Erin Clerico

I have several good clients waiting patiently to get their Manila sites moved to Wordpress - don’t worry I’m smashing forward every night.

My latest progress includes getting images and now stories exported with the process. I am also seeing the URLs cross reference information being rendered correctly, for a Manila story for example there could be at least two, maybe more possible URLs:

• www.manilaSite.com/stories/storyreader$551
• www.manilaSite.com/myNewPuppy (custom path)
• www.manilaSite.com/critters/MyNewPuppy (second custom path to same story - possible)
• more custom paths…

At this point I am getting the first two - before I’m done I had better go back thru the Manila site’s custom site paths and clean up all the other references to each story.

Also i am building a shadow-glossary with new WordPress URLs for the export process as I go. This is a table of URLs matched to Manila ‘Shortcuts.’ I use this shadow glossary to resolve Manila Shortcut style links in content as I render it for export to the target WordPress site. In English this means that embedded Manila shortcuts will point to their new WordPress URLs after the conversion (this is needed because links like www.manilaSite.com/stories/storyreader$551 will look like www.manilaSite.com/?p=443 for example).

Since I am exporting each bit of content as it was input, and rebuilding the glossary in that same order, it opens the possibility that a user may have added an image or story after a post, then went back to the post to add the shortcut. This is a time travel issue I am going to have to address - no idea yet how to handle this with my chosen route but I’m sure I’ll come up with something…

More updates as I go - keep you eye on this spot!

I got a great note this morning from Cecil Coupe introducing himself and pointing me to a site he has set up to promote another means of converting Manila to WordPress - MvManila. This is yet another approach to getting Manila content unstuck. From what I have read on his site he has a good handle on the problem and has put forth an excellent solution.

This is good for Manila users - we now have three ways to go each with their own trade-offs to consider. My process won’t be perfect and Cecil or Jason’s solutions are good alternatives, each with their own challenges. The long and the short of this is that if you feel trapped with tons of posts in a Manila site and want out - there is help available!

One difference between out efforts is that I am not planning on releasing my code. In part because with total control over the Manila server and the WordPress install I have more flexibility, such as extending the WordPress API to allow for XML-RPC calls that otherwise don’t exist. I am not going to put in the time needed to take such code to a level that it could be released.

This will be a coin-operated service at Weblogger - I’m thinking maybe $79.95 to convert a Manila site with my process that includes a free year of WordPress hosting on our servers. A client would have to get me their Manila root file for me to do this, this can be done using a standard Manila backup feature. One caveat will be that the site’s GEMs must still be on-line from their old host for the move, as GEMs are not embedded in a Manila site’s database (the way Manila pictures, or images are).