Whether you are moving from HubSpot, Blogger, TypePad, Drupal or a custom CMS into WordPress its handy to count how many pages or posts are involved, even before you have usernames and passwords.

This is the third in a series of posts that show how to use the SEO Spider and Excel to see the differences between HubSpot, Blogger and Drupal URL structures.

We tried many tools and settled on the Screaming Frog SEO Spider for our pre-move assessments. We ponied up for the Pro version and removing the 500 URL limit is well worth it. Let’s look at how to use the SEO Spider before a migration project begins.

First, launch the SEO spider and then export your results as a .csv or Excel spreadsheet.

Second, in Excel click on the Data tab and then click on Filter. You will now see the little drop down menu for each column. Here is where it gets specific and powerful.

If you are Moving from Drupal to WordPress;

First recognize that HubSpot and Blogger (like TypePad) are essentially hosted closed systems as compared to Drupal (or MovableType or Joomla) which will allow you to customize and convolute all you like. Trust me, some people do just that, which makes those projects harder to export and migrate.

I like to expand the column width of Column A (Address) so that I can read most URLs before I begin.

Filter the content for just text/html and then sort the Address column alphabetically. Now just read the URLs as you scroll down and look for patterns.

Lets find out how many pages are on the site.

In the example that I am reviewing the developers used a unique /category-name/ for each section of the website.  Since there are more than a dozen of these it will be easier to find a way to exclude the blog than include all the category names and their pages.

Now here is an interesting situation. This particular domain has not implemented a canonical URL. This means that the SEO Spider is listing both the www and the non-www version of every page and post.  We will have to filter out the www so that all the counts are not doubled up. It’s never simple.

1. Click on the Address Filter drop down, in Column A. It is usually found on Row 2.
2. Click on the Text Filters  and then choose Custom Filter
3. In the drop down, select “Contains” and type in www
4. In the second drop down, select “does not contain” and type in /blog/
5. Click OK

Now we can see a much shorter list of just the pages of the website. No images, blog posts, archives and so on.  Scrolling down the list I still see all the categories and I recognize the pages names.

You can certainly modify the filter and count only blog posts or images as well. You have to pay attention to use such a powerful tool with any hope of getting useful results.

Always expect surprises when working with websites.  These same principles apply to straight HTML sites, hosted solutions like HubSpot, Blogger, Active Rain and TypePad as well as Open Source solutions such as Drupal, Movable Type or Joomla.

This post is third in a series. Each post has unique information that is relevant no matter what CMS you are working with.

The first in the series is about moving from HubSpot to WordPress and has a nice tip regarding robots.txt and the SEO Spider.

The second in the series focuses on moving from Blogger to WordPress and illustrates counting blog posts.

Whether you are moving from HubSpot, Blogger, TypePad, Drupal, HTML, Moveable Type or a custom CMS into WordPress its handy to know how much work is involved (how many pages or posts), even before you have usernames and passwords.

This is the second in a series of posts where you can learn how to use the SEO Spider and Excel to see the differences between HubSpot, Blogger and Drupal URL structures.

We tried many tools and settled on the Screaming Frog SEO Spider for our pre-move assessments. We ponied up for the Pro version and removing the 500 URL limit is well worth it. Let’s look at how to use the SEO Spider before a migration project begins.

First, launch the SEO spider and then export your results as a .csv or Excel spreadsheet.

Second, in Excel click on the Data tab and then click on Filter. You will now see the little drop down menu for each column. Here is where it gets specific and powerful.

Click to see a larger image illustrating Excel Filters

If you are Migrating from Blogger to WordPress;

Let’s see how many blog posts we have.  The difference between a Blogger move and other CMSs is in the URL structure filtering.

I like to expand the column width of Column A (Address) so that I can read most URLs before I begin.

Post – http://blog.domain-name.com/2008/05/post-name.html

Comment – http://blog.domain-name.com/2008/05/post-name.html?showComment=1210259340000

Comment - http://blog.domain-name.com/2008/05/post-name.html?showComment=1211221980000

Comment - http://blog.domain-name.com/2008/05/post-name.html?showComment=1211988840000

Thankfully the Archives use a different string to show the date.

http://blog.domain-name.com.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

http://blog.domain-name.com.com/2008_12_01_archive.html

Feed URLs are distinctive.

http://blog.domain-name.com/feeds/1058267882026467620/comments/default

For Blogger we need to filter for /year/month/ and exclude Comment. Here is how to do that.

First off, it may already be obvious that we can’t filter on one year or month because it will exclude all others. So, we will avoid that issue by using a wildcard *.

1. Click on the Address Filter drop down, in Column A. It is usually found on Row 2.
2. Click on the Text Filters  and then choose Custom Filter
3. In the drop down, select “Contains” and type in /20**/**/
4. In the second drop down, select “does not contain” and type in Comment
5. Click OK

Now you can see just the blog posts in Blogger.

Be sure to read the two other related posts. Each one has unique lessons that will still apply regardless of CMS you are using. The first in the series discusses moving from HubSpot to WordPress.

The second post reveals a few more tips and looks at migrating from Drupal to WordPress.

Whether you are moving from HubSpot, Blogger, TypePad, Drupal, HTML, Moveable Type or a custom CMS into WordPress we often have to analyze how much work is involved before we are given usernames and passwords for a potential move. This is the first in a series of posts that will look at HubSpot, Blogger and Drupal.

There are a range of tools that allow you to peer into a site, but we have settled on the Screaming Frog SEO Spider for our pre-move assessments. We ponied up for the Pro version. Let’s look at how to use the SEO Spider before a migration project begins.

