The Move, For Those of You Thinking About It

I know there is a lot of angst in the knitter-blogger world this weekend, at least if you are a Typepad user. It seems that I’m not the only one that hit that wall going ninety miles an hour yesterday. I don’t make decisions lightly, but once I’ve made up my mind, I tend to head forward full steam without a look back. This was no different. From glimmer of idea to “maybe I should go to the bookstore and get a WordPress For Dummies book”, to registering the name and moving the major part of the posts, it was done within a few hours yesterday.

For those of you thinking of doing the same thing, it’s not as difficult as I thought it might be. Moving is definitely a pain in the ass, but this one is going relatively well. Here are my beginning findings, for those of you dithering about it.

Get your domain name registered, now. If you sign up with a hosting service, it’s often free, but even if you’re not ready to sign up, it’s generally under $10 to do so, and it saves the spot. “knittingdoctor.com” was already taken (it takes you to a Lion Brand page! What’s up with that? They’re not doctors!), but “theknittingdoctor.com” was available. If all else fails, pick something close, perhaps with a number. Though that esthetically makes me itchy, it’s just the domain name, not the name you actually give the blog. Go here to find out if your heart’s desire is still available.

Find yourself a blog host. Before you do this, pick your software. This was a no-brainer for me. I just decided without a lot of consideration that I’d do a self-hosted WordPress blog, meaning you sign up with a host site to have server space to put the whole thing, then install WordPress as the actual blogging software. The WordPress site has several suggestions, and I went with Bluehost. They have way more capabilities than I’ll ever use, but it’s relatively cheap (cheaper than Typepad, people!) and has enough storage space and bandwidth than a sporadic knitter-blogger will ever need.

The actual sign up was easy. You fill out a few boxes, give Bluehost your credit card number, download the WP software and install, and you’re ready to blog. I just used a ready-made template from their website, though I shifted around stuff on the sidebar. Importing old posts from Typepad was a bit interesting. First you go to Typepad and sign in, and in your settings pages there is a page to export everything. It sends it to a separate webpage, which you then import relatively easily from the “Tools” section of WP. The only problem is that it is a big enough file that it won’t import it all at once. It imports a bunch of posts, then gives you a “fatal error” message. Just keep importing the same file over and over till it’s done. WP is smart enough to not import the same post twice, so it just skips the ones you’ve already imported and moves on to the next part.

The links came along with the import, for the most part. So did the photos, though they are still linked to the TP server. As I have no intention of paying TP forever just to store my blog photos, I’ll move them eventually, but it will be easier, since I can go to each individual post and see what the photos are. It should be a simple matter, albeit a tedious one, of saving them to a folder on my desktop one at a time, then uploading them back into the correct post from the Bluehost server.

I still haven’t figured out all the whistles and bells. And I haven’t figured out how to get my second page, “Finished Projects” to look right. If any of you WP users out there know how to import a whack of posts into a second page of a WP blog, let me know. I’d appreciate it. Maybe I do need that WP For Dummies book, after all. However, I’m far from a computer genius, so if I can do this, so can you.

I’m off to look around under the hood some more. Have a good rest-of-the-holiday-weekend!

Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog!

22 thoughts on “The Move, For Those of You Thinking About It”

  2. Thank you!
    now I know what I might be doing this week.
    I post a LOT of pictures. The prospect of moving all of them, one at a time, is… well… more than a little daunting. But it’s good to know that the rest of the process is not that bad.

    I’ve been writing to TypePad expressing my extreme distress. I still can’t believe that it didn’t occur to them to ASK if the rest of us wanted what some people had asked for. I mean c’mon….did we really have to write to say “some people might have complained and asked for a change, but I really want things to NOT change?” really??
    sigh
    Off to brood about moving several years worth of blog with many pictures (tutorials! aaaaaa)

  3. I notice that you don’t have many comments on recent posts. Of course, I assume that you actually had tons — did they get lost in the move?

  5. And, I was going to warn you that all the photos are still hosted on Typepad… I believe there’s some way to get them off there, but I actually went through and manually did mine … three years’ worth of blog posts, and it took me over a year of stolen moments to get them all done–I only just finished a week ago!

  10. I like the look over here. Did a move, too, some time ago but let the old posts where they are and linked to my old blog on the side bar. I amnot a very regualer blogger, and I am ok with it.
    Keep going!

  13. Well, happy new bloghome to you, Lorette. I am still on Typepad, and I haven’t experienced (yet) the issues everyone is complaining about. I won’t be happy if they are screwing things up, but I am not eager to move my blog either. I’ll wait and see. In the meantime, I’ve got the new site in my bloglines now.

  14. Can you FTP to your Typepad server? (if so, use smartftp if you are a PC person and pull all the photos to your computer in one whack),
    If not, you are stuck one-a-one-a.

    For pages – open a tab with your old pack. Go to view – check “source”
    on a seperate tab, start a new WP page. Copy the code from one and paste to the other.
    Now, all you have to do is change the URL for the photos to wherever you ftp them.

  18. Thanks for all the details on the conversion. I had one bizarre situation when I replied to comments and they were posted to my blog as comments, and I didn’t like that all.

  19. I just stumbled on to you. Go sister, love that you knit w/a glass of wine and have enjoyed your cooking/grilling stuff as well. Thanks for the tips on getting your own domain.

  21. How do comments work? Any different? Any better? I’m still considering moving, even one week in. No significant change has been made yet to our comments, though something is promised for tomorrow. I’m still holding out hope…..

  22. Thank you for putting the details of the move in your post. I’ve been thinking of making the move, but didn’t feel like doing the research to see what’s involved.

    I found your blog while researching the Schacht Matchless. I’m going to try one out at a fiber fest next weekend. Do you still love yours?

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