Posted: Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 6:01 pm. Filed in Import, WordPress.com.
Tags: Windows Live Spaces, WordPress.com
Welcome Windows Live Spaces Bloggers
We’re excited to announce that WordPress.com is now the default blogging platform for Windows Live Spaces users. We’ve worked with our partners at Microsoft to create a simple migration service for Spaces bloggers to easily bring all their posts, comments, and photos to WordPress.com.
Over a six month period, beginning today, Windows Live Spaces users will have the option to move their blogs to WordPress.com. To make this possible, we’ve created a brand new importer for Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com. New Windows Live users will also be offered a WordPress.com blog when they choose to create a new blog.
All current links to your Windows Live Spaces blog will automatically redirect to your new WordPress.com blog after you set it up. In addition, this redirect we’ve set up will maintain your current traffic levels from search engines, as it automatically notifies search engines that your content has a new home on WordPress.com (the technical background on the 301 redirect method we’re using, if you’re interested, is here).
As part of this project, we’ve added support for Messenger Connect as a Publicize option, which enables you to automatically share updates to your WordPress.com blog with your friends who use Windows Live Messenger.
For detailed information on how the migration will work, check out this post on the Windows Live blog.
We’re very happy that Microsoft chose WordPress.com as their preferred new blogging service for Windows Live users. It’s a sign of how strong WordPress.com has become, and credit for that goes to every one of you who’s been creating here.
Getting the most out of WordPress.com
For Windows Live Spaces bloggers who are new to WordPress.com, we wanted to share a few tips for getting up and running with your new WordPress.com blog.
Learn WordPress.com
Get started with WordPress.com with this fun 10-step guide to becoming a blogging hero. We cover everything from the basics like creating your first post, through advanced topics like working with social tools.
WordPress.tv
Check out “How To” videos on just about every feature of WordPress.com on the WordPress community video site.
Support
If you need a little more help, make sure to browse our extensive support knowledge base, and get in touch with the friendly WordPress.com support team, known around here as the Happiness Engineers. You can also get user-to-user help on our support forums.
September 28th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
My Space was private. My friends will still access the Wp or must create a user in WP?
October 1st, 2010 at 3:07 pm
They must create a WordPress.com user in order to be added to your private readers list. You can read more about this here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/
September 28th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Wow, kinda disappointed but least I got somewhere to blog lol. Bit annoying having to move what I’ve got to here considering the date I posted them.
September 28th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for the welcome. I need it.
September 28th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I LOL’d. Honestly!!!
Microsoft is letting 30 million users to adopt OPEN SOURCE software. This is an epic win for all of us!
September 28th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
I have big among photos at Windows Live and I don’t wanna lose them. I want everyone who checks my WP can see my photos like my old WLS. Is there any way to transfer them to WP? Or How can I change the address of the link? It’s such a very big problem to me T_T… And I love my old WLS.
October 1st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Your photos will not be deleted from Windows Live Photos as they aren’t part of the Windows Live Spaces service.
If you would like to begin posting your photos on your new WordPress.com blog, you can certainly do that using our Gallery feature. You can read more about that here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/
September 29th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Do you think more people will view our blogs now?
September 29th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Hmm, so….why can’t my msn contacts read my blog like they used to? I have a personal blog that I share with family and friends (msn contacts 100+) And I can’t expect them to go and create WP accounts to read my blog, so why can’t they authenticate with Live ID?
If my readers can’t log in to read my blog my whole blog suddenly is rendered completely useless! :S Going public is not an option. So did I miss something here, or is this a huge loss of functionality?
October 1st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
We don’t support using Live ID as an authentication method on WordPress.com, so yes, your blog readers will need to sign up for WordPress.com accounts to work with our privacy feature.
It is not a loss of functionality—you can still have a private blog with some allowed users—but it is a change in functionality, yes.
September 29th, 2010 at 1:57 am
A terrific step for WordPress. Bon travail WordPress!
September 29th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Very good, it’s better than Windows Live Spaces!
September 29th, 2010 at 2:58 am
Wonderful! No, really. I tried blogging in my Windows Live account and disliked it immensely. I won’t bother importing, because all the good stuff is already here.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:00 am
I am not sure I like this move, but i heard a lot about WordPress, sounds good.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:36 am
I’m good with this. I’ve got friends who have WordPress so this is all good! Just need to know if I can post full stories on this site?