First, launch the SEO spider and then export your results as a .csv or Excel spreadsheet.

Second, in Excel click on the Data tab and then click on Filter. This will offer the little drop down menu for each column. Here is where it gets specific and powerful.

Click to see a larger image illustrating Excel Filters

The first two columns are labeled Address and Content; these will be the focus of our attention.  Each website or blog may have a very unique URL structure, so here is some guidance.

Below are instructions for HubSpot.  Each example also illustrates unique URL structures that could be found in any website or blog you are moving.

If you are leaving HubSpot for WordPress;

I like to expand the column width of Column A (Address) so that I can read most URLs before I begin.

1. Click on the Content Filter drop down, in Column B. It is usually found on Row 2.
2. Click on Select All to uncheck all boxes.
3. Select the boxes that start with Text/html and/or Text/html; charset=UTF-8.
4. Click OK.

Note that your configuration may vary. The point here is to select only text. This removes the images, applications, JavaScript, Blanks and other file types.

Now lets sort for just blog posts.

Leave the above settings in place. This is where we can find even more dramatic differences. You have to look at the URLs and think about what you want to exclude or include. In the HubSpot blog that I am looking at for reference I can see an alphabetical listing of the URLs.

1. Click on the Address Filter drop down, in Column A. It is usually found on Row 2.
2. Click on the Sort A to Z option
3. Click OK

Now scroll down the page and look for patterns.

I can see that I don’t want to include URLs like;

Tags = http://blog.domainName.com/?Tag=TagName
BB Pages = http://blog.domainName.com/?BBPpage=2
Pages = http://blog.domainName.com/PageName
RSS Feeds = http://blog.domain-name.com/CMS/UI/Modules/BizBlogger/rss.aspx?tabid=139217&moduleid=193596&maxcount=25&tag=post+name

So we are up to at least four URL structures to exclude now. There is an easier way.

All HubSpot blog posts have the following structure and we can search for a unique part of the URL;

http://blog.domainName.com/blog/bid/49582/post-name

Back in Excel;

1. Click on the Address Filter drop down, in Column A. It is usually found on Row 2.
2. Click on the Text Filters  and then choose Custom Filter
3. In the drop down, select “Contains” and type in /blog/bid/
4. Click OK

Now Excel will show you the revised count of just HubSpot blog posts at the bottom left corner. Pretty hand, eh?
This excludes, images, pages, tags and other non-blog URLs. HubSpot does not have Categories.

Keep in mind that the SEO Spider will follow the robots.txt and other similar directives. If a section of the site is excluded, the SEO Spider will not reveal them.  We have found sites that have pages that are not linked to from any other page and are not in the Google index and are yet important parts of a website transfer. This is an example of where a site owner’s first hand knowledge can be helpful when exporting a site.

How do you assess the number of pages or posts before moving?

Read the second in our series to learn more tricks and the specifics in counting pages or posts when moving from Blogger to WordPress.

Read the third in our series to learn even more tricks and the specifics of counting pages or posts when migrating from Drupal to WordPress.

Thinking of moving your website or blog? This post explains the moving steps.

It doesn’t matter whether you are moving from HubSpot, Drupal, Blogger, MoveableType or a custom CMS. The project process described below will prepare you and your team for a successful project.

Share the URL

If you need our help, here is a personal request. Some  website move inquiries don’t offer the website or blog web address. Crazy right? Even if you are inquiring as an agency or are unlikely to move, let us give more useful information by looking at your project directly. This way you get more accurate information and avoid surprises.

Time to call the website movers.

Confirm All Log in Information

We will need to log in to the host and any current Content Management System (CMS) to grab all of your data. (We have also performed migrations without being able to log in.)  Log in information may include most or all the following;

• Current host
• Current CMS – this includes database access
• Future host
• Future CMS
• Domain name registration account. This is needed to update the A Name record which points visitors to the new site
• Third Party accounts –  Analytics, Social Sharing, RSS, integration with CRM and email lists and so forth.

Export or Full Migration Services?

We can do anything, but we generally see three major types of move projects.

1. Export the data only.
2. Move the data and duplicate the current design
3. Migrate the data and create a fresh new design

Special Functionality

Review any features or special functionality on your current site and decide whether you want it on the new site. Each CMS has unique features.

Publishing

During a migration project, two websites exist concurrently.  The current live site and the destination site.

At a specific point in time your content will be exported and moved from the live site. After that time anything that gets published on the live site, by definition, was not moved.

We have a couple of ways to make sure that nothing gets lost.

1. Some clients may “double post”. This means posting the same thing on the live site and the destination site.
2. High volume publishers pay a modest fee for an extra export the day of the switch over to gather any new content and include it on the destination site.
3. Some clients opt to stop publishing. This may last for a week or two.

301 Permanent Redirects

All projects so far have included a change in the URL. The two most common reasons are;

1. Shortening the URL or
2. Moving from a sub-domain to a sub-directory.

Here are examples of each;

• A shorter URL – http://domain.com/blog/bid/3481/blog-post-title -
•  gets shortened – to http://domain.com/blog/blog-post-title
• Switch from sub-domain to sub-directory – http://info.domain.com/blog-post-title -
•  is changed to – http://domain.com/blog/blog-post-title

The 301 Redirect points traffic from the old URL to the new improved URL instead of letting the server show an error message when the old URL is no longer available.

