Import HTML Sites into Joomla with HTML2Articles

html2articles logoOne of our OSTraining members had a very old HTML site.

They wanted to import that old site into Joomla and were wondering how to do it.

HTML2Articles is a very good solution for this. It will take your old HTML files and import them as Joomla articles.

Here's how HTML2Articles works:

Getting Prepared

To use HTML2Articles you need two things:

  1. The HTML2Articles component installed on your site
  2. Your old HTML site downloaded to your desktop.

To showcase HTML2Articles, I downloaded a sample HTML page from CSSZenGarden.com:

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Here's what my HTML site files looked like. I had these files on my desktop.

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Using HTML2Articles

I installed HTML2Articles and went to Components > HTM2Articles.

The image below shows the first set of options available to me. Most of these settings are straightforward.

The tricky part may be the Title. HTML2Articles isn't able to extract the title from inside your content. There is an HTML Title tag option available here that may be more accurate, depending on your old code.

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In the second group of options, you'll see that HTML2Articles is able to import images and documents:

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Finally, you can select your files and upload them:

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Here's how that initial page we saw from CSSZenGarden will appear in your articles:

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HTML2Articles does exactly what the name implies and does it well. It can take your HTML files and convert them into Joomla articles.

Things that HTML2Articles Does Not Do

Although HTML2Articles is a great tool, it's worth being realistic about what it can't do:

  • Import your CSS into a template
  • Change links to the Joomla format
  • Import a site if you don't have the files on your desktop

So after the import is complete you will need to work on your template design and check for broken links.