Gambling Today

I’ve searched high and low for a way to move just one blog category from an existing blog into a new blog. I found tons of ways and great documentation on how to move an entire blog to a new domain, but I couldn’t find anything that showed how to take one Wordpress blog category and create a new blog using that category.

I found an old plugin/import that should have done the job, but hadn’t been kept updated with the latest version of Wordpress and so it didn’t work for me. I also found a ton of people on the Wordpress forums interested in doing the same thing, but no one offering an answer. The best they could offer was importing just the RSS feed for that category. Problem there is that then you lose all the comments, categories and tags for those posts. Comments being the real kicker for me.

Therefore, I decided to go it alone and figure out a way to do it using the only option given in the Wordpress Export which was the user that created the post. My goal was:
-Export All the posts, categories, comments, tags for just one category of my blog
-Create a list of those posts that I could use to redirect traffic/google to the new location

There might be easier ways (and hopefully they’ll make this an option in the Import), but this worked for me. Also, I wouldn’t try this method unless you’re pretty good at find and replace, executing SQL queries and editing themes.

Overview of Process:
*Export Blog to Test Server
*Change Theme to Get list of Blog Post IDs/Posts for Category
*Change Author of Each Post ID to a new author
*Export posts for new author
*Import into new blog
*Create list of 301 Redirects on old blog
*Clean Up new blog DB

Export the entire blog using the standard Wordpress export feature.

Import the blog using the standard Wordpress import feature onto some test blog. I prefer using xampp or something similar for my test blogs, but it’s up to you. However, I wouldn’t suggest doing this on your production blog.

Change the index.php file for your theme (wp-content/theme/nameofyourtheme/index.php) to the following code:

^^**

-I’m sure you could add this code other pages in your theme, but index.php was easiest for me.
-This is why I suggest doing it on a test system. Since changing this index.php file on your blog will essentially ruin the look of it.

Change Author of Blog Posts
Now change your blog permalinks settings to the default. When you load your blog’s main page with Permalinks set to default, you’ll see a list something like the following:
^^http://localhost/testexport/?p=621**
Note: I like to add the ^^ and ** at the beginning and end to help with find and replace later.

Now we need to take this list and change it into a list of SQL commands that will change the author of every blog post in that category to a specific user that has no other posts. In my case, I created a new user called exportuser in the Wordpress admin panel and then I found it’s id was 2 using phpMyAdmin (select * from wp_users)

Then, using the list from above, I could find and replace to easily create a list of update statements like the following:
UPDATE wp_posts set post_author = 2 where ID = 621;

Once you run those SQL statements in phpMyAdmin, then you can go into the Wordpress Export feature and export all the posts by the “exportuser” (or whichever user you created) into a nice xml file. Now that file is an export of blog posts, comments, categories and tags from just that one category. ***Now all you have to do is import this file into your new blog.

***I personally imported this file into a separate blog so that I could clean out any unneeded categories, pages, posts, etc that I didn’t need on the new blog. Then, after I cleaned up I exported the cleaned version and then uploaded it to the new blog, but it’s up to you if your anal like me.

Redirecting Old Blog Posts URL
Next, change your blog permalink settings to the same as the original blog. When you load your blog’s main page with Permalinks set to your normal Permalinks setting, you’ll see a list something like the following:
^^http://localhost/testexport/2008/08/05/some-page/**
Note: I like to add the ^^ and ** at the beginning and end to help with find and replace later.

Now we need to convert this list into a list of 301 redirects so that posts on your old blog will forward to the new one. Using a little find and replace and pasting the columns into a csv or tab delimited file in excel, you can pretty easily produce a list of 301 redirects like the following:
RedirectPermanent /2008/08/05/some-page/ http://www.new-domain.com/2008/08/05/some-page/
**If you’re blog is in the blog folder instead of the root of your domain, you’ll need the redirect to look something like this:
RedirectPermanent /blog/2008/08/05/some-page/ http://www.new-domain.com/2008/08/05/some-page/

Copy this list of Redirects into the bottom of your .htaccess file and your old blog post urls will now redirect to your new blog.

Note: You should also consider redirecting the category itself and any relevant tags that might get traffic.

Once you have uploaded the posts to the new blog, you’ll also want to consider running the following 2 queries as suggested here:

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘http://www.old-domain.com’,’http://www.new-domain.com’);
This query updates the guid for the post to your new domain. Don’t ask me why the guid needs to be updated, but I tried it and it didn’t hurt anything. So, I’m suggesting you do it too. Better to leave no trace of the previous blog.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘http://www.old-domain.com’, ‘http://www.new-domain.com’);
This one changes any links in the posts content to point to the new domain. Be careful with this one, because since you moved only one category you may not want to update ALL of the links. I’d consider using something like:
Select post_content from wp_posts where post_content like ‘%http://www.old-domain.com%’
and then editing the links manually. Or you could do the same search in the wordpress admin panel. Either way it shouldn’t matter too much since you redirected the traffic anyway.