Broken Link Search

Change the Domain Name Server Settings

Go Live

You have decided to export your data and move your website or blog. WordPress is a great platform to migrate in to whether you are moving from HubSpot, Typepad, Blogger or Drupal. Which project scope is right for you?

Random Before and After Blog Migration Considerations

RSS - There are platforms that do not offer the ability to export your RSS subscribers. Hubspot is one that comes to mind. Before moving setup an account at FeedBurner. Write a post asking current subscribers to click on the big FeedBurner subscription button that you have added to your blog. Now you have a fighting chance of bringing those subscribers with you.

Analytics - Some content management systems have proprietary analytics solutions or none at all.  Prior to moving consider adding a portable analytics solution like Google Analytics, SiteMeter or Mint. This way you will be able to compare data before and after the move and see if these WordPress SEO claims are true for you as well. 

Spam Prevention- Each platform has its own system for battling blog comment and form spam. The premier blog comment spam prevention solution on WordPress is Akismet. If you are a big business pay the fee and cross it off your list. 

Users - Review each user account to verify the account level ( Subscriber, Editor, Administrator).  This is a great time to update and fill in all the blank fields. Reset the password and tell the user.  Or just let them know which email address is on the system and they can use the password recovery feature to change their password and login.  If you need to delete a user, be sure and choose to have WordPress assign that author’s posts to another user account.

Social Sharing Counts - Twitter, Facebook and other sharing chicklets that count how many times a post has been shared cannot be moved. These accounts are tied to a URL and cannot be moved to a different URL.

It’s time to move your website or blog from HubSpot, Drupal, TypePad, Blogger or Tumblr to WordPress.

Three Ways to Move

1) Just export the data – posts, comments, pages, categories, tags, images, videos, meta data etc.

Some projects need just the data moved  from one platform to another. For example, the client may have already started creating a new custom theme, the project may be focused on merging a blog into an existing website in one installation of WordPress or the focus is strictly on getting the data off of the old platform for archiving purposes and so design is unimportant.

Don't feel Lost. You have Three Design Choices

There can be challenges.  For example if the site owner selected a new platform or theme and doesn’t use live data to test the construction he can run into surprises after the data is moved. After all the hard work creating the custom design the client may feel that there must be something wrong due to the migration. Unfortunately, integrating the theme is not part of the specific scope of work that they chose. This kind of website move is for more advanced developers who are comfortable troubleshooting and custom programming.

We have completed this kind of projects for an NFL team, city university, print and online magazines and more.

There are many situations where no satisfactory export function is available to exit the current platform. This is the main reason we are contacted. We run across this most when there is not a content management system (CMS) in use and in proprietary purpose-built platforms like HubSpot.

Even Blogger does not handle exports seamlessly.  The images in a Blogger blog are stored in Picassa web albums and use file names and directory structures unrelated to the blog post they appear in.

These project will need at least two to three weeks to complete. The reason is that these are usually enormous migrations with tens of thousands of posts and comments and coming from a platform that does not store data in the database in a similar way to WordPress.

2) Export all the files and duplicate the existing design and create a custom WordPress theme

This kind of project has a very clear scope that allows us to start the switch-over and move quickly.  We fully duplicate the existing blog or website with the same design “look and feel” once it is transferred to WordPress.

We have completed this type of project for a marketing blog, financial planner, non-profit, educational institution, agile consultant in Cambridge, residential realtors in MA and FL, small businesses, bloggers and more.

These project may need two to three weeks to complete.

3)  Migrate and create an entirely new design and make a custom WordPress theme

This scope of work expands considerably beyond the two options listed above to include really enhancing the design to more closely align with achieving business goals.  This type of move is chosen because a more up-to-date design may be required or business goals may have changed and the website needs a new layout to reflect this change.    Additional time will allow for the design and approval process before we begin to build the custom theme.

We have completed this kind of project for a personal coach, non-profit marketing organization in Boston, a tree trimming company in Texas, speaking coach in New Zealand and a political blogger in Tennessee.

The timeline on these projects is driven by the client’s ability to make and adhere to decisions on time. Four weeks is normally enough time for a small to medium-sized website or blog. This type of project can be the most cost efficient when a new design is in the near future.

We can complete a project in a week, but then you may also be charged the moon.

Three Ways to Move your Blog

The quickest and most troublefree move for you could be any of the three above. The clients that were focused on completing the move really fast and who didn’t want to handle the integration chose option two.

So, whether you are going to move from BlogSmith, HubSpot, ActiveRain, TypePad, Blogger, Drupal or straight HTML and CSS think about which approach will best fit your organizational needs and give us a holler. There is always an option that will work for you.

When moving websites and blogs we find great code and pretty poor code. When we run into the pretty poor code during a migration we always make the necessary corrections as part of the move after consulting with the client.

In this example an image URL is waaaaaaaaaay too long.

There are 238 sub directories below. Yikes.

This URL is 2176 characters long.

http://info.(redacted).com(redacted)/

hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/

hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/

hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/hsimages/

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The redacted URL is of a blog on a sub-domain. Most clients prefer to keep their blog and website on one URL and not use a sub-domain.

This means using something like domain.com/blog instead of blog.domain.com.  One advantage of this is that all links pointing to the website and blog now point to one domain name instead of two.

Business goals vary so using the same domain for a website and blog is not a recommendation for all situations 100% of the time.
 

One of the most important aspects of maintaining a blog is to post updates as often as possible. By getting valuable information posted before other blogs, a blogger will have a better chance of attracting and retaining an audience than the competition. However, some bloggers are not always near a computer, such as at an event where they want to quickly post an announcement or other timely information.

