[wp-hackers] Blog Import/Export Idea - Google Summer of Code 2010

[Meher Anand]

You have demonstrated how lengthy the procedure for migration is yourself.
Plus we are talking about many basic level users here.

We can argue about how useful this plugin is going to be. Many people these
days are buying domain names and hosting spaces for their personal webpages.
They might find use for this plugin. Some are dissatisfied with their
hosting providers and they decide to move on to a new hosting provider. The
causes can be enormous in number.

XML-RPC requires special capabilities at the server end. We're talking being
able to work with a simple HTTP server and a simple MySQL database.

Regards.

Meher Anand

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Andrew Gray <andrew at graymerica.com> wrote:

> What about remote mysql connections,  many hosts do no allow them or use a
> different IP address.
>
> My question about your methodology is,  how many times do you want to move
> part of a blog, not just the whole thing.
>
> Here is how I move wordpress sites
>
> 1.  Backup Mysql to Text File
> 2. FTP sync the media / theme  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ftpsync/ or rsync if ssh is available
> 3. Upload the new DB file into mysql
> 4. Change the URLs in the config table
>
> If you are going to do post by post, why not use the existing blog
> importing functions and XML-RPC.  Then have the remote site grab the media
> and organize it.  Then you can do it with FTP and mysql.  XML-RPC would let
> you merge two blogs which could be awesome.
>
> neat idea, I just wonder how often people are going to need these
> functions.
>
>
>
> On Mar 22, 2010, at 5:08 PM, Aram wrote:
>
> > Is that secure to allow the plugin to download the wp-config.php from
> > another server? it means it will have full access to ftp and mysql...
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 12:56 AM, Meher Anand <meheranandk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all.
> >>
> >> I am currently studying my last semester of Computer Science &
> Engineering.
> >> I have been using Wordpress heavily for the last 3 years and I am
> >> interested
> >> in contributing for it. The Blog Import/Export idea interested me since
> I
> >> too had faced some issues when I was shifting a blog installation from
> one
> >> hosting facility to another. Here's the working scenario which I
> propose:
> >>
> >> - User needs to know only the FTP account details. Knowing the database
> >> details is an added plus. The Blog Import Export (BIE) plugin will be
> >> installed only on the new blog. If the user is unaware of the DB
> details,
> >> BIE will initially download the wp-config file from the remote server
> and
> >> extract the DB password from it and connect to the database. A check
> list
> >> will be generated based on both Category and Month-Year and a user can
> >> choose to transfer full or only part of the blog by Category or by
> >> Month-Year.
> >>
> >> - User will also be given the following options:
> >> 1) Would you like to transfer Media files which are not being used in
> any
> >> of
> >> your articles?
> >> 2) Would you like to transfer unpublished articles?
> >>
> >> - Once all options are selected, transfers will be done on a post by
> post
> >> basis i.e. the post and all media referenced by it. This is done so that
> if
> >> this were a large blog and the transfer were somehow interrupted,
> atleast
> >> some of the posts will be visible completely with the pictures,
> documents
> >> and stuff inside the new blog. Also, while the transfer is going on, an
> >> AJAX
> >> based status update can be given so that the user is aware of the
> current
> >> status. It can be of the format, 3 / 140 posts transferred.
> >>
> >> - If the transfer were to be interrupted due to some reason, the BIE
> plugin
> >> can store the user configuration (which posts need to be transferred,
> FTP
> >> details, DB details etc.) in a separate table in the local database and
> >> also
> >> the current state of the transfer. This would help the plugin recover
> later
> >> on when the transfer would be resumed.
> >>
> >> Please review this and let me know if I've missed out on anything.
> >>
> >> Also, here's my work related to Wordpress and general PHP coding so far:
> >>
> >> 1) Faculty pages for my University. Work still in progress and to be
> >> launched soon. Demo link: http://cse.vnit.ac.in/people/ashishtiwari/ .
> >> These
> >> blogs are actually meant to be used by faculty as their personal home
> >> pages,
> >> so rule 0 is to not make it look like a blog. I had made significant
> >> changes
> >> to the code base to remove the concept of comments and side bar etc.
> Login
> >> is through LDAP. This plugin
> >> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-ldap-login/ helped quite a
> bit
> >> but didn't satisfy requirements mainly because of multiple DNs being
> used
> >> by
> >> the LDAP server. I had to make significant modifications there so as to
> >> allow use of different DNs based on regular expression matching on
> >> user-input username.
> >> 2) Installation and maintenance of http://acm.vnit.ac.in/ and
> >> http://axis.vnit.ac.in/blog.
> >> 3) Coding of Institute Alumni website to be launched by the end of this
> >> week. Link - http://alumni.vnit.ac.in/ . Coding was done in CakePHP.
> This
> >> website has features that are parallel to those offered by Facebook and
> >> Twitter and heavily uses AJAX. JQuery was used for Javascript and AJAX.
> >> 4) Currently developing the University website http://beta.vnit.ac.in/on
> >> CakePHP.
> >>
> >> Regards.
> >>
> >> Meher Anand
> >> Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology
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