So, Barefoot bum’s new shiny, wordpress-powered self-hosted blog is now ready. I’ve finally finished with all the imports and the thing is ready to use. Of course the layout might change if Larry wishes but the thing is ready to be used.

Here’s a step-by-step summary of the setup process, just to get an overview of what was required. Keep in mind that for a new blog, you don’t need more than 10 or so of these.

Day 1

1. Setup the domain to use php5 and not to use the needless www. prefix.
2. Use One-click install to setup wordpress and wait 5 minutes.
3. Setup WordPress password.
4. Install One Click Plugin Updater through FTP.
5. Deactivate Wp-Cache.
6. Acticate the plugin Wp-Super Cache (Installed with wordpress).
7. Delete all other plugins except Akismet and Hello Dolly (Just in case he likes it).
8. Go to Settings > General and copy the blog desc from the original blog.
9. In Settings, Go to Writing and add http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ to the ping so that the Atheist Blogroll is pinged.
10. In Settings, Went to Discussion and deactivated the option to require one approved comment before posting it. Increased the number of links before moderation to 3.
11. Updated the admin password to a temp password from the default of WP.
12. Added a new admin user for me and Larry and deleted the default admin to avoid 0-day attacks.
13. Went Manage > Import > Blogger. Sent email to Larry to authorize wordpress for his blogger account.
14. Downloading some themes closer to the original blog style.
15. Larry started the import procedure. It finished in about 10 minutes for 1200+ posts and 3000+ comments.
16. Installed a cartload of plugins. Activated them.
17. Set Permalinks to /blog/
18. Setting up feedburner.
19. Setup Yadis for blogger
20. Setup Photodropper
21. Enabled wp-supercache and .htaccess settings.
22. Added Similar & Recent posts to sidebar and feed.
23. Added Socrates Image to right sidebar.
24. Extended sidebar size.
25. Added We-Op-Ed image and rss for larry.
26. Added Atheist Out Scarlet A.
27. Added more wigets.
28. Got stuck on how to import the IDC comments from blogger

Total time to setup all these, from start to finish, while also doing other stuff (like chatting on ICQ and reading blogs): 5 hours.

Day 2

1. Finally received some help from Intense Debate on how to import IDC comments from blogspot to WordPress. I got a plugin which automates this in the mail.
2. Plugin did not work as my host does not support a php function for security reasons.
3. Contacted the Josh Fraser, the author of the plugin for help. He was amazingly responsive and helpful and provided me with an updated version of the plugin that could work around the php restriction. Josh you rock!
4. Import went perfectly and all comments were back into wordpress. Unfortunately one post did not get them as the title has italics which wordpress stripped and they names did not match. Nevertheless, the rest worked. (I will do a follow-up post on this later)

Total time for this part: 1 hour.

Thoughts

Of course this process was a learning experience for me as not only did Larry have a pretty customized blog with widgets, images, etc) but he is also subscibed to a lot of services I do not have access (Feeburner, Scoutle, etc). Finally this was the first time I was trying to migrate ID comments from blogger to wordpress sso this took some extra research as well.

For someone who has a very simple and uncustomized blog, the migration time can be cut to 1/3 easily.

Nevertheless, this first experience will now allow me to know what I need and streamline the process. Specifically, there is the issue that I cannot setup a lot of stuff without access to one’s accounts, while other times I may need feedback.

This is the stuff I need to know in order to bug people less:

• Feedburner password: In order to setup your blogspot feed to redirected to your new blog
• WordPress.com password or API: So that I can setup your stats
• Blogger password and username: So that I can start the import process and see the codes for any widgets you have on your sidebar (Mybloglog, scoutle etc)
• If the codes are not visible through the blogger gadgets, I need to have them so that I can put them in the sidebar.
• How do you want your tags and categories? As blogger only supports the generic “labels” which gets translated to wordpress categories, I need to know which ones (if any) to turn into tags
• How do you want your permalink structure to be? By date (as in blogger, like a newspaper), with categories? with a custom text (like here under /blog/ ?)

All of these are information that I will need to set it up with the minimum of input from you. If any of these is missing, unfortunately I will have to ask you or you do it yourself (for the last two options I can just make a choice myself which you can change later on).

All in all, it went quite well and nothing horribly broke. So I’m quite glad. This will go much faster for someone with a more simple blog (as in, one hosted in wordpress.com, or not very customized blogspot)

I’m only a bit saddened that Larry chose not to start using it yet. If he keeps using his old blog, new comments and posts will be more difficult to transfer over as it cannot be done as part of a mass import.

Anyway, so what do you think?