Mobile blogging apps available on smart phone or tablet computers allow you to post from anywhere there is access to a 3G or 4G wireless internet connection. This makes posting timely blog posts much easier.  Blogging apps are available for three of the most popular blogging platforms: Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger. These apps are available for both Apple’s iOS (used on iPhones and iPads) and Google’s Android, which are the two most popular smart phone and tablet operating systems today.

The apps available for posting to WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger over a wireless Internet connection are all very similar. Most importantly, all three apps are free. However, it is worth noting that the Blogger app that is available for free is called “BlogPress Lite” and does not have all the features included with the full BlogPress app. However, all three of these free blogging apps will allow you to post blogs, along with images, and provide a convenient WYSIWYG editor that will make sure that your blog appears exactly how you want it to.

The WordPress and Tumblr apps do have a couple of added features that the BlogPress Lite app does not have. For example, you can customize the look of your blog using WordPress and Tumblr by loading themes from the Internet or themes you have designed. Also, you can add keywords to WordPress and Tumblr posts that are written through the app to help optimize your blog’s search results on search engines like Google.

The added flexibility of the WordPress and Tumblr apps makes them a better choice than using Blogger along with BlogPress Lite. Because you have to pay $2.99 for all the features included with the full version of BlogPress, but in the end, it’s all about preferences. If you’ve already started a Blogger blog, you can always export everything from Blogger and import them into WordPress and re-directed your custom domain name to go to your new WordPress blog.

Blogger has always been easier to use for most people, but WordPress gives loads of options with plugins. The WordPress app is probably the closest blogging application to its desktop and Tumblr being the runner-up. Blogger has improved its amount of options lately, so who knows how Google we’ll surprise us in the future with it.
While WordPress and Tumblr both have mobile blogging apps that are full featured and available for free, there is one important difference between WordPress and Tumblr. WordPress users can host their blog on their own web host, while Tumblr users are required to have their site hosted on Tumblr’s web hosting. Because of this limit, WordPress is a more useful blogging tool for users who are more skilled in web development, though both WordPress and Tumblr are still leaps ahead of Blogger, in terms of their mobile blogging through wireless internet capabilities.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find internet service providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your wireless internet necessities.

Blogsmith hit my project radar recently so I started doing some elementary research on the platform.

A search in Google for “Blogsmith” took me off on a tangent and revealed how imperfect Google search results are.  Here is what I found in the first 10 search results and beyond.

Result #1

If you visit http://www.blogsmith.com/ you will find the Blogsmith logo on a blue gradient field. Nothing else.

Result #2

https://cms.aol.com/signin/ will actually allow you to login securely if you already have a Blogsmith account.

Result #3 (2006)

http://www.brianalvey.com/news/2006/11/10/aol-and-blogsmith/ is where Brian (a founder) tells a brief history of Blogsmith and Weblogs starting back in June of 2003.

Result #4

Is Brian Alvey’s Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Alvey which shows that AOL bought Blogsmith in November 2006.

Result #5

Is the Blogsmith Twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/blogsmith which has two followers, is following three other accounts and protects its Tweets.  The bio reads: “I am the most advanced blogging platform in the world”.

Result #6 (2010)

Is a Blogherald piece about AOL purchasing TechCrunch and whether AOL will move TechCrunch form Automattic’s WordPress VIP hosting to Blogsmith or not.

Result #7 (2007)

Is a TopRank blog post discussing whether Blogsmith could be released to the public in 2007.

Here is where Google entirely loses the Blogsmith blogging platform scent.

Result #8

Is a Brookline, MA bookstore blog hosted on Blogger.

Result #9

Is a general interest blog also hosted on Blogger.

Result #10 (2008)

Is a video search result. The Vimeo video shows you how to use the Blogsmith administrative panel, by Jonathon Morgan.

Towards the end of the second page of search results news articles about Blogsmith begin to appear. Moving further into the search results there are many listings where the term blogsmith was used like the term blacksmith, but about blogs.

The small amount of  information available about the history and use of Blogsmith is surprising. However, this could be because Blogsmith is still privately owned by AOL.

Brian Alvey’s work history is impressive. He has worked on some pretty huge projects and they seem to have scaled really well.

I wonder how many blogs are running Blogsmith?   Royal Pingdom showed in 2009 that Blogsmith was running 14 of the 100 largest blogs.

I wonder whether any Blogsmith blogs exist outside of AOL?

Blog Wranglers sends out a big thank you to Matt Mullenweg, the WordPress core team, the folks at Automattic, the ever-expanding eco-system of WordPress developers/programmers/designers and the many site owners that take advantage of the most useful publishing platform on the planet.

It has taken many people to get here and they all deserve a pat on the back.

Our clients (over at JBS Partners) have benefited from WordPress’s ease of use since 2007.

Blog Wranglers  was founded in 2009 to bring even more bloggers and site owners from other platforms over to WordPress.

To date we have moved more than 22,000 posts  and 31,000 comments.  So, you can see WordPress is a big part of our focus.

Of course these numbers pale in comparison to the stats that WordPress puts out.  They have over 24.7 millions self hosted blogs and more than 20 million blogs on WordPress.com.  Now that is an accomplishment.

So, a hearty congratulations and thanks goes out to WordPress and we look forward to working more closely together in the years to come.

Mark filled out the BlogWranglers contact form to ask about his HubSpot hosted company blog that he is moving to WordPress. He had completed moving his posts and email subscribers from HubSpot on his own.  His question was about RSS. Really Simple Syndication is a great thing, but Mark could not figure out how to extract his subscriber list from HubSpot.

