Help a soon to be homeless blogger?
February 9, 2011 2:17 PM Subscribe
I need to move a couple years of archived blog posts from Wordpress to another host that doesn't suck.
I am considering Blogger, but not with much enthusiam.
Are there any better free places to relocate to that will provide maximum ease of used (Im a total idiot re programming/graphics) maximum flexability (embedding videos/pictures etc etc?), and be around for a while (ie not another geocities)
I have checked a lot of the help/FAQ areas, and while many have solutions, there is typically a follow up from someone saying it doesn't work.
Biggest thing is just being able to transer all the WP stuff with ease, keeping whatever formatting, and dates of actual posting intact, or at least be able to backdate instead of just dumping them in and having years of stuff all show up as posted on the same date.
Thanks!
I am considering Blogger, but not with much enthusiam.
Are there any better free places to relocate to that will provide maximum ease of used (Im a total idiot re programming/graphics) maximum flexability (embedding videos/pictures etc etc?), and be around for a while (ie not another geocities)
I have checked a lot of the help/FAQ areas, and while many have solutions, there is typically a follow up from someone saying it doesn't work.
Biggest thing is just being able to transer all the WP stuff with ease, keeping whatever formatting, and dates of actual posting intact, or at least be able to backdate instead of just dumping them in and having years of stuff all show up as posted on the same date.
Thanks!
Response by poster: thanks pete...i think that goes a great way in proving what an idiot I am re these things...here's where it stands
1. current blog is myname.com. Hosted on a friends machine, who is getting out of the hosting end of things. It is based on wordpress the platform I guess.
2. Said blog is totally infested with spam messages (like 400,000 messages awaiting approval) tried pretty much everything to stop them, but they keep coming...put askimet or whatever it was, and that seems to work a bit. Tried a couple bulk delete options, but none of them did the trick. havent really used it for a couple years because of this, and anyone who even looks it up gets the bells and alarms that it is some kind of scam site.
3. Just looking for a place to move all the old stuff to a new free home where i dont have to worry about netsolutions etc.
4. as far as liking/disliking WP...It's fine...dont think I ever used it to its full capability, but if I can keep it all on that platform...that would probably make things easier.
5. Buddy who set up the site isn't interested in helping on this at all, other than maybe pointing the DNS stuff to whereever the new host is and being done with it
hope that makes things a bit clearer - if not, feel free to ask more and throw shit at me while you do.
thanks
posted by timsteil at 2:41 PM on February 9, 2011
1. current blog is myname.com. Hosted on a friends machine, who is getting out of the hosting end of things. It is based on wordpress the platform I guess.
2. Said blog is totally infested with spam messages (like 400,000 messages awaiting approval) tried pretty much everything to stop them, but they keep coming...put askimet or whatever it was, and that seems to work a bit. Tried a couple bulk delete options, but none of them did the trick. havent really used it for a couple years because of this, and anyone who even looks it up gets the bells and alarms that it is some kind of scam site.
3. Just looking for a place to move all the old stuff to a new free home where i dont have to worry about netsolutions etc.
4. as far as liking/disliking WP...It's fine...dont think I ever used it to its full capability, but if I can keep it all on that platform...that would probably make things easier.
5. Buddy who set up the site isn't interested in helping on this at all, other than maybe pointing the DNS stuff to whereever the new host is and being done with it
hope that makes things a bit clearer - if not, feel free to ask more and throw shit at me while you do.
thanks
posted by timsteil at 2:41 PM on February 9, 2011
Well, you can probably save your blog, excluding the comments, then upload it to wordpress.com.
Is your site running wordpress 3.0.5? It's the latest version and just came out in the last few days. It has a lot more security features and fixes than older versions, especially 2.x versions. So, if you can, upgrade your site. If your version is new enough, you should be able to do that right from the control panel.
I use askimet and it does a great job blocking spam comments, so I don't know what could be going wrong with your installation. Have you tried contacting askimet? Are the spam comments marked as spam, or are they let through as legitimate messages?
