Switching to WordPress
The other day I finally got around to deleting all of the comment spam my weblog has accreted over the past few months, only to discover that the numerous attacks I’ve suffered have had the unfortunate side effect of deleting a lot of my existing comments! I’m not sure how this could have happened, but I think it has something to do with the weird, hacked-up version of the standalone Moveable Type comments script I’m using. Suffice to say, I no longer trust my Blosxom setup.
This, combined with the fact that I attended the WordPress 100,000 party the other night, and the fact that Jonas Luster (one of the first people I got to know in California) is now employee #1 of WordPress, Incorporated, and the fact that I like MarsEdit and want weblog software that allows me to use it with a minimum of fuss, has finally convinced me to switch to WordPress.
(Update: The above statement is no reflection on Allen Hutchison’s XML-RPC implementation for Blosxom, BXR. In fact, the existence of BXR was one of the only things that kept me from switching a long time ago. My switch had a lot more to do with the other factors I mentioned, while WordPress’ out-of-box XML-RPC support was merely a nice perk.)
I mention this to you, the reader, because it means things are going to be a bit messy around here for awhile. I managed, for example, to get all of my old posts imported into my new WordPress rig, but not their associated comments. I also have a difficult task ahead of me in getting links from my posts to other posts pointing at the correct WordPress permalinks (and setting up an .htaccess file that maps my old Blosxom permalinks to their new Wordpress equivalents). Since I don’t have a lot of spare time on my hands, it might take me awhile to set all of this right.
Hopefully in the end it will all be worth it, though. WordPress 1.5’s admin interface already feels incredibly refined and easy to use compared to the rickety collection of Perl variables I used to negotiate to configure my Blosxom setup. And the fact that I can now approve comments before they’re posted on the site should more or less solve my spam problem.
March 25th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
“want weblog software that allows me to use it with a minimum of fuss”, did you think that BXR was too hard to use? If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them for the next version.
March 25th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
That was probably the wrong thing to say there. To be honest I never tried BXR, but I’m sure if I had it would not have been too difficult to use. The reasons I switched had more to do with the comment situation and the fact that I just have decided I wanted weblog software with a nicer admin interface. The fact that it also allowed me to get MarsEdit working without any additional setup was just a nice bonus. I should probably edit the post to clarify that.
March 25th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
For spam fighting, I recommend WordPress Hashcash, which has been remarkably effective for me. I’ve had only a handful of junk comments get through, but even then, their content was just the MD5 hash (I think).
March 29th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Seems you are already a long way towards switching completely. I guess I’ll have to pull myself into gear and get my own blog ported too instead of being stuck on MT 2.66. Also, thank you for going to a layout with the comments on the same page as the entries, the comment popup from the old version was one of my pet peeves.
March 30th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Bye! We’ll miss you! (That’s *not* sarcasm; that’s sincere). I’ve played around with Wordpress, too, and I can see the allure. I don’t know if you’d be interested in writing up how you migrated everything from Blosxom over to the new system? Even though I advocate Blosxom I know there are others who would benefit from your experience. PS: More restaurant reviews!
June 22nd, 2005 at 5:15 pm
How’s the spam issue been? My MT install has been getting more and more spam comments, enough that I’m considering switching, hopefully to something that really handles spam well.