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Migrating from MT3 and Right Fields to MT4 and Custom Fields

One of Movable Type 3.x’s most popular plugins was a plugin created by Kevin Shay called Right Fields. Right Fields provides much of the same functionality as Movable Type 4’s Custom Fields feature, however because Right Fields has not yet been upgraded to MT4, many users who rely on Right Fields cannot yet upgrade to take advantage of all of Movable Type 4’s new features.

Thanks to the work done by a notable member of our community, Right Fields users can now upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Movable Type. Consult the resources below to learn more about how to migrate from Right Fields to Custom Fields:

Important Notes

  • This conversion script will migrate both Right Fields data stored in the MT::PluginData format or data stored directly in a database table using SQL.
  • This script cannot migrate uploaded file data.
  • This script cannot migrate “Linked Entry” data because no corollary exists in Custom Fields. If you use this field, take a look at the LinkedEntryCustomFields plugin which is still under development but works well to both upgrade your data and provide this feature.

Instructions

These instructions re-printed from Chad’s announcement post:

  1. Download and install the plugin in your MT plugins directory.
  2. transfer the configuration. Then verify the configuration - this makes sure that you have the correct fields ready for the values that will come over. You should only run this step once. Running it more than once will create duplicate fields in your blog.
  3. transfer the actual data. You can re-run this step as many times as you like. If you have a lot of records, this step might seem like it’s running for a while without doing anything. Because of the way that the web works, there is little way around this - it has to complete before it shows anything. If anyone wants to help rewrite this to show results as they are processed, let me know and I’ll put it in there.
  4. modify your templates by getting rid of the RightFields code and replacing it with corresponding CustomFields code. Unfortunately this isn’t really able to be automated, because there are so many variations to the process. If you need help with it, let me know - I do offer Movable Type Consulting (this isn’t a free service, but it may be able to help you out).
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