Try turning comments off for a while. Do that and if there are any valuable comments, spend time cleaning up the spam. You should be able to view only the "pending" comments and delete them.
Go to the "tools" menu, the click "backup". I would exclude comments if you're not able to clean up all the spam messages.
Then, at wordpress.com, you should be able to "import" the file that you backed up from your blog.
Here's a link on how to use wordpress.com.
Good luck!
posted by reddot at 3:47 PM on February 9, 2011
Is your site running wordpress 3.0.5? It's the latest version and just came out in the last few days. It has a lot more security features and fixes than older versions, especially 2.x versions. So, if you can, upgrade your site. If your version is new enough, you should be able to do that right from the control panel.
I use askimet and it does a great job blocking spam comments, so I don't know what could be going wrong with your installation. Have you tried contacting askimet? Are the spam comments marked as spam, or are they let through as legitimate messages?
Try turning comments off for a while. Do that and if there are any valuable comments, spend time cleaning up the spam. You should be able to view only the "pending" comments and delete them.
Go to the "tools" menu, the click "backup". I would exclude comments if you're not able to clean up all the spam messages.
Then, at wordpress.com, you should be able to "import" the file that you backed up from your blog.
Here's a link on how to use wordpress.com.
Good luck!
posted by reddot at 3:47 PM on February 9, 2011
To address point #3:
Not sure if you can have a free home. Cheap, yes. Free? Less likely. Not if you want to keep your domain.
If you don't care about keeping your domain, then you could probably migrate your blog to wordpress.com and use them. See "Moving From Wordpress.org" on this wp.com support page. You can be timsteil.wordpress.com. All free. Not sure about any custom stuff you've done on your wordpress install though.
If you want to keep your domain, you can still stick with wordpress.com and pay them $12/year and point to your wordpress blog. Scant details here.
The downside of going with Wordpress.com is that they're really limited. But it doesn't sound as if you need a lot of control, just a place to park your blog and domain.
posted by jlunar at 3:59 PM on February 9, 2011
Not sure if you can have a free home. Cheap, yes. Free? Less likely. Not if you want to keep your domain.
If you don't care about keeping your domain, then you could probably migrate your blog to wordpress.com and use them. See "Moving From Wordpress.org" on this wp.com support page. You can be timsteil.wordpress.com. All free. Not sure about any custom stuff you've done on your wordpress install though.
If you want to keep your domain, you can still stick with wordpress.com and pay them $12/year and point to your wordpress blog. Scant details here.
The downside of going with Wordpress.com is that they're really limited. But it doesn't sound as if you need a lot of control, just a place to park your blog and domain.
posted by jlunar at 3:59 PM on February 9, 2011
What I would do is stick with WordPress. It's what you know. The issues you're having (comment spam) can be remedied very quickly in the future.
WordPress.com isn't expensive, but it's not free for domain use. Problem is: you're probably not going to find free. I'd go with that.
There are ways to do an import from an old blog into a new one.
When you get to your new home, there are two relatively easy ways to reduce or eliminate comment spam: Akismet (it's a plugin that is supposed to reduce spam, works really well in my experience) and closing the comments on old posts. Newer versions of wordpress do this automatically.
You will probably need to get a database dump or export of some kind from your friend, but I'd just move your stuff to WordPress.com and call it done.
posted by toomuchpete at 7:07 PM on February 9, 2011
WordPress.com isn't expensive, but it's not free for domain use. Problem is: you're probably not going to find free. I'd go with that.
There are ways to do an import from an old blog into a new one.
When you get to your new home, there are two relatively easy ways to reduce or eliminate comment spam: Akismet (it's a plugin that is supposed to reduce spam, works really well in my experience) and closing the comments on old posts. Newer versions of wordpress do this automatically.
