Switched to Blogger

I moved my blogs to +Blogger from Wordpress.com.  Blogger has essentially the same functionality as WordPress.com but has better integration with +Google+.  Blogger also allows you to use a custom domain for free, while WordPress.com charges for this.

The conversion from WordPress went pretty well.  I was able to use the online conversion tool for one of of my blogs.  But since the tool only supports converting files up to 1MB, I needed to run the tool locally.  I also encountered a few other problems:

1. WordPress.com supports special syntax that gets converted at display time, which creates the html for embedding content.  WordPress makes it easy to embed +YouTube and +Google Drive content, with out having to include the html.  When these posts are imported into Blogger, the inline content isn't shown.
2. Blogger only supports 20 labels per post, while WordPress.com doesn't have a limit for tags.  I needed to remove these extra tags before exporting the blog from WordPress.

This is the 4th migration that I have done with my blogs, so I am sure that some links won't work in previous posts. My blogs were originally run on a self-hosted LifeType blog, then I migrated to a self-hosted to WordPress.org blog, and then I migrated it to a WordPress.com blog.

Godaddy Hosting

When I transitioned from the web server running in my house, I moved to a Virtual Private Server.  When that server had problems with connectivity, I moved to a Virtual Private Server with Godaddy.  This server worked very well for several years, but it started to need more maintenance that I want to do now.

Since I was really just using the VPS for a few WordPress installations and small web site, I decided to move it to a Godaddy Deluxe WordPress hosting plan.  The transfer of the sites went smoothly, but recently the server started returning 500 errors, when accessing simple web pages.  Since the hosting plan doesn't give you as much visibility into the processes that are running or access to the logs, as the VPS did, it hard to track down the problem.

I decided to move to more managed hosting.  I moved the blogs to WordPress.com.  Since the static sites are pretty simple, I decided to move them to Google Sites.

Moved to WordPress.com

In March, I moved my blog from a self-managed WordPress.org installation to a WordPress.org hosting managed by Godaddy.  I haven't been happy with performance of that installation, so I decided to find a different hosting solution.

I decided to move my blogs to WordPress.com.  With this hosting, I wont need to manage any upgrades to the software, but I can let WordPress.com manage the bandwidth and server load.  The transfer to WordPress.com went smoothly, and I paid the $12 to allow a custom domain to be used.

When transitioning from WordPress.org, there are some differences that I met:

• You can't install arbitrary templates or plugins


• If you have multiple blogs associated with your WordPress.com account, you can't have different display names for your posts on each accounts.  (You could probably create multiple WordPress.com accounts.)


• It seems like WordPress.com strips the html that can be used in the text widget.

WordPress 3.0

Version 3.0 of WordPress was just released, and I have painlessly upgraded my blogs.  There are a few features that I am looking forward to using.

• Ability to host multiple blogs on the same WordPress installation (I still need to see if it supports multiple domain, so my blogs don't have to be on the same domain.)


• Ability to upgrade plugins in a batch.

http://v.wordpress.com/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.21

Automatic WordPress Backup

In this post, I mentioned that I was using Wordpress Database Backup to backup the databases from my WordPress installations.  I was using this too email myself the dumps of the databases.

I have switched to using the Automatic WordPress Backup.  This plugin will backup the themes, plugins, configuration files, uploaded files, and the dump of the database, to an Amazon S3 bucket.  You can configure the plugin to keep a number days or weeks of backups.

Connecting blog to Google Buzz

This post on Google Buzz describes the steps required to connect your blog to Google Buzz, and have posts automatically imported into your Buzz feed.

This plugin for WordPress makes it very easy to claim your blog, without having to modify the template manually.

VaultPress and WordPress backups

VaultPress is in interesting WordPress plugin/service.  You install a plugin and then their services offers the following features:

• Automatic backup of your content that is hosted in WordPress


• Automatic patching of your WordPress install

I think that the automatic backup of content is interesting, especially since the backup happens as soon as you add content.  I am not sure about the automatic patching of the WordPress installation.  I would be concerned about the plugin patching the WordPress installation to one that has a problem, without my knowledge.  For example, WordPress 2.9 had a problem with certain version of the curl library in PHP, and the 2.9.1 version fixed it.  When performing the patch manually, you have the opportunity to make sure that there aren't any reported problems.

Also, I am interested in seeing how a restore would work with this plugin.  For example, if my database got corrupt, how would I restore.  Also, how many previous revisions are kept in the backup.  Since they are saving any change made in the WordPress installation to the backup, this could also mean that any accidental/malicious deletion would also be automatically propagated.

Currently, I am just using the WordPress Database Backup plugin, and just having it email me the dumps of the database tables.  If I need to restore, I would just need to restore the database from the backup that I want.  The things that are not being backed-up in this process are any uploaded photos or the installation itself, but that is covered my my hosting provider.

[via Matt Cutts]

Moved to hosted WordPress

I have decided to move my blogs to Godaddy's host that comes with WordPress preinstalled/preconfigured.  Management is very easy, and I am now able to use WordPress' built in plugin update mechanism.  Also, Godaddy will manage update the WordPress install.

I was easily able to export the posts from my the WordPress installations on my Virtual Private Server, and import them into the new installation.  I was able to test the new setup, before changing my DNS records, so I was able to make sure everything was working before I made the switch.  

Moving to hosted blog software? [update]

I am thinking about moving my blogs to a hosted blog software service like Wordpress.com or blogger.com. This would reduce the amount of work that I would need to do to keep the software up to date.  Currently, I need to manually upgrade my installation of WordPress when ever a new version comes out, or if new versions of the plugins are made available.

