites, while HTML 2 Articles is good for static HTML sites.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there

Thanks for your email. If your website is dynamic (i.e. it uses PHP and takes pages from a database) then you'll probably need NetSukii, also available from this website. NetSukii can scan and import pages from any system.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Jared

Thanks for your email. Yes absolutely - if you have the original HTML files you can just feed them into Joomla using HTML 2 Articles. If you don't have the original HTML files available you'll need NetSukii also available from this site.

All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Nick,
Thank you for your question. The basic answer is yes, the styles can usually be maintained and saved into your new Joomla articles. But if you'd like to send over an example page I'd be happy to attempt an import to check that it works as expected with your pages.
All the best, Barnaby Dixon

What about what option...?

Hi there Javier

Thank you for your question. Yes you can change the publish date in the wizard, and then import your articles, and then repeat. Very easy :-)

All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Well...i know i can change it in the wizard but i want to know if the plugin can be set up to automatically set for example the date 25-11-13 to the first article imported, the 26-11-13 to the second article imported, the 27-11-13 to the third an so....i want the plugin can make it automatically for a great bulk of them...
thanks...

Hi - no it won't be done automatically, you'll need to change the article creation date in the wizard each time you want it to change.

Hi Albert,
Thank you for your great question. Anything in your HTML can and will be imported. So the key is to check how the data is presented in the source code. If it's heavily reliant on javascript it's not going to work with Joomla without heavy modification, but if it's simple HTML5 it should work. If you can send me a sample page for analysis I should be able to double check for you.
All the best
Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Marjan

Yes, actually you can enter multiple areas in the following format:

div||id||myid,div||id||myotherid,p||class||myclass

The format is: tag||attribute||value. You can therefore select as many areas as you like, just separate the entries with a comma ( , ).

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you need any more information, or if I can help further in any way.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi Huw,

Images are automatically added using their original names, and uploaded into the /images/ folder in your Joomla system.

They could potentially be uploaded into separate folders for each article, but then you could end up with a huge amount of image duplication.

All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Hi,
A number of different images already have the same name - but are in different folders.

e.g.
car1.jpg car2.jpg (in Ford)
car1.jpg car2.jpg (in Mazda)

What happens in this case?

In this case, since the images have identical names, they'll be overwritten. I would suggest revising the names prior to import. Alternatively you could use a secondary plugin or module to manage the image distribution. The basic idea would be to upload all images to an individual folder then use a plugin to retrieve the images.

Hi there Kristen,

Yes absolutely. NetSukii will spider your site, and import all the pages you want to keep, along with images and so forth.

All pages will be saved as native Joomla articles in the Article Manager. You can then use them as usual in your site.

All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Kat,
Thank you for your question. If your articles have the same alias, they'll be treated just as Joomla would treat them, so they'll have a number added. So if you have three pages called 'page.html' they'll become page, page-1, page-2 in the Article Manager alias.
All the best - Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Vaso,
I recommend using NetSukii, which you can download at http://www.php-web-design.com/Joomla-Components/netsukii-the-ultimate-content-spider-for-joomla.html.
You can then remotely scan your old Joomla website, and import all pages very quickly and efficiently using the inbuilt spider and import tool.
All the best,
Barnaby Dixon

Hi there,
Thank you for your question. HTML 2 Articles is perfect for importing HTML files, and it will work just fine on a localhost.
You just have to select HTML files for import (you can select many at once) and then each file will be imported and converted to an article in about 20 seconds, and where possible, will also import images, related documents and so forth to your Joomla 3.0 install.
All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there Joseph,
We updated HTML 2 Articles a few months ago, and Joomla 3.0 is now natively supported.
All the best,
Barnaby Dixon

Thank you very much

Hi there,

Thanks for buying! The error you got is almost always to do with file permissions - the server isn't letting you install the component where it needs to go.

There are two things I'd suggest. Firstly just check that your /administrator/components/ folder has the correct permissions (should be 0755). Secondly, if it still doesn't work, check that the $tmp_path in your configuration.php file points to the correct tmp directory (and that the directory exists and has 0755 permissions).

If that doesn't work please set me up with temporary admin access and I'll see if I can work out the problem.

Thanks & all the best

Barnaby Dixon
PHP Web Design

Ok, fixed the problem. It was a permissions issue. Needed to set permissions for the tmp and various other folders to 777.

Hi there James,

Yes - full documentation is included with the product.

Most HTML files won't need any work before importing. You can simply select the DIV container that holds the content you want to import, and all unwanted content will be stripped away. For example, if your page content is in a div called you'd just set 'content' as the DIV id you want to keep, and then you can add all new menus and so forth in the Joomla menu manager as usual, keeping just the content to be saved as Joomla articles.

The article is named based on the original page's title tag.

All the best

Barnaby Dixon

Hi Nad,

Thank you for your feedback! The upgrade to HTML 2 Articles for Joomla 3.0 is free - I will email you the downloads link separately.

All the best, Barnaby Dixon

Hi Pavel,

HTML 2 Articles takes existing HTML pages and allows you to upload them into Joomla, where they are converted into Joomla articles.

If you do not have the HTML pages already stored on your computer, you will need to save them using an HTML content grabber.

Alternatively, you may find that NetSukii is a better option, since it automatically spiders and imports remote pages.

All the best,

Barnaby Dixon
PHP Web Design

Hi there Lunarts,
It's going to be tough to get a static HTML version of each page that you want to import in this case. I'd recommend you use NetSukii, which is a content spider.
All the best,
Barnaby Dixon
PHP Web Design

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Thanks for this incredible product. i think it is realy good and it helps our company realy much. is it ok that i translate this to danish i will send the files to you if it's ok with you