No RSS Migration

There is no way to migrate RSS subscribers from HubSpot. At least that is what I figured. I checked with a buddy of mine that works at HubSpot and he said the same thing. If you know otherwise, please enlighten us in the comment area below.

How do you avoid losing your RSS subscribers when you want to move to a new platform? One suggestion is to use FeedBurner, which makes it pretty easy to move your subscribers.

HubSpot RSS Subscriber Notification

If you are in the same situation as Mark, here is what you can do.

Write a blog post explaining that your blog is moving. Keep the text to a minimum.

Ask your subscribers to subscribe again.

Place a nice big “Subscribe” button that links to the new feed.

If you can, present an offer or a “thank you for subscribing” message.

You may also want to repeat this  effort as you are entirely dependent on your subscribers seeing the post in their feed and clicking on the new subscribe button.

FeedBurner Maintains RSS Portability

FeedBurner is recommended whether you are on a proprietary content management system or an Open Source publishing platform like WordPress or Drupal.  This will help make sure that when it is time to migrate your blog or website that RSS subscribers are part of the move.

Note to Google: Please resume development on FeedBurner. Nothing much has happened since you bought FeedBurner in 2007.

Do you know a way to migrate RSS subscribers?

Automattic, maker of WordPress, released Jetpack to rousing cheers across the globe.

Free Plugin

Matt Mullenweg was thrilled to bring services found only on WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress.org accounts.

Jetpack from WordPress.com

The initial launch includes eight features that are installed by one simple plugin.  And there are clearly more to come, as indicated by the blank squares labeled “coming soon”.

1. WordPress.com Stats – Simple, concise site stats with no additional load on your server. There are many plugins and services that provide statistics, but data can be overwhelming. WordPress.com Stats makes the most popular metrics easy to understand through a clear and attractive interface.
   You will need a wordpress.com account to get this one working.
2. After the Deadline – After the Deadline helps you write better by adding spell, style, and grammar checking to WordPress. After the Deadline can check your spelling, grammar, and style when you publish with WordPress.  After the Deadline also provides a number of customization options. You can edit the phrase ignore list and enable extra options.
   You will find the activation check box in the user profile area under Proofreading.


Latex allows you to display tricky math problems

3. LaTeX - Mark up your posts with the LaTeX markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other über-geekery. LaTeX is a powerful markup language for writing complex mathematical equations, formulas, etc. Jetpack combines the power of LaTeX and the simplicity of WordPress to give you the ultimate in math blogging platforms.
4. WP.me Shortlinks -  Enable WP.me-powered shortlinks for all of your Posts and Pages for easier sharing. Instead of typing or copy-pasting long URLs, you can now get a short and simple link to your posts and pages. This uses the super compact wp.me domain name, and gives you a unique URL you can use that will be safe and reliable.  It’s perfect for use on Twitter, Facebook, and cell phone text messages where every character counts.
   Right in line with the Permalink you will find the “Get Shortlink” button available.
5. Gravatar Hovercards – Show a pop-up business card of your users’ Gravatar profiles in comments.  Hovercards enhance plain Gravatar images with information about a person: name, bio, pictures, their contact info, and other services they use on the web like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Hovercards offer a great way to show your internet presence and help people find your own blog.
6. Twitter Widget – Display the latest updates from a Twitter user inside your theme’s widgets. The Twitter Widget shows your latest tweets within a sidebar on your theme. It’s an easy way to add more activity to your site.
   There are also a number of customization options. Change the number of displayed tweets, filter out replies, and include retweets.
   In Appearance / Widgets you can enable this and show your Tweets in the sidebar.
7. Sharedaddy - Share your posts with Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other services. You can configure services to appear as icons, text, or both. Some services have additional options to display smart buttons, such as Twitter, which will update the number of times the post has been shared. The following services are included: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, PressThis, Digg, Print, and Email.
   In the Settings section you will find a new listing named “Sharing”. This is where you configure it.
8. Shortcode Embeds – Easily embed videos and more from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare.
   Available shortcodes are: archives, audio, blip.tv, dailymotion, digg, flickr, googlevideo, scribd, slide, slideshare, soundcloud, vimeo, youtube, and polldaddy]

Here is the link to download Jetpack now.

This new offering begins to level the capabilities available between the two dot-org and dot-com offerings from Automattic. The clear indication is that this is just the beginning of a raft of new features that will become available to WordPress.org self-hosted accounts.  Frankly, I am impressed and pleased that these are available for free, at no charge.  It costs zippo, bupkiss, nada, nothing.  WordPress just became more valuable and easier to use in one step. Could you do that in your business? And since they are labeled free, we can be assured that there will also be paid services arriving in the future.

The features that they are offering out of the gate are some of the most sought after and popular capabilities.  Stats. We should all pay more attention to stats. After the Deadline is an amazing piece of technology that more people should benefit from.  The ability to share shortlinks, to share content to the largest social networks and use embed codes will are all features driven by Social Media. Five years ago no one would have cared about any of these features.

Hats off to Matt and everyone that made this possible. This is a monster step in the right direction for WordPress, all of WordPress.

Which features are you most interested in?

I just read a great article. Doc Searles has concerns with Flickr.

The fundamental concern in this case applies to Twitter, Facebook and many other private silod networks that contain your data. In this case the two major concerns regarding Flicker are:

1. Your account could be deleted permanently. An example was offered.
2. Flickr may not survive. Either replaced by new technology or fail financially

These are valid concerns.

