One of my sites used to be Drupal 5.x. I recently decided that it was time to convert the site to Wordpress 2.5.x. The reason being that I was really using the site more like a blog than anything else, and although Drupal is a great piece of CMS, it is really not that great out of the box as a blog. Wordpress on the other hand….well it is awesome. There are not that many world class bloggers out there that use anything but, and there is a reason for that.

IT WORKS

So I asked the question over at DP and got a couple of good links. However it wasn’t going to be easy since I couldn’t find anyone that converted to the most current Wordpress. This caused me some grief, until I decided to simply use an old version for the conversion and upgrade from there. So I went right to the version that this guy used, 2.2.2

The thing that a lot of people may have an issue with is the fact that there is no easy way to move over the users that you may have registered. Since I didn’t force users to register to comment or do pretty much anything else this turned out not to be an issue. The only people that registered were there to post spam. I guess they thought that if they registered they would bypass the moderation.

The list/order of things that I did. I am assuming that you have a host with cPanel and myphpadmin

1. Complete backup of old site.
2. Another backup, this time the root directories and the db seperately.
3. Install Wordpress 2.2.2
4. Open phpmyadmin, copy over term_data, term_hierarchy, node, node_revisons, term_node, and comments from the Drupal DB to the Wordpress DB. Alternatively you could have installed Wordpress into the same DB as the Drupal install.
5. Run the SQL from the txt file as found on Alex’s Blog on the Wordpress DB from myphpadmin
6. Delete the node_revisions table (It isn’t done in the above SQL)
7. Download and upgrade to the latest Wordpress Build. (you don’t want to get caught with your pants down)
8. Login in to Wordpress and start cleaning.

So that’s it. The one thing that I am going to have to figure out is an easy way to 301 the old URLs to the new. For now I simply logged into my Google Analytics account and manually 301′d the most popular URLs.

If you are having any problems following the step

If you use Flickr as your main source of stock photography, maybe you should think again.

Sure it is great to have such a large source of free stock to use in your blog, but every once in a while the user of that photo will change the license or worse, delete it. When it gets deleted you get the dreaded “photo unavailable” image. That is if you hotlink, and admit it, most of you do.

If you download the image and use it from one of your own servers then you don’t have to worry about the ugly unavailable image, but you still have to worry about license changes.

This is one of the reasons that I have taken to using Crestock. I have mentioned Crestock in the past, and especially like the free image of the day, which I have started to collect to get my personal stock photo database going. This is the group of images that I go to first when trying to find something worth while to add to the post. Sometimes it is just a pretty face

Pretty Face

So keep this in mind next time that you go looking for a picture for you site, maybe what you pay for is what you get, and free doesn’t always get a lot.

I just finished a very interesting read. I wasn’t expecting much out of it when I ordered it on Amazon, I just had some aff money in the US store, and you can pretty much only buy books if you are not in the US. I am doing a review of the book right now, so I will let you know what one it is then

Anyway, it really changed the way that I look at the way that I do online business, and my life/job in general. I think, however, that I tried to jump into the process laid out in the book way too fast. I got into the product creation portion way before I was ready, and before I had the spare time to do such. I have to learn how to “eliminate” before I “automate” (if you read the book, you know what I am talking about), I am working too many hours at the day job, and there are a few of my sites that currently need a lot of TLC. So what I am going to do is use some of the techniques in the book to see if I can raise my productivity at work so that I can get more done and get home at a decent time and therefore I have more time to work on my own projects.

I think that I will have the books review done soon, but if I don’t have time I will simply edit this with the title

It is a recommended read, as long as you have the correct mind set and don’t take the title too literally. You really have to do work, like every successful person online says so, however it is the way that you set up your company that is the biggest thing.

I have a goal for this year and that is to have my semi-passive income increased to $500 per month by the end of the year. This doesn’t sound like much, but I don’t seem to have much of an imagination. I can’t seem to come up with an idea for a product. I like writing so I figured that maybe an ebook, but on what? And for who? Since this is to be passive income I want to be sure to pick a demographic that is easy to market to. I am an engineer by trade, and there is a couple of ideas there, but the people that I would be marketing to would not see my credentials as good enough to warrant the purchase. Also the topics that I am interested in, in my field of work, would be very technical and I am not sure if I could sell the books, I would need to sell one a day to reach my target.

So where does that leave me? Well frustrated….

I am not sure where to go, maybe I will offer myself up for some technical writing assignments over at DP, or elance and see if something interesting will come along. Or maybe I will simply try to think up a cool gadget that would fit into one of my hobbies. The issue that I am having now is that I am the type of person that can solve a problem if you give me one, but I am not good at coming up with things on the fly. I make a very good consultant, but service work does not lend itself to be very passive. You only make money when you are working, I would like to find a way to make money while I am out drinking with the guys.

SO what is a webmaster to do? I would like to be able to use the day job more like a hobby, something that I enjoy doing and a place that I enjoy going to, but not really required to pay the bills. This may be wishful thinking, but I am sure that if I really put my mind to it I will be able to come up with something that will enable me to be inspired. I know I will have to hook up with some old buddies and go out drinking. Maybe one of them would have a cool problem that I would be able to come up with a solution and create a product out of it.

There is a site that I have been nursing along for a very long time, however I have now decided that it is time to either get it bake to life, or kill it.

I am thinking that I am going to revive the site, and document everything that I do to make this happen here.

Currently the stats for the site include .25 registrations a day and 2 new threads a day.
So today we start back at zero. I am going to be doing a couple of things to make the site the place to be.

First I am going to make a minimum of 10 posts a day, with a minimum of 5 new threads.
Second, start working on automated post exchanges
Third, redesign the logo and get some online marketing materials made
And fourth, I am going to start working on contest ideas, something that will generate interest in the site.

I will report back in a week to let you know how it is going. Every month for the next year I will post the average number of posts, new threads and registrations per day.

If anyone has any advice, please post it here. I would be very interested in hearing what you have have done in the past to revive a currently dead forum.