Possible Re-hosting Of Website - Input Requested

[Gary Lewis]

Got an email from the CMS2CMS folks and they are supposed to call me around noon. We shall see. But the email responses I got this morning don't bode well for them as they continue to say things that don't make sense. For instance he said "Unfortunately, images cannot be migrated because API does not allow us to do that." What? We appear to have hundreds of images migrated by wpbeginner's free migration tool.

And, speaking of wpbeginner, that lady got back with me. Let me just say that for free they give awesome support! Wow! If CMS2CMS provided that kind of support this would be done.

Anyway, she said that if you run the importer several times it frequently gives duplications in the menu. Not of the pages themselves, but just in the menu. And, sure enough that's what I'm seeing. The menu has a whole bunch of repetition, but not all of the pages. My guess is that it has a max number of links and it is running into that limit. But when I go into the editor I see pages that don't appear in the menu.

And, she also said that the Weebly widgets don't migrate well, which is exactly what I'm seeing. In fact, here are the problems I'm seeing:

• Tabs don't work: The tabs themselves are shown on the page, but there's no content in the tabs.

• Links: Hyperlinks on pages like the EVTM main pages don't work. Nor do the links in the Literature pages, which use thumbnails as buttons to click. Those were originally done from w/in Weebly and point to another Weebly page, so perhaps that's another Weebly "widget" issue.

• PDF Links: The new method of placing hyperlinks in blue boxes on PDF's, like the Interior Trim page, works, but it takes you back to the Garagemahal, meaning the Weebly page. Presumably that will be taken care of with 301 redirects, and it is something that I don't think any migration tool can fix as it is embedded in the PDF itself.

• Pic Spacing: The spacing between images is not preserved. We have hundreds of pages with snippets of the MPC strung together closely to preserve the feeling that this is a continuous catalog. But the wpbeginner migration puts lots of space between the pics and that sure breaks up the continuity of the catalog.

• Non-Clickable Pages: Weebly has the ability to create pages that show in the menu bat cannot be clicked to open. An example of that is Literature - if you click on it in the menu nothing happens and you then realize you have to click 1980, or 1981, or .... But wpbeginner brings those pages over as clickable, even though there's nothing on them. However, we don't have lots of those so fixing that won't be too big of a deal.

I hope CMS2CMS can do a professional job 'cause fixing what we have would take quite a bit of time. But the fact that we got that far, or rather Chris/ckuske got us that far, for free speaks volumes.

Never got the call from CMS2CMS, the "professional" migration place. But, I have gotten several emails from Wendy @wpbeginner, the free migration place.

So I asked her about their services, and here's her answer:

We offer two kinds of free support - and yes it's free. The first is what we're doing now which just answers questions you have as you're doing the site yourself. The second may be what you're looking for and that's where we actually move your Weebly site for you. However our service only covers basic posts and pages. Since you have a forum that and the scribd pdf viewers probably wouldn't transfer and that is the majority of your content.

If you still want to take advantage of that you don't pay us directly but you do have to sign up for hosting with one of our preferred hosts

Fortunately we don't have too many Scribd pdf viewers, and those we do have can be converted to embedded iframes. As for this forum, I've tried several ways to embed it, all to no avail. But I'm working with my friend on the Nabble support forum and I'm hoping he can crack it. But this one is critical, so I need to make it happen before we get much farther.

[ctubutis]

Never got the call from CMS2CMS, the "professional" migration place. But, I have gotten several emails from Wendy @wpbeginner, the free migration place.

So I asked her about their services, and here's her answer:

We offer two kinds of free support - and yes it's free. The first is what we're doing now which just answers questions you have as you're doing the site yourself. The second may be what you're looking for and that's where we actually move your Weebly site for you. However our service only covers basic posts and pages. Since you have a forum that and the scribd pdf viewers probably wouldn't transfer and that is the majority of your content.

If you still want to take advantage of that you don't pay us directly but you do have to sign up for hosting with one of our preferred hosts

Fortunately we don't have too many Scribd pdf viewers, and those we do have can be converted to embedded iframes. As for this forum, I've tried several ways to embed it, all to no avail. But I'm working with my friend on the Nabble support forum and I'm hoping he can crack it. But this one is critical, so I need to make it happen before we get much farther.

Yeah, welcome to WordPress.

Seriously.

Do a Google search on:

how to export weebly to wordpress

The results show lots of help out there, don't be discouraged too much by this one approach you took.

IOW there are other plugins & services out there, experiment around and maybe you can find one that does a better importing job, maybe you can modify it (or the XML output results) to do what you want it to do.

Yes, the PDF files will need to be editted.

