Tumblr2WordPress

By far this has been the simplest Tumblr Scraper tool that I investigated and used. It is a free, web-based tool that works to back-up any Tumblr account and convert it to a WordPress blog. Originally created as a fail-safe when Tumblr was sold by Hao Chen and Ben Ward.

 

Usability IconUsability
Aesthetically this product is dated (created in 2007), but it works pretty flawlessly. The web page tool asks a series of questions including: Tumblr Account  (account to be backed-up); Export Format (HTML, Plain Text, Raw Data); Permalink Slugs (Define new naming conventions); New Export Location Type (WordPress Hosted or Self-Hosted); and Post Default Options (Auto-Publish, Comments Enabled, etc.).
The export is an XML file that when opened in any text editor provides instructions on uploading the XML data to a WordPress site of your choice.

 

Blue Ribbon IconContent Quality
As the data export is an XML file, it saves all of the original post text and the references to images, and once loaded into WordPress it does a relatively decent job of preserving the blog, with a few notable exceptions.
The first major issue to note is that you will need to create a user for each blog you want to archive, and connect the XML data to that WordPress user during the import, otherwise, authorship is lost. The second issue is that this only archives the main post, none of the comments, notes, etc. are saved and ported in the process. Finally, the images will appear in the WordPress, but they are hot linked and not copied. So, if the original content disappears (the feed is deleted) so too will the images.

 

Dollar symbol iconAffordability
Tumblr2WordPress is completely free. There is very little space required for the XML file, and you can use a free WordPress site for your end output.

 

File Exchange IconPortability
The output for this tool is not very portable, but it also wasn’t designed as a scraping tool. As a conversion tool it does exactly what it was intended to do: move content from one blogging site to another. That it is limited as a scraping tool is unsurprising.