Transfering site to blog

AlisonMooreSmith

I have had a site up for over four years. It consists mostly of columns written by a variety of authors. Some of these columns are Q&A columns that allow reader input. This commenting has always been done manually. (Readers email comments, I post them in the appropriate articles.) I'd like to bring my site up-to-date by automating this through WordPress. I'd like to transfer all the old articles into WP, allowing readers to comment at will. I'll be integrating WP with my existing Vanilla blog. I'd like to transfer the articles themselves into WP, and then post the comments in the associated Vanilla discussion. Is there a way for me to enter the comments under different users and with appropriate backdates? (I don't want all the dates to read January 2007.) The site is http://www.mormonmomma.com Any help much appreciated.

AlisonMooreSmith

Still looking for this answer. Can dates on forum posts be changed by the administrator? Also, anyone have input on issues that arise with integration?

WallPhone

Not familiar with WP, and the only way to change dates in Vanilla is to manually update the database with a tool such as PHPMyAdmin (often included with hosting package), or write an extension that provides the functionality. Both WP and Vanilla offer similar functionality (built-in comments and user registration) so why not just post the articles in one or the other and let their own comment functionality do? Is there something that Vanilla does with comments that WP doesn't? Is Vanilla apparently not up to task for your articles? If the articles are too long for Vanilla, there are workarounds I have seen that permit exceptions to that rule.

jimw

I've used WP for a while and there are import scripts to help you get information into WP from other blogs. You'd have to be able to export from where you are currently into a format that can be imported into WP. Where do you want to import from?

AlisonMooreSmith

Thanks for the comments. There are a few issues that have prompted the integration. (1)The home page of the blog (like most blogs) will not be open to everyone, it will only include posts from the authorized authors. Anyone can COMMENT on the blog articles, but they can't start their own threads. OTOH, I want all the readers to be able to post a question or comment in the forum section, as they always have. So, readers can COMMENT on the blogs AND they can BEGIN THREADS and COMMENT in the forum. I want to integrate them so that there is ONE place where all the reader comments can be found, searched, etc. and ONE log in process. (2) I have had a Vanilla forum for some time and don't want to lose it. (3) I don't know of a way to force Vanilla to look like a standard blog, with a title and a short bit of each post (or, alternately, the whole post) on the front page, limited to a certain number or date range. I don't know how to have archives by post month listed or how to add categories in Vanilla. I'm not sure why others have wanted to integrate the forums, but those are my reasons. I'd like to hear how/why others have, because I'm not sure if I'm on the right track with this. WP does allow the administrator to modify dates on posts easily. I wish Vanilla had the same functionality. jimw, thank for the info. My current site isn't in a blog, it's just hundreds of HTML pages. The only way I know to transfer them is to manually cut and paste the content. Do you know of something to simplify it?

jimw

I responded to someone on the WP forum just the other day about importing thousands of HTML pages into WP. You could check out that thread. I did start on a project to do this a while ago, but never completed it. There are tools to do this. If you want to chat off line, please email me and I'll try to help.