If there are identifiable attributes of a post/thread/document/etc. that you want to change to a known value, then a lot can be done wring SQL queries & inserts using MySQL Workbench

https://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

Anyway, she said that if you run the importer several times it frequently gives duplications in the menu

Yes, that's exactly what happens. You see, most of this stuff (the content of wordpress sites) is entries stored inside of a database and not files on disk, there is no way for an importer tool to (easily) determine if such-n-such db entry already exists or not, so it merely writes a new one (menu entries). Any importer tool can't easily figure this out without access to the database (files on disk are easy). Restore the database from a backup and try again.

But now you know what this one does.

Non-Clickable Pages

Not sure what you're talking about here, reading real fast, I guess....

I hope CMS2CMS can do a professional job 'cause fixing what we have would take quite a bit of time. But the fact that we got that far, or rather Chris/ckuske got us that far, for free speaks volumes.

Yes, manual fixing of everything would take forever, don't even think about it... Script it. Look at the XML output some of those things are producing, look at the source of what's producing it, it's not complicated at all. Lots of HTML-like entities, some of which you can fix in vi. Other things require more, e.g. SQL queries & database operations.

Again, welcome to WordPress. And there is worlds of support out there. :)

[Gary Lewis]

Never got the call from CMS2CMS, the "professional" migration place. But, I have gotten several emails from Wendy @wpbeginner, the free migration place.

So I asked her about their services, and here's her answer:

We offer two kinds of free support - and yes it's free. The first is what we're doing now which just answers questions you have as you're doing the site yourself. The second may be what you're looking for and that's where we actually move your Weebly site for you. However our service only covers basic posts and pages. Since you have a forum that and the scribd pdf viewers probably wouldn't transfer and that is the majority of your content.

If you still want to take advantage of that you don't pay us directly but you do have to sign up for hosting with one of our preferred hosts

Fortunately we don't have too many Scribd pdf viewers, and those we do have can be converted to embedded iframes. As for this forum, I've tried several ways to embed it, all to no avail. But I'm working with my friend on the Nabble support forum and I'm hoping he can crack it. But this one is critical, so I need to make it happen before we get much farther.

Well, while both of us were watching baseball Chris/ckuske fixed the forum. Just like that!

The issue was that I had put an HTTP forum on an HTTPS site, and ne'er the twain shall meet. He turned the S off, and away we went. In fact, I just posted on the This Looks Cool thread from that site.

So now the concept has been proven. It is possible to migrate the website, meaning the documentation portion, to Wordpress. And it is possible to embed the forum in it.

The only thing we now need to figure out is whether we've done the migration and want to spend the time cleaning it up. Or, much more likely, we want to have it migrated by someone that has done it a few times.

I still haven't heard from CMS2CMS so that may not happen. But WPBeginner says they'll do it for free if we go with one of their hosting partners. And one of those is BlueHost, which has good rates and comes out on top of the list in a review I read.

So Monday when the WPBeginner folks come back to work I'll talk with them more about what we'll get if we go with them on the migration. And if CMS2CMS should call, I'll check them out as well.

Onward and upward!

[Gary Lewis]

Yeah, welcome to WordPress.

Seriously.

Do a Google search on:

how to export weebly to wordpress

The results show lots of help out there, don't be discouraged too much by this one approach you took.

IOW there are other plugins & services out there, experiment around and maybe you can find one that does a better importing job, maybe you can modify it (or the XML output results) to do what you want it to do.

Yes, the PDF files will need to be editted.

If there are identifiable attributes of a post/thread/document/etc. that you want to change to a known value, then a lot can be done wring SQL queries & inserts using MySQL Workbench

https://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

Anyway, she said that if you run the importer several times it frequently gives duplications in the menu

Yes, that's exactly what happens. You see, most of this stuff (the content of wordpress sites) is entries stored inside of a database and not files on disk, there is no way for an importer tool to (easily) determine if such-n-such db entry already exists or not, so it merely writes a new one (menu entries). Any importer tool can't easily figure this out without access to the database (files on disk are easy). Restore the database from a backup and try again.

But now you know what this one does.

Non-Clickable Pages

Not sure what you're talking about here, reading real fast, I guess....

I hope CMS2CMS can do a professional job 'cause fixing what we have would take quite a bit of time. But the fact that we got that far, or rather Chris/ckuske got us that far, for free speaks volumes.

Yes, manual fixing of everything would take forever, don't even think about it... Script it. Look at the XML output some of those things are producing, look at the source of what's producing it, it's not complicated at all. Lots of HTML-like entities, some of which you can fix in vi. Other things require more, e.g. SQL queries & database operations.

