Shalin Jain's Little Red Couch

Filed under: wordpress

Wordpress to Posterous: The Missing Guide

Swtiching from Wordpress to Posterous is fairly straight forward and made easy by folks at Posterous. And if you are still looking for a reason to switch, read: Top 5 Reasons to Switch to Posterous  

The import is actually pretty simple, export content from wordpress, upload the XML and posterous does the job. That's it. But here is something you might want to know/fix during the process. 

  1. Media: Ensure there is no missing media on your existing blog. Posterous imports everything permanently - any missing images, files will not get imported. 
  2. SEO: If you were on a custom domain earlier (self-hosted wordpress) you don't have to worry about SEO, Posterous will retain the URLs after import. Newer posts will only follow posterous convention. 
  3. Pages: The importer does not import your wordpress Pages, you still have to do it manually. 
  4. Comments: Make sure you clear your spam before import. Bulk spam detection and deletion is easier in wordpress. 
  5. Large Blog: If your wordpress blog is fairly large, export in batches. The importing at Posterous couldn't complete my 250+ post imports at once, so I had to break it to have it successfully import everything. 
  6. DNS: If your DNS is not managed my Domain Registration Service, you would need to make a A record change at your existing web host where your wordpress site is hosted. A good reason to retain your current web host is for the email service. 

Enjoy the switch. 

SMS Updates on my Wordpress Blog posts

Google SMS Labs now enables me to create channel and update anyone or a particular group of members (by invitation) with SMS alerts. I created a Channel called SHALINJAIN. So, whenever I update my blog you would get a SMS with brief description about the post. It is almost realtime. The invitation process is really simple. If you already have a GMAIL or Google Account just clicking one button would do the needful. Subscribe for SMS alerts: Click here to Subscribe for My Blog Updates You can also create your own channels and keep your group updated about anything! The best part is - the service comes free. Give it a shot.

Moving Wordpress Blog to a new web host

It is fairly simple to move a wordpress blog across servers. In fact, I just did that. I gave up on my old host and am now hosting on Rackspace Network. Here is quick checklist:

Move Wordpress Installation

  1. Download all the scripts - You can skip a cache folder under the wp-content directory
  2. Go to your existing web hosts PHPMyAdmin page to download your Database as a SQL file.
  3. Create a new MySQL database with your NEW web host and import this SQL file.
  4. Upload your scripts to the new web host
  5. Open wp-config.php and modify the database name, hostname, password accordingly
  6. Change the DNS at your domain registration service provider, as required
  7. That's it!
Most time is consumed in downloading and uploading the files. Everything else is quick. It is really simple to manage and move your wordpress blog if you need to do so. (This is also my test post after moving!)
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Posterous theme by Cory Watilo