On one hand I want a table of old Manila URLs matched to new URLs, and the only way I can see to do this is to plow thru the Manila site in the exact order it was created – message one then message two then three etc. The trouble is that the glossary is not of a chronological nature. And he’s right, users go in and mess with it all the time.

So here’s the new plan – please hold your nose and remember, reshaping a large amount of complex, interrelated data in to a new schema never designed to house it is by nature a kludgey, messy operation – best to accept homely solutions (and refer to them as ‘novel approaches’) and just move on.

I’ll make one complete pass over all stories, home pages, images, GEMs and news items, accumulating new WordPress URLs for each resource as I go.

When that is complete, and I know the whole truth about every URL in the old glossary and have a new glossary against which I will re-render every Manila story and home page and then post the result as an update to each already existing WordPress page. Remember, this should only be necessary for Manila stories and home pages, possibly discussion posts as replies to home pages and stories since Manila ‘news posts’ do not render shortcuts or Manila macros.

Only a little easier said then done, and I know what your thinking but remember — this a ‘novel approach…’

I updated the flowchart to document this insanity – should have the code actually doing this shortly.

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!

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).

Manila to WordPress Conversion PDF

Enjoy!

So far we have all members from the Manila site being created remotely, complete with WordPress style logins – which can’t be e-mail addresses. My sollution has been to take the Manila e-mail login, take the ‘@’ sign and any other non-alphas like periods etc out – making John Doe’s Yahoo address into ‘johndoeyahoocom’ for John’s WordPress login. If John was a Managing Editors, or some other level of editor, hi role on the WordPress site is set at the same operational level.

We also have all Manila New Item Departments being created on the target site, so when we post all the Manila News Items they will have the same categories on the Wordpress site.

Manila Gems, if available from the Gems static server, are being uploaded to WordPress properly and their old URLs are stored with their new WordPress orient URLs so we can do some re-direction magic on the new server. This is nice, keeps old bookmarks, links and search engine referrals working, no breakage.

More to come in the next few days. I may be able to accept a few test users to get some feedback very soon. Stay tuned.