Convert Blog to a Forum

shzakeer

Hi all, I run a blog which is currently hosted on Wordpress.com Is it possible to convert a blog in to a forum (Vanilla of course)?

Tim

Not sure what you mean by "convert". Can you clarify?

DirtyDog

Seems he would want the blog posts converted to discussions and the blog comments converted to comments on those discussions.

shzakeer

Seems he would want the blog posts converted to discussions and the blog comments converted to comments on those discussions.

Exactly.

Linc

Yes it's theoretically possible, but you'd need to write the migration tool.

Tim

We don't have an importer for this currently (that I know of), but we could do it for you if you wanted to host with us on vanillaforums.com

I assume wordpress.com has a data freedom policy?

Linc

I assume wordpress.com has a data freedom policy?

Yeah, you can do XML exports from the dashboard iirc.

x00

Actually I found the Magpie Feeds plugin is a simple way to import wordpress.

You can also adapt it. For example you don't need excepts, or you can specify you own. and also import the comment an tag (categories in rss) .

That is basically what I did.

Examples:

$StoryTitle = $Item['title'];
....
if(array_key_exists('content',$Item) && array_key_exists('encoded',$Item['content'])){
	$StoryBody =$Item['content']['encoded'];
}else{
	$StoryBody =$Item['description'];
 }

$StoryBody = preg_replace("/(\<[^\>]*)\n/i",'$1 ',$StoryBody );
$StoryBody = preg_replace("/[\n][\n]+/i","\n",$StoryBody);
$StoryBody = preg_replace("/>[\s]+<",$StoryBody);
...
$Tags=array();
if($Item['category#']>1){
	for($c=2;$c<=$Item['category#'];$c++){

                 if(!empty($Item['category#'.$c])){
			$Tags[]=str_replace(' ','-',$Item['category#'.$c]);
                 }
	}
}
....
$InsertID=Gdn::SQL()->Insert('Discussion',$DiscussionData);

If($InsertID!=null){
@$this-&gt;InsertTags($DiscussionModel,$InsertID,$Tags);
}

I did have to change the magpie feed code a bit to get tags to work I believe. Anyway you are going to have to give it a go yourself.

x00

@Tim the pre is inserting <br /> it is making it difficult to format.

shzakeer

@x00 thanks for that. I'll check it out.

Tim

@x00 I know, I told @Todd about it.

Raize

not worth the effort in my opinion