Community Server (RSS)

all about CS.

An exhaustive list of Community Server resources

Everything you wanted to know about CS skins, addons and controls. An exhaustive list of Community Server resources  [from (e)Mail Insecurity].

Pushing my old stuff to Community Server!

Phew! This was though but I did it. Finally, I finished migrating all my stuff from my old .Text installation to Community Server.  And it was not easy. At all. I must say that this is what CS lacks a most. A good tool to do migrate all your old stuff to the new blog.

 

My first idea was to do a mirror installation of CS on my desktop machine, so I can do fiddle with the database and not risking to screw my life installation (which is actually a pretty good idea if you would like to do anything other than posting). Then I decided that I will do use only the two databases and try something simple to pump the old data to the CS database. I must admit that I am pretty lazy and I did not pay too much attention to understand the db structure of CS. First I wanted to use CSverter but I could not download it (link must be broken). Then I decided to use Dan Bartel's sql script, but I was not able to make it work and I was a bit worried about screwing up the integrity of the db.

After all this I decided that I will write a simple command line tool and will use MetaWeblog API to send the data to CS. Sure, it broke the comments and categories, but I fixed the categories manually and the comments were few so I did not bother to migrate them.

 

First, I thought that doing some parts manually would be a hassle and major pain, but it was not. Reorganizing my past posts was good and relaxing activity and it also gave me the chance to think about why I am doing this blog and what I want with it. I think I am doing this only for recording the stuff I have seen and some of the code I want to remember later. Do not want to do big statements or evangelizing myself, only an easy to search repository of the stuff I was interested let's say 2 years ago.

 

Now, I need to do something how the site looks. So, this is the next step I guess. And to upload some photos, only if CS would have a mass posting capability.

Steps to migrate my blog from .Text to CommunityServer v1

  • Install CommunityServer v1 on my server account.

    This step is completed with the help of the Installer app. I am not sure how I would complete the install without it. I was trying hard to all the betas without any luck because all of those stupid db url things. That was a major pain in the previous version as well. But npw I cannot really complain.

 

  • Switching it to single blog configuration.

    For converting communitiserver into a single blog site, I was using the following article:

    How To: Single Blog/Gallery Site Configuration

    The whole process is quite simple itself but be sure to backup the file you are about to modify, because i just had to restart it after overwriting my web.config.

 

  • Migrating the content into CommunitServer.

    This can be tricky and needs quite some time to dig into the CS db internals and figure out what goes where from .TEXT.
    I am aware of two tools to migrate your content from .TEXT to CommunitServer at the moment. All suggestions are welcome:

    1. CSverter 1.0 is some kind of DTS package creating application. I have not tried this one yet. Discussion. Download. Wiki.
    2. The other is an sql script written by Dan Bartel. His skin is awesome by the way.

    My Migration to Community Server Blogs from .Text

 

  • Customize the look and feel for the site.
    This step would involve to make my on kin/design or acquire one somehow. I do not like that the first page and the blog skin is not consistent.

         

   

Life is good with CS

I am starting to get use to it and starting to even like it. The hard thing left is to get back the old content and keep the posts I already have and not to screw the server up until I am finished... fingers crossed ;-)

CommunityServer singleblog config

After scraping the previous install of CS (my previous attempt to configure cs to singlesite just did not went really well) ust managed to getthis blog to single site. It was always a nightmare to setup .Text for me, I managed to do it once in my life, 3 years ago and then I would not ever touch it for anyone's sake...the site just went black last sunday and that was the final push for me to switch to CS. The next step is I think to get back my old content back and then create my own custome skin. Some more comments about CS coming later ... and also some stuff about my new phone, yes, the JAM!