Again, welcome to WordPress. And there is worlds of support out there. :)

Thanks, Chris. I'll read the info in the links tomorrow. Too much computing and I'm ready for bed now. But this post is coming to you from a Wordpress site.

[ctubutis]

Thanks, Chris. I'll read the info in the links tomorrow. Too much computing and I'm ready for bed now. But this post is coming to you from a Wordpress site.

Before you get toooo involved, spend some time looking at some themes, find a new look & feel you like. For example, the tabbed pages; I seriously don't expect that stuff to import over real well, you might be better implementing some WordPress-style of doing those things (remember, there are boatloads of plugins & themes available).

Or, look at some of the commercial themes; I've seen some I liked on ridethetockies.com & pedaltheplains.com, though I forget the name of the company that authors/sells them. :( Let Google be your friend. :)

[Gary Lewis]

Before you get toooo involved, spend some time looking at some themes, find a new look & feel you like. For example, the tabbed pages; I seriously don't expect that stuff to import over real well, you might be better implementing some WordPress-style of doing those things (remember, there are boatloads of plugins & themes available).

Or, look at some of the commercial themes; I've seen some I liked on ridethetockies.com & pedaltheplains.com, though I forget the name of the company that authors/sells them. :( Let Google be your friend. :)

Chris - There's LOTS of research to be done. Themes, plugins, you name it. And thanks for the places to look, I'll follow up on them.

I've done a bit of playing with the test site. For instance, I uploaded the 46Mb Four Wheelin' brochure in pdf to the site's media section and then embedded it below the same file saved on OneDrive. Both were embedded the same way using iframes.

And then I viewed the page. The file from OneDrive loaded in a second or so, but the file from the Dreamhost site took MANY seconds.

So I downloaded and installed the PDF Embedder plugin that supposedly does things "better" and doesn't use iframes. Then I embedded the Four Wheelin' file below the 2nd instance and viewed the page. Again the iframed file on OneDrive was by far the fastest, and the PDF Embedder file was 2nd. But the iframed-Dreamhost file took forever.

The hope was that locally-hosted files wouldn't be found in media storage when Google crawled the site but would be on the page. Gonna have to think about this a bit.

I know we are also going to need a backup plugin. And I'm sure there are plenty of others. But at least those things are available on Wordpress. They aren't on Weebly.

[Gary Lewis]

Chris - There's LOTS of research to be done. Themes, plugins, you name it. And thanks for the places to look, I'll follow up on them.I've done a bit of playing with the test site. For instance, I uploaded the 46Mb Four Wheelin' brochure in pdf to the site's media section and then embedded it below the same file saved on OneDrive. Both were embedded the same way using iframes.And then I viewed the page. The file from OneDrive loaded in a second or so, but the file from the Dreamhost site took MANY seconds.So I downloaded and installed the PDF Embedder plugin that supposedly does things "better" and doesn't use iframes. Then I embedded the Four Wheelin' file below the 2nd instance and viewed the page. Again the iframed file on OneDrive was by far the fastest, and the PDF Embedder file was 2nd. But the iframed-Dreamhost file took forever.The hope was that locally-hosted files wouldn't be found in media storage when Google crawled the site but would be on the page. Gonna have to think about this a bit.I know we are also going to need a backup plugin. And I'm sure there are plenty of others. But at least those things are available on Wordpress. They aren't on Weebly.

Ok, I'm trying to think through a game plan. And one thing that appears to be highly likely is that pages using Weebly's widgets, like tabs and buttons, won't come across correctly. (The jury is still out on that one, but I'm pretty sure that's going to be their verdict.) So the question becomes whether to take the widgets out before the migration or fix the pages after.I've thought of a couple of issues, but I'm sure there are more:

1. Content: If we "fix" the pages before the migration the content will come across where it wouldn't, or doesn't appear to do, if the tabs/buttons are left in. On the other hand, as long as we've not cut over we'll have the Weebly site to refer to and figure out what the content should be. So, in some ways it might be better to fix the pages afterward 'cause we we might be able to use the power of Wordpress to create the pages in a better fashion.

 

Editors: In Weebly I'm the only editor, and to have more requires we spend money to upgrade plans. But in Wordpress it looks like we could have several editors. So if we fix the pages after the migration we could spread the work out - assuming we had others with the skills willing to do it.So, over to y'all. What other issues or thoughts are there regarding the order of doing things?

