Possible Re-hosting Of Website - Input Requested

[Gary Lewis]

Well folks, I'm bummed. I just got off the phone with Will Zudok of WPEngine. Apparently they are a major Wordpress hosting company and when you go to their site you are asked if you'd like to chat. I said yes and a few minutes later Will called.

Nice guy. Drives a 2011 F150 w/a 3.5L EB and says it does great pulling his 18' boat.

But, he took a look at the site and said he's 100% sure they cannot migrate it to Wordpress, and he's almost 100% sure no one can. In fact, he thinks the only way to take it to Wordpress is to rebuild it there, page by page.

Pass the tissues, please.

Hold the tissues! I just got an email from wpbeginner with a file which they say contains the whole of the site. I've emailed it to ckuske to see if he can import it to a Wordpress instance on Dreamhost.

But, I have my doubts as it is only 16.7Mb while the backup I just downloaded is 1.7Gb. However, the lady from wpbeginner said that's because it only has links to the picture and pdf files, and not the files themselves.

I hope she's right!

[ctubutis]

Hold the tissues! I just got an email from wpbeginner with a file which they say contains the whole of the site. I've emailed it to ckuske to see if he can import it to a Wordpress instance on Dreamhost.

But, I have my doubts as it is only 16.7Mb while the backup I just downloaded is 1.7Gb. However, the lady from wpbeginner said that's because it only has links to the picture and pdf files, and not the files themselves.

I hope she's right!

I migrated a lot of WP sites to newer versions of WP at my newspaper job, and I remember doing one of them that *wasn't* originally WP but was something else - not sure if it was Weebly or something else.

Those migration plugins can really help you! But they may need some tweaking, /paths/to/files (or something else) might need to be adjusted. Working next to the developers can be a good thing. :)

The small archive should just be a SQL dump; all of the pdfs, docs, images, etc. need to already exist on disk, WP theme distributions generally have dedicated places for that kind of stuff.

[Gary Lewis]

I migrated a lot of WP sites to newer versions of WP at my newspaper job, and I remember doing one of them that *wasn't* originally WP but was something else - not sure if it was Weebly or something else.

Those migration plugins can really help you! But they may need some tweaking, /paths/to/files (or something else) might need to be adjusted. Working next to the developers can be a good thing. :)

The small archive should just be a SQL dump; all of the pdfs, docs, images, etc. need to already exist on disk, WP theme distributions generally have dedicated places for that kind of stuff.

ckuske has created a website using the file the lady from wpbeginner sent. And it has 7 pages instead of 559. And those 7 pages have a sentence or two on them, but nothing else. No content like pics or pdf's.

So I've gone back to her to see what can be done. Perhaps she'll respond in the morning. But her last email said:

Actually that should be everything. It's an XML file, so it will have links to your attachments and not the actual files. That is where the bulk of your site size comes from. When you use the WordPress importer choose the option to download attachments. WordPress will do that directly from Weebly to your new host so you don't have to download all 1.7 GB to your computer. :-)

So Wordpress is supposed to have downloaded the files w/o us having to do that.

Anyway, here's what one original page looks like vs the wpbeginner page:

[ctubutis]

ckuske has created a website using the file the lady from wpbeginner sent. And it has 7 pages instead of 559. And those 7 pages have a sentence or two on them, but nothing else. No content like pics or pdf's.

So I've gone back to her to see what can be done. Perhaps she'll respond in the morning. But her last email said:

Actually that should be everything. It's an XML file, so it will have links to your attachments and not the actual files. That is where the bulk of your site size comes from. When you use the WordPress importer choose the option to download attachments. WordPress will do that directly from Weebly to your new host so you don't have to download all 1.7 GB to your computer. :-)

So Wordpress is supposed to have downloaded the files w/o us having to do that.

Anyway, here's what one original page looks like vs the wpbeginner page:

OK, cool! That's a major start! :)

@ckuske: As the wordpress admin, you can investigate & maybe fix the missing images & documents, hopefully it's something easy.

Does Dreamhost allow shell access?

[Gary Lewis]

OK, cool! That's a major start! :)

@ckuske: As the wordpress admin, you can investigate & maybe fix the missing images & documents, hopefully it's something easy.

Does Dreamhost allow shell access?

Well, the website Chris created now probably has all 559 pages. The nav menu is broken so everything is in a jumble at the top of the page. But, he caused the system to load all of the files onto/into Wordpress, and they appear.

However, there are things that are broken, like tabs and thumbnails that work as buttons. He's going to look into it. But, there is PROGRESS!

[ctubutis]

Well, the website Chris created now probably has all 559 pages. The nav menu is broken so everything is in a jumble at the top of the page. But, he caused the system to load all of the files onto/into Wordpress, and they appear.

However, there are things that are broken, like tabs and thumbnails that work as buttons. He's going to look into it. But, there is PROGRESS!

I bought a book on WP when I first began that stuff, it's packed away in a plastic tub right now and is unavailable but it sounds like he's making good progress. :) The books won't really teach what he's doing, anyhow.

[Gary Lewis]

I bought a book on WP when I first began that stuff, it's packed away in a plastic tub right now and is unavailable but it sounds like he's making good progress. :) The books won't really teach what he's doing, anyhow.

The 505 error was because the migration process ran out of time. But they ran it in batch with more time and it looks like it completed.

So we are going through and noting the issues, like the tabs don't work and buttons don't work - both of which use a Weebly widget. So that may be an issue. However, both of us agree that this is proof of the concept, and I'll probably hire pro's to migrate it if they agree that everything will work. (It'll be well worth it to not have to fix several hundred tabbed pages.)

[ctubutis]

The 505 error was because the migration process ran out of time. But they ran it in batch with more time and it looks like it completed.

So we are going through and noting the issues, like the tabs don't work and buttons don't work - both of which use a Weebly widget. So that may be an issue. However, both of us agree that this is proof of the concept, and I'll probably hire pro's to migrate it if they agree that everything will work. (It'll be well worth it to not have to fix several hundred tabbed pages.)

He'd hopefully tun a script (to fix the tabs en masse).

There are chitloads of WordPress plugins available, you could maybe find one that does your tabbing.

Paying somebody who does this (and other such dev work) for a living can be worth it sometimes....

[Gary Lewis]

He'd hopefully tun a script (to fix the tabs en masse).

There are chitloads of WordPress plugins available, you could maybe find one that does your tabbing.

Paying somebody who does this (and other such dev work) for a living can be worth it sometimes....

Yes, paying someone is probably the way to go. And so far all I've found that do it for a living is cms2cms. Maybe someone else can find someone else? I ask because the chat line lady there doesn't know what she's doing, so it didn't sit well with me. Perhaps someone else will get back with me, as I requested, but I'm not confident.

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, paying someone is probably the way to go. And so far all I've found that do it for a living is cms2cms. Maybe someone else can find someone else? I ask because the chat line lady there doesn't know what she's doing, so it didn't sit well with me. Perhaps someone else will get back with me, as I requested, but I'm not confident.

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.