The Content Wrangler Moves to WordPress
September 10th, 2009 | Posted in blog 10 Comments »
It seems like everyone is moving to WordPress lately. A few months ago, David Farbey moved his blog to WordPress. Scriptorium recently converted their site and blog to WordPress. One die-hard Movable Type interaction designer at my work is moving to WordPress. And now The Content Wrangler has moved to WordPress.
I actually helped Scott transition his site from Expression Engine to WordPress. Converting the site was not necessarily easy, because WordPress doesn’t automatically import Expression Engine databases (like it does with Blogger, Movable Type, and other platforms). You have to run a manual script to convert the entries over.
And while we used a theme from press75.com, we customized it, hiding the featured panels, changing the widths of sidebars, customizing the banner, adding in share-this-post buttons in the post headers, customizing the display of podcasts, adding a mobile view, integrating an asides column, including author pages, adding the sidebar ads, adding the big subscribe buttons in the upper-right corner, and making other tweaks here and there.
The Content Wrangler on WordPress
I find that when people want to move to WordPress, it’s easiest to find an existing theme that best approximates what they’re looking for, and then customize it from there. WordPress is a bit complex to begin entirely from scratch (think of the comments features, the handful of theme files — index, single, archive, comment, search, etc — all the PHP tags, and more). If you do start from scratch, almost everyone uses an existing WordPress theme framework, which is basically a stripped down theme.
A while back I also helped Rahel Bailie move her Expression Engine site to WordPress. Her theme actually started out as the Brownline theme, and we customized it with her blue and gold branding to look as it does now.
Not to make a bandwagon appeal here, but if you a blog on another platform, you might consider moving to WordPress. WordPress has a tremendous momentum and community behind it right now. It’s hard to compete with it. And the user interface is usable and easy to learn.
On the other hand, all technology is transient. Content is what matters.
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Tags: Blogging, Expression Engine, movable type, WordPress
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LOL. Sellout!
Just kidding. Seriously, though, they don’t get more elegant than Textpattern CMS (http://textpattern.com). One–and I mean just one–of Txp’s glorious aspects is you *can* build up from a clean install without any trouble at all (assuming you know HTML basics). I mean you even say it yourself: “WordPress is a bit complex to begin entirely from scratch.” Well, there’s a problem there, and cookie-cutter themes should not be the answer. Another biggie: Txp has never had a security issue in it’s existence. Never! You can’t say that about WP. (Better make sure you have the latest version. Heh!)
You’re right about the momentum behind WP, and that’s where Txp can blame itself. There’s no marketing or community activity ambitions there at all, and seemingly no interest to put somebody on their team to handle it. You see WordCamp, DrupalCon, EE Meetups and all that stuff. Nothing like that goes on in the Txp community, and it’s a shame. Even their website is ancient (though a new marvel is launching very soon). But it’s not their philosophy and I can respect that. When it comes down to it, it’s the quality of the system, and Textpattern has that in spades (they have a nice wiki too, erm.)
Anyway, I’m not trying to make this into yet another CMS pissing contest. We use what we like and what suits our needs; that’s the beauty of choice. But sometimes I think WP has a little *too* much momentum behind it, and you are kind of fluffing it with that non bandwagon appeal.
BTW: If formatting can be used in comments, you should provide some clue as to how it works (html, Textile, voodoo), or is it the assumption that everybody uses WP and thus knows the score. LOL!
Cheers. Keep up the great work!
Destry, thanks for your comment. I’ve never used Textpattern. I think Textpattern has been around longer than WP, right?
I know how easy it is to become a dedicated fan of one technology, whether EE, WP, MT, or something else, and the same happens with HATs — RH, Flare, Author-it. I’ve recently been using Joomla for a project at work, and I find it pretty robust and usable. I should probably stay away from those kinds of tool arguments, because they always get me in trouble, but they are appealing.
Re the comments, there is a default paragraph of text that explains what formatting is allowed, but I removed it because I didn’t think anyone wanted it. Maybe I’ll put that back in. Basic html is allowed. I can add a wysiwyg toolbar in there as well.
As for community and momentum, I think WP should be a case study for this. This is key for the forward development of software, because the more community and momentum you have, the more themes, plugins, and new versions are released.
I should have added this up there to my first paragraph. References are always good. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/09/wordpress-hacking-blogging
I’d like to know why. WordPress is a PITA. Personally, I’m sticking with Blogger until and unless I have a REALLY good reason to switch. And by “good reason,” I mean not switching would be a dumb move, or staying put would cost me money.
Craig, I was thinking of you when I wrote those last few sentences, because I know you’re not fond of WordPress. I tried to call attention to focusing on the content more than the technology with the last line, because I truly believe it. Platforms come and go. And I’ve changed themes before and no one says anything. Write an engaging post, though, and tons of people comment. People come to the site for content above all else. So often people forget that.
Just moved my blog from BlogEngine.Net (ASP.Net CMS) to WordPress. I haven’t figured out how to get my old posts into WordPress yet; you don’t by chance have any experience with BlogML or know a way to import the old posts?
I tried a couple things outlined on the web, but with no success. Here’s what I already tried: http://balajiramesh.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/blogml-importer-for-wordpress-25/
Really enjoying WordPress so far.
Chris, sorry, I don’t have any experience with BlogML. If you have fewer than 300 posts, I recommend just copying and pasting them. You could hire someone on jobs.wordpress.net to write a script if you have more posts than that. But it may cost several hundred dollars to do that.
Thanks Tom. I certainly have fewer than 300 posts, so you’re probably right that taking a Saturday and fixing them up would be the best option.
Tom, it was some of your earlier blogging that got me to set up the XML Press website (xmlpress.net) using WordPress, and I’ve been very pleased with the result. I would never have thought of using a “blogging” platform for a company’s web site, but in fact, it makes it possible for me to have a good looking web site with a less-than-expert webmaster (me).
One of the nice things about using a widely supported platform is that there are plenty of add-ons and plug-ins (I just added one to create an interface between wordpress and phplist to manage our mailing lists), and help is just a Google search away. Also, there are folks like you out there who can make it do pretty much anything you might want.
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