Production of content is one of the harder parts for most people, whether it is a hobby or for profit site.  The inability to control the content or the possibility of losing it entirely should be given more attention.

There area couple of steps that I have taken that may be useful to you as well.

1. Look into the Backupify.com service to backup your Flickr and many other accounts including Google Docs, Facebook and so on.
2. Setup a dedicated WordPress. org blog and pipe all of your content there. I setup a blog that receives every one of my tweets as a post. This gives me the ability to login and search for links, images and tweets well past the short amount of time this content is available through Twitter.

In the comments of the Doc’s post mention is made of Gallery, an open source photo sharing web application. A do it yourself Flickr.  This could be another good option for the photographers in the audience. I have worked with other photo galleries. They each have their good and bad points.

The Blog Wranglers are always up for something new. If you want to move your photos from Flickr, but don’t want to get into API programming give us a holler.

Based on just this one article, I can see how our migration services can quickly expand well beyond our current scope. It is an exciting time to be in technology.

How are you taking care of your online data?

How would it effect if you if your Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Docs, GMail, Blogger, Zoho, delicious or FriendFeed data and account were deleted, permanently?

One of the features that has been native in Tumblr for some time now is “post types”. An easy method of categorizing posts that results in them being displayed in an organized templated structure. Many have duplicated this in WordPress by using categories and then defining a theme specific to the special “post type” to create a by category display. Others have gone to some coding to solve the issue. In WordPress 3.1, now in beta, the WP team is adding “post types” called “post formats” and themes are already being written that take this into account. Will this result in a number of Tumblr users moving to WordPress given the other advantages of WordPress over Tumblr?

We have been moving Tumblr blogs to WordPress for a while now and expect we may see some more work.

Just a day or two ago I wrote about helping people get from 2.x to 3.x in word press. WP creator Matt Mullenweg took the unusual step today of announcing 3.0.4 via email and indicated it is because of a critical flaw that was discovered and now fixed. So don’t put it off, update today!

If you wish our help, we are available to help you, just give us a holler to get a price.

Remember that even though updates since WordPress version 2.7 have been largely one click, that is no excuse for getting lazy. Always take a backup of your DB and your files before updating because one of these days something is bound to misfire for you. Every wordpress install is different — you use different themes, different plug-ins, and different content. Some use it for pure pleasure of writing and blogging, while others use it for critical content management system core features. It doesn’t matter how you use it — you should update again today.

You might not have guessed that the Blog Wranglers perform WordPress version upgrades for clients since it does not involve migration, but we do just about anything that comes our way.

Just this week we were contacted by a client who hosts at DreamHost and was stuck in WordPress version 2.0.1.  She wanted an upgrade to the latest version of  WordPress.  One of the biggest reasons you should upgrade is that older WP installs are subject to attacks. Another is to take advantage of all of the great new features.  In other cases functional breakdowns appear.

This client’s main reason to upgrade WordPress was simply that it was time to do it.  Imagine our surprise when we realized that the site was hacked by an injection attack between the time that the client first contacted us and when we were given the project go ahead.  Like I said above, the best reason to upgrade is to avoid security issues that leave you vulnerable to getting hacked.

This client benefited from excellent timing.  Quick identification and remediation of the site hack avoided likely being labeled as an attack site by the search engines and anti-virus/security software!

Instead we were able to clean up the system and upgrade the WordPress version all the way from 2.0.1 to 3.0.3. So, this was just in the nick of time.

We found injected code such as this at the top of each php page:

<!–?php /**/eval(base64_decode … ?–>

That code will results in de-listing with Google and a blocking of the site.

You can have your blog upgraded from any WordPress version to the current one too! Just give us a hollar with the details and we would be happy to work with you.

Curious about the WordPress major releases and the dates they were released?
Release History
Version Date
.70 May 27, 2003
1.0 January 3, 2004
1.2 May 22, 2004
1.5 February 17, 2005
2.0 December 31, 2005
2.1 January 22, 2007
2.2 May 16, 2007
2.3 September 24, 2007
2.5 March 29, 2008
2.6 July 15, 2008
2.7 December 10, 2008
2.8 June 11, 2009
2.9 December 18, 2009
3.0 June 17, 2010

However there are many interim releases!

Here is a list:
Version
0.71-gold
1.0.1-miles
1.0.2
1.0.2-blakey
1.0-platinum
1.2-delta
1.2-mingus
1.2.1
1.2.2
1.5-strayhorn
1.5.1
1.5.1.1
1.5.1.2
1.5.1.3
1.5.2
2.0
2.0.1
2.0.4
2.0.5
2.0.6
2.0.7
2.0.8
2.0.9
2.0.10
2.0.11
2.1
2.1.1
2.1.2
2.1.3
2.2
2.2.1
2.2.2
2.2.3
2.3
2.3.1
2.3.2
2.3.3
2.5
2.5.1
2.6
2.6.1
2.6.2
2.6.3
2.6.5
2.7
2.7.1
2.8-IIS
2.8
2.8.1-IIS
2.8.1
2.8.2-IIS
2.8.2
2.8.3-IIS
2.8.3
2.8.4-IIS
2.8.4
2.8.4a-IIS
2.8.4b-IIS
2.8.5-IIS
2.8.5
2.8.6-IIS
2.8.6
2.9-IIS
2.9
2.9.1-IIS
2.9.1
2.9.2-IIS
2.9.2
3.0-IIS
3.0
3.0.1-IIS
3.0.1
3.0.2-IIS
3.0.2
3.0.3-IIS
3.0.3

We have been working with WordPress since before the 1.x version series which makes us confident that we can help you get up to speed.

