Monday, November 24th, 2008
SSL plugin that suites your needs. You can setup URIs that must be handled by Wordpress only through https.
Features three Es:
- Easy to install
- Easy configuration
- Easy to use
Installation:
- Get (download) the plugin
- Unzip the contents
- Copy the whole directory into your Wordpress plugin directory (usually located in /wp-content/plugins/)
- Go into Plugins management in Wordpress back-end and activate plugin
- Go into Options -> SSL in your Wordpress back-end and setup the plugin
Make sure that you have HTTPS available on your server with correct certificate, else you can disable your whole website. If this happens to you you'll need to disable this plugin directly through database.
Usage:
Check "Secure URLs with SSL" and type-in URIs you whish to be accessed only through HTTPS.
foliopress ssl options
You can use "*" as wildcard for some URI, if you type it after "/" it means that all URIs under this URI will be accessed only via https, if there is no / it takes all URIs under this URI, this URI including.
By Peter
WordPress |
Monday, November 17th, 2008
We recently rescued a complex and older weblog Uncoy.com from Typepad and moved it to Wordpress with absolutely zero broken links or posts.
Why do we write rescue? First of all Typepad is a truly awful platform for anything but the most basic weblog.
- images look terrible
- CSS is difficult to alter
- stats are a joke
- tech support is a close tie for the worst on the web
Secondly, it wasn't easy. SixApart make it really difficult in fact. It's only easy if you are ready to accept:
- broken permalinks
- missing comments
- disappearing images
Making the move work involved:
- special plugins on export and import
- collecting all the images via a special script
- adding a special plugin to prevent Wordpress from breaking comments in your post
- installing a plugin to allow you to keep categories at root level (not easy in Wordpress, perhaps the only plus of the Typepad system is that categories default to the root directory)
- adding a special plugin to allow you to update your permalinks easily (the Typepad permalinks are terrible)
- creating archive templates which match the Typepad setup
- adapting a theme to suit the setup of your Typepad weblog (if you have a relatively complex layout)
The detailed steps are below - the list above is just the executive highlights.
Was it worth it:
The day my weblog was finally out of the hands of Typepad and safely into Wordpress was one of the happiest days of my online life.
I wish you the same success. But buckle up - the going gets rough:
Updated Step by Step Guide to moving from Typepad to Wordpress
-
Use custom Movable Type export template to export the content of your Typepad blog. You need to use this template to preserve the original URLs for the articles.
You need to use ‘Create new index template’ in Design/Current Design tab in your blog administration and put the content of our file there. If you don’t see this option, you need to create new Advanced template and activate it. Also, this feature is available only for Unlimited and Business Class Typepad account levels.
You have to give it a name like export.txt and then open it in your browser via {yourblog}.typepad.com/{yourblogname}/export.txt
- Install Wordpress on your site (guide).
- Log in into Wordpress administation interface and set up a custom permalink structure /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html (Options | Permalinks).
- Copy Foliovision Movable Type and TypePad (fv-mt.php - view source - download) into wp-admin/import/ and use it to import the Typepad exported file. You need to use this custom import plugin to preserve the original permalinks.
Current version works up to Wordpress 2.9.2. You can download Wordpress 2.9.2, do the conversion on it and then use Wordpress upgrade to get to the newer version if needed.
fv_mt import plugin
- Install Top Level Categories plugin to remove /category/ from category URL. Then leave Category base in Options | Permalinks blank.
- Use Disable wp-texturize plugin, if you have problems with HTML comments in the posts.
-
Next step is to download all the images from all the posts. You will loose all the images hosted on you blog site when you cancel your Typepad account. That's why its
We use a free and easy-to-use offline browser utility called HTTrack to get the images. If you are using Windows, use the WinHTTrack version.
Download it, install it and start a New project. Set the Project name and Base path. This will form the location where the images will be downloaded to your hard drive.
WinHTTrack - basic project settings
Click Next and enter your site URL.
WinHTTrack - site URL
Then click Set Options to open the Options window.
WinHTTrack - Scan Rules
Keep in the default Scan Rules. To make sure you get all the images, add the following rule in Scan Rules tabs:
+*/.a/*
Next up si the Limits tab. Set the Max transfer rate to a bigger value than the default 25,000 B/s. 50,000 should be enough, but you can experiment with 100,000 value too. Don't forget to enter 0 into Maximum external depth to get only the images from your blog.
WinHTTrack - Limits options tab
Press OK and press Next until the download starts. Please note that the actual download may take hours to complete.
WinHTTrack - Downloading
- Now it's time to decide how to organize the images directory on your new site. So make your choice and don't forget take notes about this, as it will be crucial in the next step. Upload the newly organized images directory structure to the /images directory on your site via FTP.
- Then use Search Regex plugin to update links and images in the posts. Be very careful about this. It's a good idea to back up your database first.
If the original image URL was http://site.com/people/image01.jpg, replace http://site.com/people/ in all posts with /images/people/ (it will work for all the images and directories in this directory!). Of course all depends on your new /image directory structure
- Create 301 redirections for the images on the original locations if necessary (to keep up with the Google Image search, this is basically the same as). Get all the images URLs from the Movable Type export file or database. Find all the images from the domains you have access to and write .htaccess rules for them. Here's an example of such rule:
RewriteRule ^/images/(.*) http://newsite.com/images/oldsite/$1 [R=permanent,L]
- Install Redirection plugin and put in some basic redirections for your posts and pages. This largely depends on your original blog structure, if it was domain mapped etc. This one works for domain mapped blog with blog prefix. It's a Regex redirection, so turn that on when you add it into Redirection plugin.
/your_blog_prefix/(.*).html => /$1.html
- After installing the Redirection plugin and running the site for few days, check the 404 log in this plugin to get rid of all 404 errors.
- Set up some nice theme with edit buttons bellow both posts and comments and all the other stuff. We assume, that you want your page to look the same as it look on Typepad.
- Create archive page which lists of all the months and years and categories if necessary.
- Create about page.
- Check trackbacks.
- If you are testing your new site on some other domain and you plan to move it when finished - be careful about _capabilities and _user_level meta values in _usermeta table and _user_roles in _options table when moving Wordpress from one database to another!
The original mechanics are based on conversations with Michael Hampton
and Anu's Typepad to Wordpress Switch. Thanks guys
By Alec
WordPress |
