Erin Clerico

Okay, realizing there was not logical way to bring in old Manila threaded discussions was a bummer. Onward and upward. I working on mapping specific URLs from each Manila peice exported to WordPress. Stories, images etc. I am relying on the a part of the Manila database called the glossary (adrSite^.["#glossary"] just in case you do care).

Over the years managing Manila servers I can recall just enough cases of trouble with this index that I have a slight superstition about it, but we’re talking about a handful of cases years ago. Since this is a rare service request (haven’t heard about a problem in years) I think I’m gonna put my trust in this source as a reliable lookup for Manila stories and pictures.

WordPress returns enough information to calculate the new URL with each new post, story or image posted. So I just need to store the old URL and the new URL together so some future process can point traffic frm the old to the new.

Next I will need to devise the most efficient way for the WordPress site to recognize an incoming Manila link (which normally it would reject as a 404 not found) and forward the request to the the object’s new location. This way we can minimize (although not entirely eliminate) breakage for your content when you move.

Way back in the day… Dave Winer supposed people may one day want to move from one Manila host to another - so he pioneered a feature for Manila (an ancient but solid blogging platform) that allowed for a complete site export file. The file is useless unless you happen to have a copy of Frontier of Radio Userland hanging around, but it could be sent to a Manila host who could pop it right up for you on his or her server.

But alas this is of little help these days as the Manila hosting market never really took off and is a relatively quiet sector in terms of competition (disclosure - I am one of those hosts as the owner of Weblogger).

What Manila site masters really need is a way to change blogging platforms without the bruising pain of losing all of their posts and other content, images and editorial structures etc. In other words - is there way to savage the blood sweat and tears I’ve plowed into my Manila blog?

We have had Jason Levine’s script for exporting a Manila site in to an MT formatted file, which is compatible with the Wordpress importing process. This approach does leave a lot to be desired, mostly due to the fact that as each Manila item (post, page, image etc) seem to lose proper context when the site is exported in a single piece.

I liken this process to taking a brick house apart brick by brick and loading it on a flatbed truck to be re-assembled in another location. You do your best to document how the house was originally put together, you take pictures and make diagrams. Even with the best laid plans, in the end the re-assembled house is certainly recognizable but never really the same house. Plus you have an odd pile of left-over bricks!

A better approach would be to move the house one brick at a time. For the time that the house is partially located in two places, you have a perfect reference for where to put each brick, and you would probably wind up with a moved house that is pretty darn close to it’s original state. And no left-over bricks!

What I am talking about here is a new approach to moving a Manila site piece by piece - in such a way that the WordPress site you wind up with is much closer in all ways to your former Manila site.

I am currently working on this and I’ll try to blog a bit about my thinking as I build.