Posts tagged with "WordPress"

I am about to embark on migrating this blog from WordPress to Django-Mingus because I simply can't stand the WordPress Compose Post interface (if you can call it that).

This exciting move comes less than two weeks after I spontaneously decided to ditch Habari after the lack of a functional 'Auto-Save' plugin caused me to lose 17 minutes work.

You may say 'I'm reading this in my preferred RSS reader so please don't bother me with such minutiae'.

However, when I migrated from Habari to WordPress a month ago, I flooded you both with my most recent posts duplicated so this is just prior warning that similar oddness may well occur as I endeavour to hook up the new blog feed to FeedBurner.

This may or may not signal a period of blog hopping and I'd like to say this will may trigger a series of interesting posts about which blogging platforms I considered and discarded and top tips on planning and executing an efficient blog migration.

This blog used to run on WordPress but now runs on Habari which is a blogging platform currently being developed by a set of very talented people.

Undoubtedly, the number of developers and users running Habari is far fewer than the massive community using WordPress. Similarly, the number of available themes and plugins available for Habari is relatively small (albeit growing daily) and dwarfed by the vast, almost bewildering wealth of add-ons and the extensive range of themes available for Wordpress.

However, this isn't a bad thing because it forces anyone contemplating a migration to Habari to think carefully about the core plugins that are truly essential to adminster your blog and valuable for your readers.

One such plugin (for me) was an equivalent of the Wordpress sitemaps plugin. Rick Cockrum published a excellent summary of why an automatically generated sitemap is useful.

When I first configured and activated the sitemap plugin for Habari, nothing happened. No sitemap file was generated. Initially, I thought that maybe the sitemap was only generated after a post was published. So I published a new post. Still nothing happened..

I posted a enquiry on the Habari users mailing list. In an effort to 'help' the Habari community, I even opened a ticket (bug request).

Then, I made an amazing discovery when an anonymous author was forced to waste some of his valuable time to close my 'bug report':

The plugin is not intended to generate a file, rather to serve the sitemap xml document when requested.

So, it transpires that the Habari sitemaps plugin doesn't actually generate a file. The sitemap is simply a URL which is dynamically built, on request.

Now I believe this is a much neater solution. No need for the user to specify where the file should be placed. Less work for the plugin to do. Much cleaner. Much simpler. Credit to the author, Andrew da Silva.

The lesson I learned was that just because something has always been done that way doesn't necessarily mean it can only be done that way.

P.S. If you're worried about the performance impact of needlessly rebuilding a sitemap, on the fly for 234,432 entries, don't worry - some clever individual has already implemented a cache for the sitemap data.

The forthcoming release of WordPress 2.5 was one reason I was hesitant to move to Habari.

However, having seen a demo of the revised dashboard in WordPress 2.5, all I can say is I am glad I made the move and didn't wait.

While I am merely an end user (not a UI designer), Michael Heilemann articulates many of my views on the deficiencies and usability of the Wordpress dashboard in this detailed analysis.

Michael also dissects the design of the WordPress 'Write Page' screen. The 'Write Page' is probably the most important one for the blog author as that's where he spends most of his time. I agree with Michael - the page is cluttered with unnecessary distractions.

Compare the WordPress page with the 'blank canvas' presented by the article editor in Habari.

Adding support for OpenID to Wordpress using this plugin is quick and straightforward.

Similarly, the latest version of Drupal includes a core module providing full support for OpenID integration.

So, if you have an OpenID, you can now use it to comment on this blog.

• Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2
• Plaintxt theme upgraded to v4.0. The main change is tag support which I don't currently use.
• Reinstated the 'Related Posts' plugin because I couldn't understand why people looking for information on Virgin Media/V+ don't scan other relevant posts. Already seeing a benefit.
• Added useful plugin to support embedded YouTube videos to liven up my monochrome posts.

Successfully upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 in four clicks using the excellent WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

There is currently no utility to migrate existing blog content to django.

However, conversion of an existing WordPress blog is pretty straightforward.

Firstly, simply export the following tables from the WordPress database using phpMyAdmin

• wp_posts
• wp_comments
• wp_terms
• wp_term_taxonomy
• wp_term_relationships

Import the tables into the django database.

Then run the following SQL statements which migrate posts, comments and categories and assume a WordPress 2.3 schema and a blank django blog. If you have already created content in django, minor changes will be needed. My WordPress blog only uses categories which simply get converted to django tags.

insert into blog_post
(id,
slug,
title,
pubdate,
moddate,
body,
draft,
closed)
select
wp_posts.id,
wp_posts.post_name,
wp_posts.post_title,
wp_posts.post_date_gmt,
wp_posts.post_modified_gmt,
wp_posts.post_content,
0,
0
from wp_posts
and post_type = 'post';

insert into comments_freecomment
(id,
content_type_id,
comment,
object_id,
person_name,
submit_date,
is_public,
ip_address,
approved,
site_id)
select
wp_comments.comment_id,
14,
wp_comments.comment_content,
wp_comments.comment_post_id,
wp_comments.comment_author,
wp_comments.comment_date_gmt,
1,
wp_comments.comment_author_ip,
wp_comments.comment_approved,
1
from wp_comments
where comment_approved = '1';

insert into blog_tag
(slug,
title,
description)
select
wp_terms.slug,
wp_terms.name,
wp_terms.name
from wp_terms;

insert into blog_post_tags
(post_id,
tag_id)
select
wp_term_relationships.object_id,
wp_terms.name
from wp_term_relationships, wp_term_taxonomy, wp_terms
where wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
and wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id;

Finally, delete the WP_* tables from the django (and not the WordPress) database.

I have upgraded this blog to the recently released WordPress 2.3. However, I have deep rooted concerns that the new tagging functionality will simply overload my tiny brain.

The WordPress upgrade went smoothly enough although the editor now reports a missing table (wp_post2cat) which is slightly irritating.

Also, I sense increasing disquiet amongst some long standing, intelligent and loyal WordPress users so I took the precaution of installing YABP (Yet Another Blog Platform). Please put your hands together and welcome Typo (powered by a delightful lady called 'Ruby on Rails').

Update: The Google Sitemap Generator plug-in was causing the error. The problem is resolved in the latest version.

Create tables, resize, add rows and columns, preview the output and add the finishing touches in Google Docs.

Then simply paste the HTML into the WordPress WYSIYG editor.

I don't know what I did wrong but I just upgraded to WordPress 2.2 and everything still works.

• Download WordPress 2.2 distribution and read instructions.
• Upload tar archive to Bluehost using pscp.
• Run manual database backup using AutoMySQLBackup.
• Deactivate all plugins.

$ cp -rv blog blog-213
$ rm -fr blog
$ tar zxvf ~/wordpress-2.2.tar.gz
$ mv wordpress blog

• Overlay contents of original wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes directories.
• Reactivate all plugins (apart from widgets) which is now in core.
• Check version number (2.2) from dashboard.
• Manually delete 143 spam comments that appeared during the 4 minutes Akismet's shields were down.
• Admire new full screen WYSIWYG preview post.