Overview of Blogger Migration Advantages
We have suddenly been doing some complete Blogger to WordPress migrations. People who realize that there are advantages to a complete move cite the following as some of the reasons:

• Complete database and images on your own server
• improved speed
• SEO enhancements are available
• increased ease of posting in the WP environment as compared to Blogger

We have had a few stories where Google has simply wiped out accounts, often with no notice and in one recent case, they declined to reinstate the account. Unlike WordPress where regular back-ups are simple to make and can even be automated, your data is in the hands of another.

While we would be happy to discuss the value to you or your organization of moving your entire blog presence (or content managed site) to WordPress, we have developed a method of simply backing up your images.

Blogger Image Back-Up Only
While moving a succession of Blogger Blogs to WordPress we developed several excellent techniques for moving images. Unlike the Blogger Content Back-Up that is now available, images are not readily available in a usable format. However we have developed a method that will permit us to make you complete folders of your Blogger images in all three formats:

• Thumbnail Size Blogger Images
• S400 – the displayed size of your images in the blog post images in Blogger
• S1600 / S1600-h – the full sized original image that you uploaded

We can provide you with a list of all images and with a list of the posts that use those images as well as a directory of each of these images.

How Blogger Images are Moved/Handled
Many people are unaware that every time you upload an image in Blogger when creating a post that it goes into a Picasa web album. The album is “hidden” from public view unless you alter that. Of course you can easily make a back up of that entire album, but the names are cryptic and nothing ties them back to specific posts. Many use winHTTrack and make a duplicate of the site off-line. However with this method, the images are buried in several levels of sub-directories and they have cryptic directory names.

When we first started doing Blogger site moves, the Blogger/Picasa images were moved with simple brute force. We would have to essentially go post by post, and retrieve and upload the proper pictures while creating links when migrating. Thankfully we have developed a more automated system now.

We have developed a system that allows us to retrieve and archive your images economically and in a way that would allow you to match images to the proper posts should you ever be in a disaster recovery mode. It also allows us to easily re-create the images on a complete move to WordPress.

So while we might encourage you to make the complete WordPress move with your Blogger Blog, feel free to use our contact form to give us a hollar if you just want to make a back-up of your blogger images. We’d be happy to provide you with a quote for this service.

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Some of the newer themes being developed are really nice and flexible. I came across a few lately that I really liked. When I get a minute perhaps I’ll feature a few others that I have liked.

This past week when doing a Blogger to WordPress move (the migration included moving about seven hundred images to the BlueHost WordPress server from Picasa/Blogger), I found one that I really liked called Simple Balance.

What is nice about this particular theme is that you can put several different looks on it, change a lot of the features such as show one featured post with the rest excerpted, etc. The site advertises version 2.1, but in fact the download I took was version 2.2. While I appreciate a theme like Thesis with all of the hooks and flexibility, using something like this is much more intuitive and offers a lot of simple flexibility.

Installed Theme

Access the Simple Balance Control Panel

Options are a click away in Simple Balance

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1. WordPress Theme Directory: Generate URL Dynamically with PHP Code

Migrating from HubSpot to WordPress continues amongst a variety of businesses. One of the companies we spoke with recently operates in three countries which means it is a sizable enterprise. Their reasons for moving from HubSpot to WordPress are;

1. The API does not meet expectations
2. The website is loading slowly (very slowly)
3. Lacks the ability to include custom developed software
4. There is no direct access to the database, which limits access to our own content
5. Not seeing an SEO benefit

A consulting firm shared their primary motivation behind the move from HubSpot to WordPress.

1. $250  a month is no longer affordable
2. The purpose of driving conversions was not achieved
3. The blog posting/editing system is a pain to use

We are not certain if there is a trend developing here.  WordPress is certainly gaining steam and it is quite natural for companies like HubSpot to see customers come and go.   Client companies may shrink or mature or take on internal expertise or hire topical experts.

Do you think there is a trend in HubSpot clients moving from HubSpot to WordPress?

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1. Personal Blog Experience Drives Blog Migration to WordPress

For the first time ever BlogWranglers was asked if we could move a blog from HubSpot to WordPress.  All we needed to hear was move and WordPress and we were all in.  Another blog migration here we come.