Let me know what you think or if I missed something easy I could have done instead.

Ted Murphy, founder of IZEA recently launched a personal microblog. If you are part of the IZEA family or a fan or rockstartup this is your chance to interact with Ted. You can check out the site here.

I was the 61st member of PayPerPost when I joined 3 years ago. You can imagine that over the 3 years Ted, myself and PayPerPost (now IZEA) have been through so many interesting experiences. While I’m not nearly as active in IZEA now, I still follow them and am interested in what their doing. Ted’s one of the most creative people I know so it will be interesting to see what Ted does with his blog and if he’ll have the time to do much.

I’m sure that many of you know by now that I have been with PayPerPost since nearly the beginning of Ted’s journey to make money for bloggers. It’s been quite the adventure for me and a true learning process. I’ve met hundreds of amazing bloggers and learned a ton about blogging. Oh yeah, and I made a bunch of cash along the way too. I personally call it my “date” money.

Well, back in November I attended Postie Con where SocialSpark was announced for the first time. It was a very exciting time to see what Ted and crew had been working on for so long.

I was invited into the alpha version of Social Spark and it’s been quite the experience. My favorite part has been the blog sponsorships. I can see why this might not fit right for many of the bloggers out there, but it’s perfect for a number of my blogs. In fact, I’d like to automate the blog sponsorship so that my blog always has a sponsorship with the highest paying sponsor (possibly with the option for me to block certain sponsors). Overall though, sponsorships are really neat and I haven’t heard any complaints from my blog readers. Granted I understand how I generate traffic to my blog and these type of sponsorships aren’t a problem. I’m still generating just as much traffic as before.

The next best part of social spark is the transparency and disclosure (ie. no follow). Here’s what social spark offers (which quite frankly was a problem with PayPerPost):
-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

Now that those problems are out of the way, I think that Social Spark can bring in some really large brands. Hopefully that means more revenue for us bloggers.

I think the most disappointing part of Social Spark to me has been the method of filtering, organizing and finding blog opportunities. It was bad in PayPerPost and is still bad in Social Spark. It should be much easier for me to know what opportunities are available and a way to sort them the way I want to see them. Plus, if I no longer want to see an opportunity, then give me an option to hide that opportunity forever.

Some of the social aspects of the site are interesting, but I would have preferred if Social Spark would have focused on more of the functional parts of the site and less on the look and feel of it all. I’m sure that hundreds of hours of design and development time were spent making it look pretty. When the reality is that functionality would have been more beneficial to all involved.

In the end, this is still the beginning of social spark, but I honestly had hoped for a little more after all the delays. However, it’s a good foundation for making bloggers a good amount of money. Especially with blog sponsorships. Let’s just hope the market will pay well for those blog sponsorships. They definitely can’t be missed by blog readers.

Email is still the most used application by internet users. I don’t know many people that are online that don’t pretty much go straight to their email when their online. Checking your email for new messages is an addiction for many (including myself). It’s my connection with my social life and it connects me to other things happening around the internet. In fact, one of the first things that new users of the internet do is get an email address.

Since email is so ubiquitous, then it only makes sense that getting your blog posts in people’s email box is one of the best way to drive traffic to your blog and encourage comments from users interested in what you’re posting to your blog. In fact, my wife has a friend that would manually send out an email to everyone telling them that she created a new blog post. That’s how much people like the idea of using email to “promote” their blog.

The crazy thing is that these people were sending out their blogs posts manually. What a pain in the butt. Plus, there might be some blog readers that aren’t on your personal email list.

If you’re manually doing it, then stop it and start using Zookoda. It’s a free service that basically turns your blog into a newsletter. Here’s a short list of features.

-Manage email newsletter subscribers.
-Enhance your blog with custom newsletter subscription forms.
-Design eye-catching newletters to match your blog design.
-Schedule recurring broadcasts for each day, week or month.
-View real-time open, bounce, click and unsubscribe reports.
-Access mobile users by emailing blog content in text format.

Did I mention it’s free? Trust me, that’s a good deal. I had personally worked on projects like PHPList to do the same things, and it was a pain in the butt. A hosted email newsletter service like this is so much better.

It looks like Wordpress 2.5 is going to arrive possibly next week. Either way it will be coming really soon. Is your blog ready for it? I found a pretty extensive check list of things you can do to prepare for the upgrade. I think that it is a little over the top myself, but I guess you kind of have to be to avoid that person that gets mad at you for saying that the upgrade should be very easy. That’s why I’ve basically limited myself to the plugins that are so mainstream someone is going to update them or the ones offered by Wordpress themselves (ie. Akismet and Wordpress Stats). It’s always interesting to see what features they come out with next.