September 29th, 2010 at 7:34 am
I think it sucks. I just transferred here and I am not loving it. It is very limiting and it seems like they want to charge a fee for the most basic of things, like the option to change fonts/colors, give me a break, this is not an up grade it feels like a downgrade. On SPACES we had lots of options that does not seem to be applicable here with being ask to pay and endless slew of fees. The transition has not been smooth and wordpress is very restrictive in its options.
September 29th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Hahahahhaha! I shifted my blog just a week ago. Had to copy paste everything. But still at least it’ll be useful for other people
September 29th, 2010 at 11:55 am
For all those ex Spacers who also wish to export some of their photo albums across to WordPress as well as their blog posts, I have done a step by step post on how to do this. If you have a lot of Albums that you wish to transfer from there ( if you are deciding to close your accounts on there for example) as WordPress does not allow as much storage in your Media files, it might be more prudent to only download those photo Albums that you wish to associate with your blog or alternatively download them and save them to an external hard drive or a DVD.
See here http://technograns.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/moving-your-photo-albums-over-from-windows-live-to-wordpress/ for how to transfer a photo album from Windows Live to WordPress.com
September 29th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Tell me where can I find my Link and album, it seems they are still in space, but i cannt find that anymore
October 1st, 2010 at 2:41 pm
As links were modules on Live Spaces, they are not part of the migration process and so are not available on WordPress.com.
Your photo albums are still available and can be found at http://photos.live.com/ or http://skydrive.live.com/.
September 29th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
How many blogs are hosted currently on Windows Live Spaces? I’ve never heard a figure quoted, just curious.
September 29th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
It’s awesome! Great news!
September 29th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Migration worked without a flaw, thanks!
September 29th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
This doesn’t seem like an intelligent decision on the part of Microsoft. If Live Spaces members move their blog to WordPress, would they continue to blog on Live Spaces, or just blog on WordPress? Seems like Microsoft is going to lose some members this way. I’ve seen way too many abandoned blogs on Live Spaces already, where the most recent post is dated back to 2006. But then again, I’ve seen abandoned blogs on all blogging networks and platforms, so it’s going to be that way regardless.
October 1st, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Live Spaces is completely shutting down after the migration window is over. This is how they are providing for their blog users to continue blogging after they turn out the lights on Windows Live Spaces.
September 29th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
We who’ve been on WordPress for nearly four years, or in blogging terms, forever, welcome all newcomers!
September 29th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
That’s Awesome!! Welcome to WordPress.com. I used to have a live space account but deleted to come to WordPress—absolutely love it.
September 29th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Ace – I’ve just converted… and now I’m “converted”
September 29th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Windows Spaces is dead, long live WordPress!
September 29th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
I like that I can still use my writer program to upload blogs, and that I don’t have to remove my links as they forward everything to here. I do wish that they would allow us to put photo albums up here and embed videos that aren’t in a blog (like windows spaces use to). But other than that, I like this! Will this still automatically update my facebook friends when I post a new blog though? It use to through Windows Live Messenger, but I am not sure if this will update that and put it on facebook or what. Thanks!
October 1st, 2010 at 2:31 pm
If you use our Publicize options, you can indeed alert your Facebook friends to your blog updates: http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/
September 29th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Wow, this is awesome ~ Congrats, WordPress
September 30th, 2010 at 2:11 am
So far very disappointed. It said that all blog entries, pictures and comments would be migrated over automatically but didn’t bother to mention the little fact about only pictures embedded within blog entries being migrated. So none of my picture albums that used to show up right next to my blog entries were migrated over and I don’t have the time or energy to figure out how to fix things. Although I suspect wordpress won’t even allow me to do albums anyway. I wish I hadn’t migrated at all.
October 1st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
WordPress.com doesn’t have photo albums in the same way as Windows Live Photos does, but we do have the ability to post photo galleries. You can read more about how to do so here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/
September 30th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Mine is saying
Blog Domain
Sorry, that site is reserved!
mshanhun.wordpress.com
I would have thought that it would be reserved for me since that is my user name! Can someone help?
October 1st, 2010 at 2:08 pm
If you see that message, it means that there is already someone with that username or blog name on WordPress.com – you will need to select a new one. If you need assistance with this, or you think it’s possible you signed up for it before, please contact us in Support.
