I am not a linux guru but......................:)
In which I explain how to download all your images in posts from WordPress.com without having a nervous breakdown.
.Alert : Linux hackery ahead.
Windows geeks who would like access to linux type command line voodoo might need to download and install puTTy. Please note that using puTTy may be unlawful in some fascist dictatorial jurisdictions where encryption is outlawed. I may be wrong but I think that includes the USA.
The problem in brief. We obviously need to wget. But wget does not have a wild card function. It is just as well. Think of the havoc you could cause if it did. The universe might implode. So we need to fiddle a bit first. What we really need is a list of the all urls of all the images in the blog in a nice neat list. That is where we are headed first.
So to get started you need to export the data from your old blog to your working directory. It is an .xml file. You need to put in the right date in the code to match the date on the .xml file but it looks like the stuff below. So do:
egrep -o '\"http://youroldblog.'*'.jpg\"' wordpress.2007-08-04.xml | awk -F src=\" '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}' | sed s/\"//g>result.txt
Then do :
egrep -o '\"http://youroldblog.'*'.gif\"' wordpress.2007-08-04.xml | awk -F src=\" '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}' | sed s/\"//g>>result.txt
You should now have a list of all the images in the blog stored in the file results.txt. Now for the mother of all functions just run wget using the -i switch. That is it.
Warning: Do not do this at home unless you are accompanied by a responsible adult.
Big thanks to WordPress developer Barry for a lot of help with this. I edited it somewhat from his suggestion but he certainly put me on the right track.
If this is all too much for you then why not check out our new WordPress com to WordPress org transfer service?