Nothing is good about the “new and improved” version 3.0 to 3.0.11 that has continued through to Thunderbird 3.1 through 3.1.7 which is current as of December of 2010.

When you add a new email account (tools > account settings > account actions button (bottom left) > Add Mail Account) Thunderbird 3.x.x attempts to auto-configure the account. This would be helpful if it got the settings the way you wanted, or allowed you to easily change them.

Unfortunately it auto-selects IMAP for many accounts, when Pop3 is preferred.

There are two suggested ways to solve this:
1. quickly (and I do mean quickly) hit the stop button (not the Manual Setup button contrary to logic) -see figure one. Often you simply cannot hit it quick enough to stop it and move on to Manual Setup. If you can catch it quick enough then use the drop down to select Pop3 – see figure 2.

Figure 1 - catch the stop button quick when auto-configuring in Thunderbird 3.0

Figure 2 - then use the drop down to select between IMAP and Pop3

2. fake it out with a non-existent account — see Figure 3 — this assures that it won’t actually mis-configure it before you have the opportunity to hit the stop button. I encourage you to use something like the example I show in my figures with some random numbers or characters as this will assure that you didn’t actually catch someone’s domain. Note: Leave the password BLANK.

Figure 3 - Use a completely unlikely domain when auto-configuring Thunderbird 3.x.x

3. fix it after the fact — not really that difficult to do if you aren’t afraid of a little code. Here is how. First in Thunderbird 3.x.x, click on Tools > Options > Advanced > General Tab > Config Editor and click through the warning about totally and completely and for all time messing up your install. Select “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

If you are working on the last added email it will be the highest numbered account so you can simply skip to the next step substituting an asterisk (*) for the number and then work on the highest numbered hostname account.

Otherwise, the next step if you have more than one email account up and running (and most likely you do) and it isn’t the one you last installed, then first you need to figure out which “instance” of the server is the one you want. They are simply numbered so you enter this into the filter:

mail.server.server*.hostname

Identify the proper hostname server number by looking at the associated domain name to the right:
mail.server.server7.hostname userset mail.matchingdomainname.com

This tells us we need server7 or if you have only one email account you can skip this step as explained above.

Finally, we can simply switch the type by entering in the filter the following:
mail.server.server7.type
(or mail.server.server*.type if you know you are working on the last added email account).

The server type will appear, double click on it and change it to what you want, either imap or pop3.

Figure 4: You can manually switch between pop3 and imap in Thunderbird 3.x.x even after auto-configure selects the wrong choice for you

Done!

We here at BlogWranglers regularly move blogs from hubspot, blogger, typepad and other platforms to WordPress (currently 3.0.3). Sometimes the migrated blogs are hosted elsewhere, but we often provide hosting to our blog move clients and as part of our hosting service we help people who wish to use Thunderbird as their email client get set up for the domains hosted here at BlogWranglers.com hosting. It has been more difficult to get this accomplished since the regressive improvement to auto-configure was added to Thunderbird. We hope that this article helps not only those folks for whom we offer top notch blog hosting after migration, but others as well.

We have moved a fair amount of Hubspot blogs to WordPress the last two weeks and I am beginning to significantly improve a couple of processes that I use for the moves. But I had to take a momentary break to download Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2010 tonight … only MS could give you something that is 155MB and call it express — what does the express stand for?

Short and too the point -- NOT

For those who missed it, I hate Facebook — that is right HATE.  And this weekend they rolled out a new Facebook Profile (link to CNN article) — great, make it even more confusing for those of us who find it hard to use, navigate, and understand.

Now I do get Facebook as a great way to find some long lost friend and get in touch — awesome, but what a horrible way to carry on any meaningful conversation.  As the Grinch might say, oh the noise, noise, noise, noise.

On the new format, I find the chat and poke buttons but I am unable to find the “send a message” link.  Where is it?  Please let me know.

Okay, so I found it — it appears when your friend goes off line — “Chat” becomes “Send Message”.  I don’t like it at all.  I want to send a message even when my friend is on-line.  Chat often wastes time, it is lost once you close the window.  It just isn’t the same.  Who dreams these things up?

I have always loved Meall Dubh’s Fold Page Menu Plug-in.  For many complex projects, it is a great way to keep menu’s fairly well controlled.  Even better, he has now made it into a Fold Page Menu Widget. I can also confirm that it works fine through WP version 3.0.2 that was recently released.  Unfortunately (you listening here Meall?) it has always been offered in a .tgz (tar zipped) file instead of the more common zip format.  That aside, you can use the free sourceforge, 7-zip to extract the files if necessary.

I found that I wanted my current page to be highlighted in the fold out page menu and that was just a little problematic because my initial attempts also highlighted any child pages.  Of course I soon realized why,  I was working on the ID current_page_item.  Because it was an li, the sub-lists were thus also included.  The fix was to use the following:

#folded-pages li.current_page_item > a{
color:#82FFFF;
}

The “>” makes only the top level menu items respond and not the sub-list items.

Problem solved.  I looked for a few before it dawned on me.  At first I was thinking it was an inheritance issue and I wasn’t making much progress.  The I realized all sub-lists were simply part of the existing list and thus included.

I move a lot of data for customers in any given week.  We move blogs from all manner of current platforms including lately a lot of hubspot and blogger traffic, but also custom platforms and cms (content management systems).  Sometimes it is a static site that is moving to wordpress.  Sometimes it is comments from disqus to wordpress — you just never know.  But what you know is that I need to save a lot of files to a folder, work on the data and by next week I’m off to other things and don’t need to save to those locations any longer.