September 30th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Internet Explorer 9, and now this. It seems like Microsoft is beginning to do things the right way. Thumbs up!
September 30th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Ended up wiping my windows live space and creating a blog on here from scratch. Really loving the features!
September 30th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Hi everyone!
I’m one of the thousands of bloggers from Windows Live.
I’m happy to be here, to be part of such a great service.
I’ll continue to write about my opinion and my life as always.
September 30th, 2010 at 10:46 am
I am totally disappointed because my Spaces live blog was a kind of repertoire for many photos from my collection that was the main theme of my blog -it took me a long long time to import those photos- and now I am on this WordPress, I can’t transfer all my albums to this blog…well if it’s just a writing blog, I am no more interested. I don’t want to spend too much time again to upload my photos. So just coming and just leaving…too bad !!
September 30th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
THANK YOU! I was already getting eady to move-Made my life a lot easier!
September 30th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Welcome, Windows Live Bloggers!
September 30th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Cool stuff. But I want to point out the logo of WordPress looks really like that of Volkswagen.
September 30th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
I’m also very disappointed that none of my photo albums have migrated. The process for inserting galleries in WordPress not only seems long winded, the end result seems neither very user-interactive nor aesthetically pleasing. Stupid me I guess for having assumed that the description claiming that “all photos” would be moved actually meant all photos.
I am, quite frankly, absolutely gutted to have migrated – irreversibly, it would seem – and to have lost the integrated photo-text platform that MSN Spaces offered.
October 1st, 2010 at 2:28 am
I hope users of Windows Live will be satisfied with WordPress.com
October 1st, 2010 at 5:50 am
I will miss my old space……….. It was my favourite
October 1st, 2010 at 6:22 am
Ok, am going to lose my Spaces blog, but does that mean that i will also lost my content uploaded on Skydrive?
October 1st, 2010 at 1:35 pm
No, if you had content on Skydrive, it will remain there at http://skydrive.live.com/.
October 1st, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Where are my drafts?
October 1st, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Drafts were not included in the export process and so your old drafts are not available here on WordPress.com.
October 1st, 2010 at 3:48 pm
How am I supposed to get to my photos in future?Do I always need to how to… side to guide me there?
And after windows live is completely down next year, are the pictures gonna gone for good?
October 1st, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I was a Windows live Space Blogger. Nice to be here now.
October 1st, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Hope I can get used to this new place ASAP.
October 1st, 2010 at 6:50 pm
i have video embed from youtube and others, how do i make them work? also, the format of windows live page vs. this is based on theme while live is not – how do i make wordpress look the same as that of windows live space page?
October 1st, 2010 at 9:08 pm
I found migrating my Windows Live blog to be pretty easy, but I was disappointed to lose all my formatting and page design.
The contents came over fine, but it lost all the flair – and my blog didn’t have that much to start with!
It’s going to take some time to learn how to tweak the appearance and lose that ‘new blog’ plain look.
October 2nd, 2010 at 12:35 am
I did: I signed up for wordpress
I saw:
I expected: to be able connect my new blog to my officelive small business site; http://www.eandclifestyle.com. Whenever I try to insert my blog information I’m asked to “Type the Live Spaces Web address:
http:// .spaces.live.com”.
The problem is, I never had a Live Spaces Web address to begin with… now what?
Will I be able to insert my new blog into my office live small business website? I need detailed instructions please!
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 am
Here we grow again!
Grazie
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:14 am
WordPress is cool, man!
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:26 am
OOOO, Windows/Microsoft is evil, how dare you sell out to these guys! /sarc
Obviously just kidding, always nice to have new members to the ever-growing WP community. I’m impressed at your strategy at expanding to new markets and new technology add-ons.
October 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 am
WordPress team, I have just discovered this morning that not only do your Spaces blogs get posted across, but also any Spam in comments as well, and as there appears to be no way that you can delete individual comments on here, its either stick with them showing or alternatively delete all those Spaces blogs posts that have spam comments attached!
Looks like I’m gonna be very busy over the next few days!
November 4th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Maybe you already saw this, but there’s a great support article on Managing Comments. It has a bunch of tips on how to moderate and manage comments.
