Moving a Blog from Wordpress.com to your own Wordpress installation May 30, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , 7 commentsThere’s not a lot of documentation on how to do this, so here are the steps I took to move Camden Lady, on wordpress.com, to Camden Kiwi, on my own hosting service.
From what I’ve seen so far, you should only attempt this if you’re comfortable with ftp, basic work in the Unix shell, basic SQL, and a little general hacking. You don’t need to be an expert, just sensible, willing to give it a go, and with those basic skills. I did find myself needing to clean up via the shell when I misinstalled some plugins.
First, you need to get a hosting service, and install wordpress. I use Dreamhost, but there are many others out there. Make sure you get one that does an automatic install of wordpress, because most of them do and it saves a bit of fiddling. You also need mysql, php, some form of ftp access and a shell account.
Installing and setting up wordpress is easy and well documented, so I won’t bother with that.
The first challenge is to set up your blog in your new place, and find a theme and all the plugins you want. The themes on wordpress.com normally have links to places you can download them from. I’ve also set up plugins for the sidebar widgets, statcounter and akismet.
They were all fairly simple.
With Akismet, you will need an API key from a wordpress.com blog. That’s wierd, but it’s the way it is. Get the API key from your existing blog, and use that.
With statcounter, set yourself up on statcounter.com first, so you have all the info you need.
To copy your blog over, you need to take :
Posts - The easiest way to do this is via RSS. Increase your RSS feed size to the size of your blog. You will need to create a post to force a regeneration of the feed. Get the feed, and save it somewhere. In your new blog, use the Import tab, select RSS and give it the file in which you saved your feed. It will then update it.
I had a small problem, in that everything was imported as being written by the wrong user. To fix this, you need to go into MySQL, and run a query ‘Update wp_posts set post_author = n’ where n is found from ‘Select id from wp_users where display_name = ‘xxx” xxx is the name you want displayed. You must set up the name you want first, of course!
Links - I think this has to be done by hand.
Comments - You could possibly extract the comment feed. I’ve decided to leave them.
Images - Don’t do it. Keep your images in flickr. Its so much easier
Categories - These come automatically with the posts. If you have sub-categories, you will need to relink them to their parents via the Manage –> Categories tab.
Sidebar widgets - Any customisation of these (such as text boxes) also need to be done by hand.
This is a rather painful process, particularly because it would be very easy to do with access to the wordpress.com databases, so I hope that they’ll offer an export facility in the future.
Once you’re happy with the new blog, put a post on the old one to tell people you’ve moved. I also put a text box in the side bar so that people who enter the blog via an older post still see it. It’s a good idea to let anyone linking to you know where you’ve gone.
And there you have it - all done.
Laptops do not like soup May 29, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a commentMy beautiful top-of- the line HP workstation did not appreciate the bowl of vege soup I gave it for lunch, and now it is sulking. I suspect it is very sick. Somehow, I doubt the warranty covers this one.
So this post is coming to you courtesy of the ancient Toshiba which has been sitting on shelf for the last six months gathering dust, for which I am inordinately grateful. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a copy of the document I spent most of the morning preparing.
I can see this is going to be a good week.
1000 UK soldiers desert May 28, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a commentThe BBC reports today that 1000 UK soldiers have deserted since the start of the Iraq war, and the numbers are increasing. I doubt these people are cowards, or unwilling to fight. This is not a brave or noble war, and a deserter now is very different from one in my Grandfather’s war, when there was a real threat to Britain and a real cause to answer. No doubt there are many reasons for this rise in numbers unwilling to go to Iraq, but surely the fact that they are neither defending Britain nor, it would seem, doing much good for Iraq is part of it.
For a long time I’ve subscribed to the view that we should not have gone in there in the first place, but now that we have, we should finish the job. But of course, I sit here in the safety of Camden. I don’t have to ‘finish’ the job. I’m not a soldier on the front line, nor a scared Iraqi watching her country occupied by foreigners I neither understand nor welcome.
It is time to stop treating the lives of our soldiers with such disrespect. It is time to stop thinking that we have the wisdom or the ability to undo the damage that has been done in Iraq. It is time to bring our soldiers home, before we sink further and further into the quagmire and end up having to leave anyway, having achieved little and spent more lives.
Spencer House hidden garden by St James’ Park
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London , add a commentIf you’re not doing anything on 25 June 2006, you might like to pop down to Picadilly, and see the gardens of Spencer House.