Click in each spot shown to get to the good stuff

Until recently when I click “save as” I get a standard dialog box offering me the default windows folders — none of which is where I am headed because I always organize sub-folders like blogwranglers > blog moves > client x > hubspot images or some such.  I had to go “my documents” > then through the other sub-folders.  How to avoid that?

I had my old machine set with some custom commonly used folders so I started at blog moves and only had to click on the client’s folder.  I also name currently used files with a one at the front so in the time I am working on it daily I call it 1client x which brings it to the top of the pile.  When I am done working with it I name it zclient x which takes it to the bottom (I know I could drag them to an archive sub-folder).  I didn’t actually remember how to do this — so today I went looking and I found a good set of instructions on how to make this happen again — but I added an embellishment.

First I followed this set of directions that helped me to create a custom set of folder in my save as dialog box (I know they have a lot of advertisements on that page — enough that I might typically discount the page completely).

Note in my picture that they missed one step which is the expansion of “windows components”.  So I clicked one more time than they suggested.

My embellishment was to create a folder on my desktop (where it is easy to find/get to) called “shortcuts” and into that I then right clicked and dragged this weeks folders, being very careful to choose shortcut from the options — now I added this “shortcuts” folder to the save as dialog box and I am always one click away from saving to this week’s project folders.

I hope this is helpful to you.  It made my week all the more pleasant and saved me a number of mouse clicks — they only click so many times before they wear out you know …

shortcuts to my most commonly used files this week are now one click away

First set of BlogWrangler Ads out of the Hopper

We'll Move Your Blog

Professional Site Moving Services

Move Your Blog to WordPress

Professional Blog Moving Services

Ready to make the move to WordPress?

Professional Blog Moving Services

Now we need to get the copy sizzling.

1. We Move Blogs to WordPress
2. We move you to WordPress
3. Want to move to WordPress?
4. Corralling sites into WordPress
5. Over 15,000 posts moved
6. Moving Blogs Since 2009
7. WordPress Move-In Specialists
8. Move MovableType to WordPress
9. Migrate MovableType to WordPress
10. Move HubSpot to WordPress
11. Migrate HubSpot to WordPress
12. Move to WordPress with BlogWranglers (text above with the same stylized Blog Wranglers text below)
    

The bolded numbers 1, 8, 10 and 12 seem most likely to succeed.  Number 12 seems the best with 8 and 10 running a tie for second place.

Which do you think will be most effective?

Round Four – The Final Round

Move to WordPress with BlogWranglers

Professional Blog Moving Services BlogWranglers

Ok, so now we are ready to hand select advertising locations. Suggestions?

But when it comes to our duties here at blogwranglers – blog migration – we think of our customers as our wife in some respects, we want you to be happy.

Over the weekend we helped a couple of customers with their blog migrations. One, Brett Kelly wrote a nice article about his experience with us here. His response is pretty typical. Sure he could have figured a lot of it out — obviously we did at some point, but we have worked hard to find the shortcuts, to make it efficient, to make it pain free for you, our many wives.

Need help moving your blog? Have comments in Disqus that you would like to move to wordpress? Stuck in Tumblr and not sure how to get out? Let us know and we’ll see if we can be of service.

And Brett, if you need anything else, come on over to the corral.

Disqus has some distinct advantages, but also is undergoing explosive growth. Some people are simply not happy staying with Disqus and need to move comments from Disqus to WordPress. We recently completed a project to move Disqus comments as part of a blog migration to WordPress.

If you need help moving your Disqus comments to your WordPress blog and converting them to standard WordPress comments, please consider hiring us to help you export comments from Disqus and then import comments into WordPress.

Please share some information with us before we move your blog.

How much content is there to move? (Numbers are required, not descriptions like “not many”. Thanks.)

1. What is the URL that you want to move?
2. Are we moving the blog, website or both?
3. How many pages?
4. How many blog posts?
5. How many blog comments?
6. How many authors?
7. How many images?
8. How many audio files?
9. How many video files?
10. Anything else that will be moved?

What platform are you moving from?

1. Are you moving from HubSpot, MovableType, Ning, Blogger…?
2. If you are moving a WordPress blog, what version of WordPress are you running?
3. What company hosts the blog that will be moving?
4. Do you have cPanel?
5. We can provide hosting. Do you need a host to move to?

What is your time frame?

1. Is there a hard deadline?
2. Can the blog migration project scope dictate the schedule?

What type of blog or site is this?

1. Is it a hobby blog?
2. Is it a commercial enterprise?
3. Is it a non-profit?
4. Are you a student?

Custom Features

1. What is your sidebar comprised of?
2. What customizations are on your blog that are relevant to the move?
3. What platform specific features need to be replicated in the new site/blog, but are not native?
4. Is there a log-in area for clients/members that we need to reproduce?
5. What beyond pages and posts needs to be moved (Galleries. E-Commerce. Forums. Custom Forms and so on.)?

On the new server or account

1. Are we installing WordPress or are you?
2. Do you need a custom theme so that the new site looks like the old site?
3. Do you need a new design altogether?
4. Do you need us to handle the DNS change to point to the new server (this is mandatory)?
5. Do you need us to handle the all important 301 permanent redirects?
6. How familiar are you with WordPress? Need training?

What are you most interested in or most concerned about with the move?

Can we log-in and really see how things operate? That’s the best for complex looking projects.