October 2nd, 2010 at 9:58 am
I’m sorry to bother you again. My old WLS was plublic and I think I’m the only one who can sees my photos but how can everyone sees my photos on WLS like before? Could you please help me?
November 4th, 2010 at 2:19 am
Here’s an article on how to change Privacy settings for your blog: http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/
October 2nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm
It’s great if you ask me. WordPress.com has many more readers than Live Spaces, so hopefully someone will actually read my blog! Also, since Live Writer 2011 publishes to WordPress, I won’t have any publishing differences!
October 2nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
hi, i want that WordPress import my all photo’s album (http://photos.live.com) in media’s wordpress !
I think it is not difficult to do that !
I can’t do it manualy, because i have too much albums and photos !!!
Thank you to find a solution !
October 2nd, 2010 at 9:45 pm
I switched to wordpress on the 27th of september and am still waiting for my blog to actually appear on the site – where can i go for help with this – is this a normal waiting time!! It’s been days not hours and I’m starting to worry I’ve lost my blog
Arghhhhhhhh
October 3rd, 2010 at 7:19 am
wonderfull! after blogspot and now windows live spaces, when will you tackle migration from typepad?
wordpress will then be the best place to blog and this is good for the user who don’t have to mess
with dozens of sites. keep on and on and on !!!
October 3rd, 2010 at 7:58 am
The Windows Live Space was not too bad, at least I was used to it and knew the ways around but well, nothing is more permanent in life than changes and so I exported my blog to WordPress…
Some embedded files arrived broken and most categories became different fonds, tables and other stuff are not as easy as it was at Windows when you are not familiar with the HTML codes or CSS settings plus the media gallery here keeps on collecting endless files without the possibility to create own folders and subfolders for individual arrangements but then again, the general appearance could be made friendlier to the eye and visitors can have it much easier to navigate around… old gadgets are no longer available, new gadgets could be used now…
Well, all in all not that bad, I will just have to go over my posts and redo them in a better way… I began already doing a few and will contuniue with the remaining ones when I have again some time…
It is nice here too… thank you for the warm welcome and eventually I will have figured out a few basic WordPress features, I suppose…
October 3rd, 2010 at 9:43 am
WordPress.com is the best…
October 3rd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I lost my space on MSN few days ago. On WordPress.com I have now an empty page. The worst is it seems that China blocked the website WordPress.com. So for me is a terrible scenario which means I am forced to find an alternative for msn space (WordPress) forever! Pity but thats the fact!
(I have never heard of WordPress.com.)
October 3rd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Happy for WordPress ^O^~~
October 3rd, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Hello WordPress I’m from Indonesia.
I very very very very very like WordPress…
October 3rd, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Frankly I would have to say that the mitigation makes me a big trouble and failure, cause it appears that I lost the contacts with all my Live Spaces friends. Are there any way that I can see their blog updates, as well as they can see my blog updates, as we did on Spaces???? It was promised befoe that all our messengers contacts will remain and that lead me to gain the trust on mittigtation. However, where to find my messenger contacts????
My dear administrator, my heart is bleeding, Please, please, please help !!!! Without my friends, there is no meaning for me to write blogs….
October 3rd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I believe the notification WordPress sent that appeared in my previous Live site referred ONLY to blogs within my site to which I agreed on . NO clarification was given re. the photos, videos and other media collection which are in my site. How are these other media now to be accessed by me for editing or by others I choose to share them with since Word Press just deals with blogs ? I think the insertion of your pop-up notification which obligated Windows Live users to click on it was underhanded since no through explanation was given for loss of media other than Blogs. I f you fail to provide a solution for users to go back to their former Live sites to retrieve their other-than-blogs media or even provide an option to go back to their previous Live site, you may be LEGALLY LIABLE.
October 3rd, 2010 at 4:27 pm
am i the only one who want Windows Live Space back?
October 3rd, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I migrated from spaces but I am unable to locate anyway to start blogging. and my blog no longer shows up on my website. nstead this error message is displayed ” Error rendering control.An unhandled exception has occured. Reference to undeclared entity line 13, position 79″ . How can I magrate back to spaces as It seems tword press is too difficult. Please help. I need to be able to post on my blog and I need the existing blog showing up in word press to go back to my website.