You will probably need to get a database dump or export of some kind from your friend, but I'd just move your stuff to WordPress.com and call it done.
posted by toomuchpete at 7:07 PM on February 9, 2011
Am I right in assuming the blog you're talking about is the first Google result for 'tim steil'? Because that site's been pharma-hacked -- the description is all about cialis and viagra and there are "buy-cialis-online" links buried in the code. I wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of your spam is coming directly from that and bypassing Akismet completely.
If this is your blog and you're not looking to do anything more ambitious with it, wordpress.com would probably be your best bet, but it'll run you about $15 a year for a custom domain and $30 if you don't want ads. They don't seem to allow commercial blogs, which means you probably couldn't have a page with links like "buy my book here" through them. I don't know where they draw the line though.
Blogger is the closest option you have to free, since it doesn't charge for custom domains and has no ads, but there's no direct way to import from WordPress. And because they link to content in different ways, you may end up literally breaking every link to your content from anywhere on the web if the converter or the importer isn't smart enough to change them internally. (Which they might be, I have no idea.)
The other option would be finding relatively cheapish hosting, which would run you about as much per year as ad-free, custom-domained wordpress.com but without the restrictions and with a lot more storage. This would be the best option mainly if you're planning on really marketing yourself or your writing through the website, want to keep all your old content, and are okay committing to maintaining the site or paying someone else to. It's not *terribly* difficult, especially once you're past the initial setup, but it does need to be kept updated -- one of the reasons your blog was hacked, and therefore is spammy, is that it's running a very old version of WordPress and has missed tons of security updates.
The actual export should be pretty easy, I think. Just be aware that you might still have hidden links in the post content, and forget about anything you can recreate by hand. If you go WordPress -> WordPress you'll also want to check all the uploaded content you plan to transfer as well, since I've heard of some hacks disguising themselves in there -- things like scripts in twice-zipped subdirectories renamed as jpgs, that sort of thing.
posted by toxotes at 10:10 AM on February 10, 2011
If this is your blog and you're not looking to do anything more ambitious with it, wordpress.com would probably be your best bet, but it'll run you about $15 a year for a custom domain and $30 if you don't want ads. They don't seem to allow commercial blogs, which means you probably couldn't have a page with links like "buy my book here" through them. I don't know where they draw the line though.
Blogger is the closest option you have to free, since it doesn't charge for custom domains and has no ads, but there's no direct way to import from WordPress. And because they link to content in different ways, you may end up literally breaking every link to your content from anywhere on the web if the converter or the importer isn't smart enough to change them internally. (Which they might be, I have no idea.)
The other option would be finding relatively cheapish hosting, which would run you about as much per year as ad-free, custom-domained wordpress.com but without the restrictions and with a lot more storage. This would be the best option mainly if you're planning on really marketing yourself or your writing through the website, want to keep all your old content, and are okay committing to maintaining the site or paying someone else to. It's not *terribly* difficult, especially once you're past the initial setup, but it does need to be kept updated -- one of the reasons your blog was hacked, and therefore is spammy, is that it's running a very old version of WordPress and has missed tons of security updates.
The actual export should be pretty easy, I think. Just be aware that you might still have hidden links in the post content, and forget about anything you can recreate by hand. If you go WordPress -> WordPress you'll also want to check all the uploaded content you plan to transfer as well, since I've heard of some hacks disguising themselves in there -- things like scripts in twice-zipped subdirectories renamed as jpgs, that sort of thing.
posted by toxotes at 10:10 AM on February 10, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
WordPress is a platform.
WordPress.com is a host (which uses the WordPress platform).
Are you looking to move from WordPress.com to another WordPress host? Are you looking to change platforms entirely? What problems are you hoping the move will solve? Where are you hosted now?
It's hard to make recommendations without knowing why you dislike WordPress[.com], since both WordPress and WordPress.com are, as far as I'm concerned, best of their respective breeds.
posted by toomuchpete at 2:28 PM on February 9, 2011