Im tired of going against the grain, gonna convert my DNN blog to Wordpress
Ive been thinking about this for a while. I’m finally fed up with Dotnetnuke. Lets go to the wayback machine for a minute so I can explain what I’m talking about. This blog is my second blog, the first blog I started a little over a year ago. If your interested, the url is www.jonzee.com. It is pretty much a gadget blog with a minor focus on deals and online shopping. Jonzee.com wasn’t always a gadget blog. I had another idea for a website, more of a service. I did a little research and found out about Dotnetnuke. I created the website with dotnetnuke, had it up and running for a few months, then had a mishap with the web host. lost all of my work. When I reinstalled Dotnetnuke I decided to just do a blog. Born was Jonzee.com the gadget / shopping blog.
Ive changed the look of Jonzee.com several times in the last year. Mainly because I wanted it to look more like a blog. Now I am pretty pleased with the look. The look isn’t the only thing that was problematic for me. If you ever used Dotnetnuke, you’d know that there is a lot of tweaking you have to do to get your DNN site performing like other websites out there. Most of those tweaks comes in the forms of Modules which are equivalent to Plugins for Wordpress, but they are normally not free. Yea plugins for DNN are all generally paid for and Ive spent a decent amount of money on different plugins for Jonzee.com. Right now Jonzee.com is about as perfected as my current skill will ever allow. But this blog (jonespc) is still a huge improvement on a lot of levels.
There are a lot of things that are done automatically using Wordpress. There are a lot of built in features in Wordpress that I find very useful that will never be incorporated in my other blog. I am tired of it. I’m tired of trying to make my DNN blog work in its current fashion. I am going to convert that blog to Wordpress…Finally.
There is a problem, well 2 (more than 2 but these are the main 2 that matters)
Problem 1: My blog is well indexed
- Like I said, I have been blogging over at Jonzee.com for over a year, and the blog is pretty well indexed by Google. I get a really good percentage from my overall traffic from Google searches. If I convert it to Wordpress, all of those pages that are already indexed will start giving people error pages. Since it is currently a DNN website, every URL ends with ".aspx". I can do some kind of redirect and maybe it will work itself out…Well thats what I hope will happen. But how long will that take? Will it effect my SERPs? Will my traffic drop off? I don’t know, but I’m ready to take that risk.
Problem 2: How do you convert a Dotnetnuke blog to Wordpress?
- This is something Ive been researching on for a while, and it seems like there is no easy way to do it. Right now it looks like I can import the website by using the RSS import feature of Wordpress, or I’m going to have to start from the very first blog post and cut n paste every single post. I think I’m going to do the manual work and start to cut and paste everything. That way I can add categories, keywords, and tags to all the post. I’m thinking in the long run this will work out better.
I think Dotnetnuke is great if you are creating a website that isn’t a blog, but right now I just want normal blog so I’m gonna bite the bullet. If anyone has any suggestions that will make things easier, Id love some tips or advice (email me here)
Other post you may find interesting
- The grass is always greener, a DNN SEO plugin I wish was available to Wordpress users
- Wordpress users, you might want to upgrade your Wordpres install
- Too much of anything can kill you!
- Dont forget to add that important piece of code when changing your blog template.
- The snipping tool in Windows 7 can be pretty useful for bloggers
October 11th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
1. You can use .htaccess mod_rewrite to do a 301 direct from the old pages to the new.
2. If conversion is a problem, why not leave the old site up, and set up a new blog with Wordpress?
3. Or you can re-post 130 odd articles by hand.
4. Or get a freelancer at http://www.scriptlance.com to write a conversion script for a few bucks.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
I thought about leaving the old site up and just start a new blog. I’m still not sure how I’m going to do it yet.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:18 am
So sorry to hear that, must have used wordpress from the beginning!
October 12th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Wordpress is a good platform for your site. At least, it’s the most common platform on net… However, like Donnell say use .htaccess mod_rewrite to do a 301 direct from the old pages to the new.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:33 am
Hey! Try WordPress, its really amazing and you can download plugins on to your system and then see the wonder it creates.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
You will love wordpress. It is so much easier to use. Also, you can redirect your entire site structure, or you can redirect individual pages if your site structure will be different. That way, you can maintain your existing traffic.
November 17th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Interesting you had the same view as I did with the blogs.
http://blogs.ninameiers.com/2007/01/20/Why I Chose DasBlogs Over DotNetNuke Blogs.aspx
I chose dasBlogs because it was another open source project, but also because it ran under the .NET framework allowing me to put it into the same structure as what dnn was working with.
I agree that blogs are a different animal and whether dasBlogs does a good job as WordPress, I’m not going to enter that discussion, as I think it depends on your individual requirements.
Anyway - as I have just recently updated my blogs to .NET2 framework, and installed windows live and working with the windows livewriter API I was testing some more of the features here and found your blog.
Glad to hear you’re in sync again - I agree the DotNetNuke core blogs are tedious and for no other reason other than blogs are different than content management in general - it’s like an entity in itself that I’m still learning about.
I like what you’ve done
Nina Meiers
December 15th, 2007 at 10:00 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
November 5th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Cool! Peshi ischo
April 15th, 2009 at 9:47 am
This is very hot information. I think I’ll share it on Digg.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I’ve also come to the same conclusion - that DNN is okay as a website but lousy as a blog.
I’ve also noticed that development for most of the key modules has dropped off to barely active. Some modules seem to have no development at all for the last few years.
Yes, I know that it’s all volunteer. Yes, I know that people have real jobs. Yes, I know that developing software is tough. No, I do not have the skills to develop my own. Yes, I know that many believe this means that I should not voice my opinion about whether or not DNN Modules meet my needs.
Yes, I have contributed to the DNN fund.
Just saying that it is in danger of losing relevance when development slides into a once every year or two release cycle.
The blog, while having a recent major update, is falling behind.
October 21st, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Interesting article as for me. It would be great to read a bit more concerning this theme.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Recently, there has been a good deal of investigation by the
American FTC against blogs and website promoters
for not publishing advertising profits, or potential
relationships with ad networks.
What are your ideas concerning how this could effect
the blogging world?