I tried registering inword press but I am unable to. The system says my email address and username is already in use. The system is not working right. consequently,I need to go back to spaces
October 3rd, 2010 at 5:23 pm
about tunning up the page look
i tried to paste on the text widget the html from rockyou (a horoscope) that i used to have on WLSpaces but it doesn’t work on WordPress
is anyaway to work it out? it’s flash-based
October 3rd, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I missed my windows live space
October 3rd, 2010 at 10:51 pm
The process took a little longer than I anticipated, but was unbelievably smooth and error-free. Nice job!!
October 4th, 2010 at 1:33 am
It was the best decision that i have chosen WordPress.com.
October 4th, 2010 at 6:08 am
I’m the same as Pilot. I switched my blog from windows live space to wordpress long ago maybe about 2 years ago.
October 4th, 2010 at 9:48 am
I increasingly love WordPress. Thank you for this great information.
October 4th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Hi everybody !
I come from Windows Live, I’m new here in WordPress.com, I think it’s cool.
October 4th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I just migrated and this looks nice!!
Hi WordPress!
October 4th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Great move both from WordPress and Microsoft! Really glad to see this
October 5th, 2010 at 2:36 am
we hope blogspot.com can be moved to WordPress.com
thanks so much for that…
October 5th, 2010 at 2:49 am
I have a really serious problem, please help me if you can, thanks in advance.
I am a Windows Live Spaces user in China, I found its very diffcult to access WordPress from China, I have no Internet connection problem, it is the problem that the firewall of China blocks WordPress from time to time, even I can access WordPress, it takes minutes to open a page, I can’t bear this.
My question is, since I have moved my Live Spaces contents to WordPress, can I do a reverse so I can, maybe move the content to some Blogs in China.
I know I can download the contents in XML file, but Blogs in China do not support this format. They just transfer the content from Live Spaces directly, the problem is, my Live Spaces is actually not exists anymore!
Please HELP!
October 5th, 2010 at 4:56 am
I know you have tons of replies, but I am so pleased by this and had to let you know. I didn’t use my WLS blog anymore, but didn’t want to get rid of what I had written. I imported my old blog as soon as I saw the announcement. It all imported fantastically. The only thing I miss are the lists I could make up on WLS, but I can do the same thing here by creating pages. Yay!
October 5th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Hi! I had a private space on Windows Live Spaces so I migrated to a private blog on wordpress. I understand now that my friends on the messenger cannot read my blog but I thought they would at least receive an invitation to read my blog at wordpress. Isn´t it so?
October 5th, 2010 at 9:17 am
I’m a blogger in live spaces and turn to wordpress for “survive”. But the transport from live spaces to wordpress is a hard work. Although there is a shortcut or a link to here but I can’t move my blog here successfully. Maybe the link is broken or the network is bad. I just do it by live spaces writer……It’s a hard work because I had to get to every article to change its destination and publish it again. I’m bored and tired to do this. But I still finished this afternoon. Maybe you should provide some more efficient ways.
October 5th, 2010 at 11:54 am
WordPress is not a good platform for China it seems, because Sina.com.cn is reported to be picking up tons of livespace users. What a fiasco!
October 5th, 2010 at 11:55 am
This is the kind of thing that keeps me on track through out my day. Highly appreciated !
October 5th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
I used to have pictures on my space but now that i changed it to wordpress.com i don’t have them any more, am i not allowed to have pictures? or what is the reason why they don’t appear anymore?
October 6th, 2010 at 1:55 am
Is all those accounts comments are from the same person? They all write like the same!
October 6th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Thank you for your welcome… It’s actually sad. But I like your platform and I am sure that my grief will quickly disappear..
So, back to the initial part… Choosing the appearance of my blog (which is difficult, because there are so many nice themes – I like it here already)… 
October 6th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I live China and I couldn’t switch my blog from windows live space to wordpress. How can I switch?
October 6th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
i used to synch new post to windows live space from my self-hosted wp…can i synch to wordpress? (manually or automatically?)
October 7th, 2010 at 12:41 am
I was hoping this would happen and it has. Very happy to be on WordPress.
October 7th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
No thanks mitchell84,i like it here and i have a wonderful template or blog,Wow it’s fantastic,thanks.
October 7th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Thank you for your welcome Pif ☀ Rebecca
October 7th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I am here in wordpress and I like it.
October 7th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Thanks Microsoft & WordPress
October 8th, 2010 at 3:01 am
What a nice place you have here.