Well, what a surprise upon logging into the account at HubSpot.  Here is what we found;

1. There is no blog or website Export function in HubSpot
2. There is no access to the database in HubSpot

The account is structured in way that really prevents leaving HubSpot.  So far, all of the major content managements systems that we have worked with offer some sort of export or migration tool or access to the database and file system, so HubSpot was quite a disappointment on this point.

We ended up doing a lot of heavy lifting, the hard way, and successfully transferred the website content into a fresh WordPress installation on our dedicated server.

The client is very happy now and grateful to have reduced his monthly expenses considerably.

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1. Personal Blog Experience Drives Blog Migration to WordPress

http://wpgarage.com/tips/38-ways-to-optimize-and-speed-up-your-wordpress-blog/ .

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

http://www.port80software.com/tools/compresscheck.asp

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I can’t quite remember how to generate the theme directory with PHP – I’m usually off by a letter for some reason …

It’s of course very simple and I do it regularly when creating updates and custom coding, particularly in Thesis custom themes, because adding code in open hooks will NOT link to the the directory, but rather to the main directory structure unless you add this:

<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>

I hope you find this in Google more easily than I  did because searching for the keyword — Theme — always seems to display results of WordPress theme sites and not to the URL structure to get to a theme directory.

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1. Adding a Blog Page to Thesis WordPress Theme
2. Membership Directory Powered By Wordpress

Many people wish to add a blog page to their page structure.  By doing so, you can have your cake and eat it too because the blog page will wind up in your navigation structure.

How to do it yourself:

1. Create a page called “blog”.

2. Choose custom template for the page template in the left sidebar when creating the page.

3. Leave the page blank — seems odd eh?

4. Open your custom functions file in the editor and add this:

function add_blog_page() {
if (is_page('blog')) {
$limit = get_option('posts_per_page');
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts('' . $limit . '&paged=' . $paged);
echo '<div id="content">';
thesis_home_loop();
echo '</div>' . "\n" . '<div id="sidebars">';
thesis_build_sidebars();
echo '</div>';
}
}
remove_action('thesis_hook_custom_template','thesis_custom_template_sample');
add_action('thesis_hook_custom_template', 'add_blog_page');

Of course save your custom functions file.

If all is well it should work. Feel free to leave us a comment if it works well for you. This is a modification of the code found here for creating a featured category post page.

I hope you find this useful. If it presents too much of a problem for you or you want something close but different, we’d love to provide you with a project cost to suit your needs. Just contact us with our give us a hollar page.

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Many of our new customers come to us with something broken on their WordPress install or needing updating to the latest version.  Frequently the issue is their inability to utilize the automatic upgrade feature to get the latest version of WP (2.9.2 as I write this).  In fact just tonight we had such a client upgrade to perform.  Automatic update wasn’t working — but we were able to get the upgrade in after a bit of lasso work.

You can figure it out yourself perhaps (while risking loss of functionality of your site, or loss of data), or you can simply contact us, let us do the heavy lifting and as much as anything finesse your site to the latest WordPress version.  You might be glad to save the headache and to allow us to do so professionally protects your site, your data, and your site visitors’ experiences.

Time to contact BlogWranglers.com so we can tell your WP install to giddy up and go?  Give us a holler!

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Skipfish is a new service from Google that allows you to scan a site for vulnerabilities. They say the following which seems to me to be incredibly nieve:

All right, I want to try it out. What do I need to know?

First and foremost, please do not be evil. Use skipfish only against services you own, or have a permission to test.

Keep in mind that all types of security testing can be disruptive. Although the scanner is designed not to carry out malicious attacks, it may accidentally interfere with the operations of the site. You must accept the risk, and plan accordingly. Run the scanner against test instances where feasible, and be prepared to deal with the consequences if things go wrong.

Now hang on, isn’t is as simple as asking me to upload a skipfish.txt file to my root and only running the service if it’s there — and better yet dated currently?  This is a great new service from Google, but I could in fact use it in disruptive ways.  It’s easy for the team to correct it.

via SkipfishDoc – skipfish – Project documentation – Project Hosting on Google Code.

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I recently used this one and it appears to be working well:

http://detectmobilebrowser.com/

What one do you use? Why is it better than this one?

Need help installing this or other enhancements on your website? It is what we do, give us a holler.

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