Just to add my experience to this. I actually have multiple high-end hosting servers that I use for my clients websites. Just installed WordPress 2.0 for the first time, and then attempted to use the import feature to bring over about 40 blogger posts.
I came across the same ‘timeout’ experience with PHP that others have. Although we run quite high end php websites with a lot of complex processing and workflows we have never had an issue on these servers even keeping the php script timeout at 60 seconds. In addition this particular server is sitting on a triple redundant 3 gigabits per second link. So I was a bit confused as to what could possibly be causing the processing timeframes seen other than a lack of responsiveness by the blogspot servers.
I have confirmed through detailed monitoring that there is virtually no processing load on the server, connectivity, etc. during the part of the process in which it seems to ‘hang’. However, I have also confirmed that if given enough time and memory that the script *will* eventually succeed as it is written.
As much as I hate to say it it seemed that in my testing the faster the system was on which I attempted to do the import the worse off the problem was. When testing an import on an internal development test server that was absolutely bogged down at the time it made it much further through the script.
I increased the servers php script timeout to 180 seconds and increased the script memory from 8MB default to 16MB. It still failed, just at a later point. I then just kept repeating the import. Since the script skips already imported entries it allows it to get further each time. After 4 more imports I got everything into the system.
Note that this was only around 35-40 blogger posts.
My current strong suspicion is that the issue does lie in the import script itself. Perhaps in conjunction with something at the blogspot servers, a certain type of data or syntax in particular posts being imported, etc, etc., but there’s definitely an issue in the code. I haven’t attempted to parse through the code to examine where exactly this is happening though. If it would benefit the author (sorry, just can’t remember your name at the moment) for me to do so I’d be happy to do so. I could also give you access to my blogger account information to import those posts directly….and a wordpress installation on my server to test with if it came to that.
Cheers,
Matt