Its a small ‘town’ garden, backing onto St James Park, in space given to the Spencer family in the 1790s to allow them to keep the hoi polloi going through the park at bay. Twice a year, the hoi polloi are allowed in on a strictly timed ticket basis, though the garden wasn’t fully in bloom for today’s opening. There’s a big emphasis on scented flowers, and prickly things - mock orange, roses and lots of lilac for the former, and various thistles, cacti, and holly for the latter. Standing on the terrace feels rather grand, looking out over the garden to the park beyond.
This is a pleasant summers afternoon outing, if you’ve nothing better to do.
Welcome to Camden Kiwi May 27, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , 3 commentsWelcome to everyone who’s come over from Camden Lady at Wordpress.com. This blog contains all the old posts, but I haven’t been able to move comments, and am working on the blogroll.
I hope you’ll enjoy it, make lots of comments to make up for the ones I’ve had to leave behind, and spend time reading here.
If you’ve got a link to Camden Lady, I’d be very grateful if you could update it, and also update your feed reader. The feed is now at http://www.camdenkiwi.org/?feed=rss2
Trees for Cities May 23, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London, Trees , 1 comment so far
In a fit of enthusiasm, about this time last year, I signed up for a 5km run in aid of Trees For Cities, a London based charity which plants trees in cities. Much to my amazement, I managed to finish and didn't even come last. They gave me a nice goody bag, in a jute shopper, including a t-shirt, bottled water (not sure about that) and some tree seeds. I planted them immediately, they hatched a week or two later, quickly grew to about 3 cm high and then did absolutely nothing until the last couple of weeks, when they've suddenly put on another centimetre or so.
I think they'll grow to about 30-40m, given the chance, so I may have to bonsai them. I've no idea how quickly they'll grow here, but the ones on a plantation in NZ that I have as part of a long-term pension scheme are supposed to be ready for harvest at 25 years. They can stay in the yoghurt pot for a little bit longer.
Somers Town Project May 21, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden , add a commentI just found this - the Somerstown Project - including photos and stories from Somers Town in the 20s. I must go and have a look at the model.
Most of Somers Town was built in the 20s and 30s, and then some rebuilt in the 50s, though there are a few older buildings. There's some uncertainty about when my flats were built - the surveyor said 1910, but people here believe it was later. There is a photo of Johnson St (the old name for my street) but its showing a different block.
Get rid of your junk and save the planet
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Green in the City , add a comment
You've got some stuff to get rid of, it's not really good enough to sell, but you're a greenie so you're reluctant to just put it out with the rubbish. One solution is to put it in the basement and hope the fairies will take it away. This does not work, and has led to broken furniture which 'could be repaired', useful containers, ten years worth of the Philosophical Review and all the other unwanted paraphenalia of an affluent but environmentally friendly lifestyle clogging up space in guilt-ridden sheds and basements all over England.
A better solution is to put it up on Freecycle, if you've got the time and inclination, but if you're busy, lazy, or not too keen on total strangers turning up on your doorstep, there's a reasonably priced alternative in central / North London.
I've seen these trucks around a fair bit lately with one parked over the road the other day, and they look like a good idea. Ecojunk pick up your junk, take it away and try to recycle it as much as possible. They have a goal of a 50% recycling rate in their first year, and say they'll put their actual figures on their website, though there's nothing there yet.
They use LPG trucks as well, so lower emissions. They're a new, green business and need your support. Go on, you are never going to use all those yoghurt pots, you know.
Walking on the Heath May 20, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Trees , add a comment
London is a big, sprawling, crowded metropolis with a deceptive ability to provide green and almost wild spaces. A short ride on the number 168 bus takes me up to the South End, close to the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead. The Heath is so very different from Regents Park and the lovely but very orderly squares of Camden and Bloomsbury, with woodland areas that are left to grow almost as they will, dead trees providing habitats for small beasties and fungi, flowers growing wild. Its a place to be quiet, to walk and get lost, to pretend you're out of the city for a while.
After an hour, or a day, wandering across from South End, I arrive at Parliament Hill Fields where the 121 bus is waiting to take me back home again, after a stop for coffee at the Cafe Mozart.
Happy geeking
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , add a commentI've spent the afternoon having a happy geeky time, setting up wordpress on my new hosting service. It works well, and at some stage in the near future, this site will be moving.
I'm doing this because I need a new host for my business website and blog, and may as well have them all together. Although its a long time since I've worked in technical roles, I used to be a Unix / Oracle systems engineer, and there's still a bit of geek in me, so it was rather fun getting it set up, and having a good look at MySQL and some of the PHP scripts I'm planning to use.
One of the (very few) disadvantages of wordpress.com is that you can't put javascript into your blog. That would let me do a few nifty wee things, such as participate properly in webrings, and show all the green bloggers links. I'd also be able to get better stats and see who's visiting.