Also since don't have the ftp server enabled on my server, this would make adding/upgrading plugins a lot easier.

I am leaning towards WordPress.com, as it is an easy export of my blog into that server.  (I have already done this.)  I would just need to pay $10 to have my domain pointed to their servers.

Update:  I am going to stick with running WordPress on my own server.  There are several things that are missing from WordPress.com:

1. You can't have a custom permalink format


2. You can't upload themes or plugin (Adsense and Bad Behavior plugins are not available)


3. If I don't want their ads, I need to pay an extra $30 a year.

Android Apps

This post has a good list of Android applications. I think that ecosystem of Android application is really doing well.

Here is a list of the third party Android applicaitons that I have installed:

• Amazon


• Backgrounds


• Bank of America


• Barcode Scanner


• CNET Scan & Shop


• Evernote


• Jewels


• Last.fm


• LastPass


• Listen


• Movies


• OneTouch Timer Free


• Pandora


• PhoneFlicks


• Remember The Milk


• Seesmic


• Shazam


• SqueezeControl


• SqueezeDroid


• TripIt


• TuneWiki


• Ultimate Stopwatch


• WordPress


• Yelp

rssCloud

RSSCloud is an interesting concept.  The idea is to define a standard way to push notification of changes in rss feeds.  I have installed the RSSCloud Wordpress plugin, just so I can write a service that listens to these notifications.

[via Mashable]

Evernote iPhone app when offline

I while on this flight, I wanted to review some documentation. Wanted to write some notes, so I thought that I could use the Evernote iPhone application. I figured that the next time that launched the app when my iPhone has a network connection, the note would be synchronized to the Evernote server, and the. I could access that note on any of my PCs.

Unfortunately, the Evernote application will not let you do that. Even though you can access already created notes when you are offline, you can't create or edit them.

I would like for this to be fixed. Other applications do not have this problem. For example, Remember The Milk let's you create, delete and edit tasks offline. The Wordpress application lets you write new posts and pages while offline ( I am doing that now). That seems like the right model as the apps are still functional when offline.

FriendFeed Comments plugin

The FriendFeed Comment plugin is a WordPress plugin that lets you display the comments that have been posted for an article on FriendFeed.  The comments that were written on FriendFeed, are shown along with the comments that were written on the blog itself.

In addition to letting you display the FriendFeed comments, you can also also have any comments written by the blog author on the blog itself, added to FriendFeed.

[via Zeigen]

Comments after switching to WordPress

I have notices something interesting after making the switch to WordPress.  Many of my older posts are now being commented on with a higher frequency than they were with LifeType.  I think that there are some potential reasons for this

1. LifeType had a Bayesian spam filter.  It is possible that it was trained poorly over time, so these comments were marked as spam and deleted immediately


2. There could have been a bug in the other spam filters, which would have deleted those comments.


3. Since I am submitting a new sitemap for the WordPress blog, the posts could see "fresher" and could appear higher in search results.

WordPress for web site

A while ago, I wanted to set up a new web site.  I didn't want to hand edit the html, as I usually do, so I decided to use Godaddy's Website Tonight to create the web site.  Website Tonight is a web based site management system where you can use GUI tools to edit the look of a web site. The tools are done in such a way where you can easily change the theme, and have it apply to all of the pages.

I have been having some problems with Website Tonight, though.  There is a bug in the UserAgent handling in the editor.  It doesn't recoginze Firefox 3.x as a recent version of a browser.  So I am forced to use Internet Explorer in my Windows XP virtual machine to edit the site.  In addition to that, some of the widgets that they have available have some problems.  For example, Godaddy makes a rss widget available to embed an rss feed in a web page.  The widget doesn't have some of the configuration options that I want.  For example, I want to include the text from the rss items themselves, but I don't want to include the text from the channel element.

I think that WordPress will work perfectly for what I want to do.  I can create multiple pages in WordPress, and they will automatically appear in the navigation for the site.  I can also use WordPress's WYSIWYG editor to edit those pages.  In addition, I know that WordPress doesn't have the problem with UserAgent detection.

Since WordPress natively deals with blog items, I am sure that it will be very easy to create a page that has one category of posts.

Facebook Connect

I have decided to use Facebook Connect on this blog, instead of my previous usage of Google Friend Connect.  There are a few reasons that I am making this switch.

• I was never impressed with Google Friend Connect's social features.  Google Friend Connect doesn't have a concept of a "friend activity feed".  So there is no way to see in an aggregated list of my contact's activities. With Facebook Connect, comment activities appear in the Facebook News Feed


• Google Friend Connect's comment system requires Javascript, which is not compatible with all browsers.  Facebook Connect, with the WordPress plugin, the comments are still process in the normally, but there just is an addition step for publishing the status item.

This page has good instructions about setting up Facebook Connect for WordPress.

Switched to Wordpress

I have just switched this blog to WordPress from LifeType.  The mtexport plugin make this very easy.  The main thing that the Movable Type Import Format doesn't include is image resources.  So, instead of attempting to move the images to WordPress, I just used some mod rewrite rules to redirect those requests.

First, I created an Alias in apache to the LifeType install.  (I did this, so I could have access to the old LifeType installation)  Then I used the following rewrite rules to redirect resource requests, and requests for the rss feeds

RewriteRule ^/gallery(.*) /archive/gallery$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^/rss.php(.*) /feed/ [L,R=301]

Unfortunately, with these rules, requests for atom feeds will now return rss feeds.

Now, I just need to pick a new theme.