need assistance retaining comments through a livejournal import

Hey folks, new wordpress user here and this is my first time posting to the forums…so please feel free to let me know if this post needs further information or if it should have ideally been put someplace else! I wasn’t 100% sure whether this question most aptly belonged under “troubleshooting,” “plugins,” or possibly even “hacks.”

I have been trying, for months, to complete a total migration off livejournal to wordpress (there are a zillion reasons, I’m sure you can guess at most of them). Initially, I focused all of my efforts on wordpress.com, where I figured this might be most easily accomplished. I ran into problems however, and needed to switch to a local wordpress installation (at least temporarily) in order to tweak and experiment.

For the unaware, livejournal is currently experiencing an issue (more than a dozen support tickets and running) with its XML-RPC interface for exporting posts and comments. This completely cuts off many livejournal users (especially those who have been around a long time) from using backup clients, archive tools, or the newer-style wordpress importer (because instead of taking in XML files, it contacts livejournal directly using XML-RPC).

I had a lot of struggles getting my content out of livejournal, but eventually succeeded by using methods not reliant on XML-RPC to assemble complete XML files of all my posts and comments (over a decade’s worth). So that part is done, WHEW! What I’m working on now is getting that XML data into a local wordpress installation (with the long term goal of exporting that out to XML and uploading it to wordpress.com).

In order to have the “select an XML file” as opposed to the “contact livejournal directly via the API” functionality in my wordpress installation’s tools, I searched backwards through trac until I came upon 2.7.1, the last wordpress version before the new importer replaced the older one. I downloaded and set up 2.7.1 and over 1400 livejournal entries immediately imported into it without a hitch! I could have done backflips.

However, I can’t seem to get the old importer to recognize or do anything with my livejournal comments.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might proceed? I’m currently reading through the XML file I have with my comments in it, and tracing through how the old livejournal import PHP works, but I could really use some advice. I know other folks out there have effected total livejournal-to-wordpress switches before (without using the modern, XML-RPC method) and I’m hoping someone can give me some pointers?

Thanks very much, in advance, for your time!