The other day, I took on a challenge for the first time. As usual, I have to blog about it.

A client of mine has (had) a Blogspot blog that she wanted transferred over to a WordPress blog. I have researched this before and didn’t find any useful information on how to do this until recently. That is not to say the information isn’t out there, you just need to use the right search criterion.

Anyway, to do this export from Blogger/Blogspot and import to WordPress you need to do a few things.

1. To start, you need to have WordPress installed and configured before you can begin.

2. Log into your WordPress Dashboard area.

3. Choose Tools > Import. On the page that appears, there are fifteen different blogging systems to choose from that WordPress has more or less automated. For this instance, click on Blogger.

Important Note: In order to proceed, you must have a Google account. If you have the old style Blogger account, you do need to upgrade to the new Google version of Blogger which is hosted on Blogspot.

4. Click link that says “Authorize.” This tells Blogger to let WordPress access your Blogger account. You will be sent back to this page after providing authorization.

5. Select the blog you want to import. Next to each blog in your Blogger account, there will be “Magic Button” that says, “Import.” Chose which blog to import and click the magic button.

6. Author Mapping. This is so that the username on your Blogger account can be matched to your username on your WordPress account.

Once you’ve completed these steps, it is all automatic.

Personally, I was surprised that it went so easily. However, I was not impressed that all (or most) formatting did not stay intact. We ended up with text and images all misaligned. When you have tons of posts, this is just too big of a job to try to correct. But on the bright side, we got all the posts to move over. I would love it if someone could tell me what more I could do to realign text and images. Please leave me a comment.

– More later

Technorati Tags: Blogs, WordPress

I manage several websites, of which I have installed 3 WordPress blogs. I don’t know whether it is lack of experience or bugs in WordPress, or both… But earlier versions of WP had various problems that involved LOTS of extra work to setup or fix. I must say, I am impressed with this new version.

One of my websites had so many problems with the blog. It took 4 months before I was able to fix it. The final fix… uninstall completely, remove from server, and install the newest version… BUT, I had to keep the old archives, posts, comments, and images. Well, my tech support team helped out with the database part. I think they rather preferred to do that than to have me try, fail, and then have them fix a mangled database.

I wish I could have fixed this one blog before I finally did, but I am glad it got done when it did. My client, StoryConnection.net use her blog to update various aspects of her life… Workshops, education, recipes… but this time Professional Storyteller & Author, Dianne de Las Casas, tells us her experiences with Hurricane Gustav.

During this “learning” curve that I have gone through with WordPress blogs, I have been learning so much about plugins and widgets… also learning a lot about using themes and how to tweak them.

I am not what I would consider ‘experienced’ with blog installation and management, but I am getting there. Let me know what you think of my new theme.

More later…
Heidi

Technorati Tags: Blogs

I am knew at installing WordPress. So, you can imagine the frustrations that I came across.

For me, I have a cPanel installation. It really is quite nice to just click a button and have it install automatically… all files and database… Installed! Cool Huh?! Yeah, well… didn’t work so easily. I ended up getting some help with the installation. After getting WordPress installed manually, my dashboard told me that I needed to update to 2.5. Hmm.

I found out that the WordPress that I had been working on can NO LONGER be upgraded with cPanel. Something, apparently got messed up with the integration between cPanel and WordPress. Great!

So, I call my tech support and beg them to help out with updating to the new version. They were glad to help out.

So now, the blog that I have installed (with a little help) won’t upload images… Oh man. Well, I did lots of lookups on the problem. First, I found out that the Permalinks has a script that it wants to add to the .htaccess, but can’t because the .htaccess is set to a 660 permission. So, I tried every combination, 777 worked best. I was able to upload images… but only once or twice. I found that when I logged out and then back in again the permissions changed on the .htaccess and WordPress still wanted permission to write to it and couldn’t.

Then I found some help in the WordPress Forums to add this script to my .htaccess:

<ifmodule mod_security.c>
<files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</files>
</ifmodule>

So now my htaccess looks like this:

<ifmodule mod_security.c>
<files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</files>
</ifmodule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Well, I used that and it seemed to work for me, but not for my client couldn’t seem to make it work. We both use Firefox and it is the most current version.

Well, today I updated her blog again… I got tired of always changing the permissions to 777. I figure, hey maybe the most current, 2.5.1 will correct this problem. The image uploading seems to work fine for me.. but, sad to say, it doesn’t work for her.

To boot, I still have the permissions problem for the permalinks. I don’t understand why it needs to always add the same script over and over again.

Anyway, regarding the image uploads, I found this website Upload problems? Upgrade Flash that has a lot of different things to check such as what version of FLASH you’re using. So, now my goal is to find out why I can upload and she can’t.

If you have any ideas, let me know. At this point, I am out of ideas.

More later…

Technorati Tags: Blogs, WordPress

Over the past few months blogs have become an important cog to the workings of a web site. I have read numerous articles and heard several opinions on why blogs are essential in creating a well ranked web site.

Well, after numerous hours of hacking away at this blog, I think I have finally installed my blog. Now you get to hear me rant about various subjects that cross my mind.

Now, the first thing I had to do was choose a blog program that I felt was easy to work with and had a good reputation for support. For now, I have chosen Word Press. The next thing on my agenda after installing my blog was to decide whether or not I would create my own template for look and feel, or choose one already created and then tweak. No reason to “reinvent the wheel,” I chose a template to tweak.

Using a template has it’s own troubles… for instance, you need to understand PHP and CSS a little bit to be able to navigate through the various files that come together to create your blog. I know just enough to get into trouble!

So, now I have a very simple blog and with it comes the tweaks of frustration.

Well, for me, it is incredibly late… 5 am for bedtime is not normal. We’ll see tomorrow if this blog stands out.

More later…

Heidi

Technorati Tags: Blogs