[Ford F834]

Ok, I'm trying to think through a game plan. And one thing that appears to be highly likely is that pages using Weebly's widgets, like tabs and buttons, won't come across correctly. (The jury is still out on that one, but I'm pretty sure that's going to be their verdict.) So the question becomes whether to take the widgets out before the migration or fix the pages after.I've thought of a couple of issues, but I'm sure there are more:

1. Content: If we "fix" the pages before the migration the content will come across where it wouldn't, or doesn't appear to do, if the tabs/buttons are left in. On the other hand, as long as we've not cut over we'll have the Weebly site to refer to and figure out what the content should be. So, in some ways it might be better to fix the pages afterward 'cause we we might be able to use the power of Wordpress to create the pages in a better fashion.

 

Editors: In Weebly I'm the only editor, and to have more requires we spend money to upgrade plans. But in Wordpress it looks like we could have several editors. So if we fix the pages after the migration we could spread the work out - assuming we had others with the skills willing to do it.So, over to y'all. What other issues or thoughts are there regarding the order of doing things?

Gary, are you able to try a couple of sample pages to see how they test? I understand wanting a smooth and uninterrupted transition, but my gut feeling would be to move it, then fix the problems in the new environment rather than trying to preemptively fix it and hope everything lands sunny side up. Granted that is just me, with zero knowledge of the process and a fair amount of mistrust in computer programs doing what they are supposed to.

[Gary Lewis]

Gary, are you able to try a couple of sample pages to see how they test? I understand wanting a smooth and uninterrupted transition, but my gut feeling would be to move it, then fix the problems in the new environment rather than trying to preemptively fix it and hope everything lands sunny side up. Granted that is just me, with zero knowledge of the process and a fair amount of mistrust in computer programs doing what they are supposed to.

We’ve moved all 500+ pages, and those that don’t use the widgets are fine. I’m sure they could be better given all the capabilities of Wordpress, but I happy with just moving over one-for-one. Then we can upgrade later if we want.

Anyway, I’m leaning to your thinking of move and then fix. 👍

[ctubutis]

Chris - There's LOTS of research to be done. Themes, plugins, you name it. And thanks for the places to look, I'll follow up on them.

I've done a bit of playing with the test site. For instance, I uploaded the 46Mb Four Wheelin' brochure in pdf to the site's media section and then embedded it below the same file saved on OneDrive. Both were embedded the same way using iframes.

And then I viewed the page. The file from OneDrive loaded in a second or so, but the file from the Dreamhost site took MANY seconds.

So I downloaded and installed the PDF Embedder plugin that supposedly does things "better" and doesn't use iframes. Then I embedded the Four Wheelin' file below the 2nd instance and viewed the page. Again the iframed file on OneDrive was by far the fastest, and the PDF Embedder file was 2nd. But the iframed-Dreamhost file took forever.

The hope was that locally-hosted files wouldn't be found in media storage when Google crawled the site but would be on the page. Gonna have to think about this a bit.

I know we are also going to need a backup plugin. And I'm sure there are plenty of others. But at least those things are available on Wordpress. They aren't on Weebly.

Gary,

I had composed a response but lost it when tried to preview where an external link was taking me and then hit the browser Back button and it put me at the Table of Contents. That's annoying.

I told you about your SSL configuration some time ago, I've been clicking through it in Firefox for what seems like years now. Unencrypted HTTP is certainly easier and was good for times past, but the world is moving to encrypted everything at this point.

Performance comparisons need to be fair. Your browser cache could be affecting a lot of your perceived speed, it's best to clear your cache & maybe cookies between runs when making those tests.

Your VMWare virtual machine's capabilities certainly make a difference, these are generally dependent on how much RAM & bandwidth you pay for.

Wireless networks are slower than wired but they aren't subjective, it's everybody or nobody.

There are tools available to measure network performace (e.g. Wireshark or tcpdump) but their use & interpretation can be a bit non-trivial. You will need source & destination IPs awa the protocol being used; time is measured in milliseconds. Maybe your new Chris can look into that if he's interested, he's doing a good job so far. :)

It doesn't surprise me that OneDrive performs well, it's a cloud product produced by Microsoft and of course they want their infrastructure to perform well. Sometimes there are benefits to using cloud services, one of them is sometimes speed.

I know nothing about Dreamhost or their capabilities, they are just a hosting company like lots of them (used to be known as ISPs). They provide virtual machines on a blade server connected to the 'net, just like all of them.

Backups will be easy, the hosting companies will likely point you towards a Linux GUI control panel known as cPanel. It works fairly well and is certainly easier for most people to use. Or, command line tools can be used to create sqldump backups & tarballs of disk files, then copy them to your local HD. Your choice.

But at least those things are available on Wordpress. They aren't on Weebly.

Weebly is the Playskool of Internet hosting. Certainly it is easy, and many people find it sufficient for recreational use. WordPress allows virtually unlimited functionality, but you need to operate within its constraints.