I’ve been working the past couple evenings to get a Wordpress blog to integrate with a bbPress forum. They’re both from Automattic so I thought that it would be a no brainer. Turns out it should have been, but I just missed one link. I’m putting them here for those looking for a reference on integrating Wordpress with bbPress.

Here’s the Wordpress plugin that you need to integrate it. I didn’t activate it until after I had created both the Wordpress install and the bbPress install. This plugin also requires you to set the prefix for your bbPress database name. Simple enough to do on the tab that’s created for bbPress once the plugin’s activated.

This is the bbPress Wordpress Integration plugin that is used in bbPress to do the integration. Of course this is activated after installing bbPress. Just make sure when you install bbPress that you set all the right information in config.php I won’t detail that out since the documentation is good for that and is really very straightforward.

A lot of the documentation points to a Display Name plugin to show the Wordpress display name in bbPress rather than the login. It’s a great idea and would be great if it worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work, but the comments made on the plugin have a better workable method to make this happen in the bbPress template which in reality is probably where it should be anyway. Although I would shy away from loading all of Wordpress on the bbPress pages if possible. I can imagine that it will slow things down.

The Spaces and special character in login name Plugin isn’t even an official plugin and I haven’t tested it myself, but it loads well and seems like a simple enough plugin that I added it in to prevent errors in the future. Let’s hope now that they’re putting some resources towards bbPress we’ll get some things like this in the core.

I haven’t added the Human Test Plugin yet, but I expect that I’ll probably need to do that sooner or later or we’ll be swimming in fake accounts before we know it.

There are a bunch of other plugins that would be cool, but we’ll see what the manager of Crowdsource This wants to do. A signature plugin might be cool. The Private Message plugin might be useful. Probably a few more I haven’t looked at yet.

Well, hopefully this helps some people trying to integrate Wordpress with bbPress. Next up is to find a good theme. Possibly a look and feel designed for Wordpress and bbPress would be best. I’ve read that there are a few out there. If someone knows where they are, please let me know.

So, you don’t know how to market your blog or you’re not sure what to do to drive traffic to your blog. Well, don’t say I didn’t point you in the right direction. I haven’t looked at too many details of this list, but just looking at the volume and the categorization I’m sure there’s a lot of information in it that could be used. In fact, probably too much. The key will be to take this list and find things that match your interests, blog and skills well.

My friend from Cambrian House decided to step into the blogging world with his blog Web Fugitive. I think he’ll actually be a really good blogger with his knowledge and writing skill. I guess time will tell.

However, his tech skills and implementation of Wordpress sucks. Sorry Web Fugitive, but there’s a reason you shouldn’t expose yourself. I’d be embarrassed to admit who I was if I’d committed so many mistakes. Here’s a few helpful hints to get you started.

1. Turn on permalinks. If you don’t know what that is, then find out. It’s easy and Google likes permalinks. Don’t be lame and link to a page with ?p=12
2. Turn comments on on all of your posts. I was about to comment on a post and comments was turned off. How lame is that. Well, I guess maybe it was a good strategy, because it motivated me to blog about you. Otherwise, I think it sucks. I bet it was just an accident, but fix it already. Comments are what makes blogs interesting.
3. Get rid of the “Uncategorized” category. Choose a topic like Web 2.0 which will encompass all your posts and then make it the default. Uncategorized just makes you look lazy and uneducated in the art of blogging. Not to mention good categorizing is liked by Google bots too.
4. I already told you this so do it already. That lame hostmonster favicon not only makes you look lame for using hostmonster, but it shows you don’t care about your website.
5. I can’t tell this for sure, but I bet you don’t even have the Wordpress stats plugin turned on and maybe not even akismet. I’d even settle for Google Analytics, but I’m confident you don’t have that. Get some stats already.

Ok, I will give you one prop. At least you have the latest version of Wordpress installed. Of course, you don’t have to listen to anything I say, but I’m sure you will since you know better than to not listen.

Welcome to blogging. It’s addicting!!

When I was reading my twitter feed today I found Jules and blm03 talking about using TwitterFeed to publish when you do new blog posts. I think this might be a good idea. Definitely better to be able to automate the posting of your blog feed. I’m thinking that I might try it. I just wonder how many people it will annoy on twitter. Considering the number of posts I’m doing right now I don’t think I should be too worried.

I don’t know how many of you have heard about BlogHaus at CES, but I read all about it last year and it sounded like a lot of fun. I’d really like to stop by and see what’s happening. My only question is whether it is open to all bloggers or only professional bloggers. I imagine it is open to all bloggers since how do you define who is an A list blogger and who is not. I guess I shouldn’t even ask this question since I have like 10 blogs and make a pile of money blogging. I think I’ll sign up and see if I can find the time to stop by. I think the internet connection may be the best reason to stop by. Last year I can’t remember finding a good internet connection almost anywhere.