I’ve been using Drupal for my blog for just over a year now, and it’s been a really great platform to work in. I use it pretty much all day for projects at the U of C as well. But it just feels a bit lacking in the area of managing a personal blog, compared with WordPress which is built solely for that purpose.
I’ve been missing things like email subscriptions to comments, and some of the other niceties that WordPress has had nailed for a long time, but are missing in Drupal.
So, if you can read this, it worked. But things are going to be messy for awhile while I finish tweaking stuff. If anyone knows the quick easy SQL to run to recount all comments for posts, to properly set the value of wp_posts.comment_count I’d appreciate it. All comments are properly in place, but they don’t show up in the comment count indicator until/unless someone posts a new comment on the blog entry.
In the meantime, all static pages (including About, Contact, Links, etc…) are borked. I’ll fix them up as I have time.
Update: Lovely. Looks like new comments are being rejected here. wtf. worked fine in staging before moving here… A blog without comments. Good thing I left Drupal…
Update 2: Things are pretty much up and running. I’ve added a bunch of modules, and will start playing when I have/make time. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I miss some of the power of Drupal, but am liking the simplicity of WordPress.
Welcome home, D’Arcy. We’ve missed you dearly;)
yeah, yeah… fanboy.
Welcome back 😉 If it is any consolation, your drupal site also used to bork on my some of my comments, or maybe you had the “no sarcastic comment” akismet module running back then.
actually, it was just the el guapo filter… looks like i need to tighten that back up… 😉
woohoo! back! dude, if you don’t know all the SQL, i don’t know who could.
I’m glad you tried it before me, now I know who to ask for help 🙂 I want to convert my camera blog over because the spam is just dragging it down. Did you convert to wp using sql queries or some off the shelf import routine?
@davidicus: google knows 🙂 eventually found the solution.
@chris: I used a sql script. Easy peasy. I modified one that I found, built for 4.7 –> 2.0 and fixed it to work a little better with 5.1 –> 2.1 It’s not perfect, but it works. I can send you a copy if you like. Use it on a backup copy, of course 🙂
Well- my trackback didn’t publish- but, since you commented on it- you know I wrote it.
I missed the subscribe to comments function badly- so I’m glad you switched back.
Note- K2 hasn’t been the most 2.1 WordPress aware- I’m still using it for my personal site- but, I’m looking at alternatives. They seem to have dropped the ball on updates.
Thanks for the heads up, David. I’m going to be hunting for a new theme, as well. Preferably one that lets me reuse the existing header images…
I would welcome you back, but you never left … oh, and with the Canadian EduBlogger takeover of Twitter it is all D’Arcy, all the time! I do have to admit the new space just “feels” better to visit in real time. Nice look as well! Now, do I do what I usually do and just copy you? Hmm, will have to ponder that one a bit.
thanks, Cole. I agree – the new setup does feel better. might not BE better from a technical standpoint (Drupal wins that, hands down) but in the end, that doesn’t really matter very much…
WordPress: It’s a dessert and a floor wax.
Following you on drupal as a blog platform was something I wisely opted out of 😉
When my blogline subscription gave me the red exclamation mark on D’Arcy’s blog, I knew the Matrix has been reloaded… Because it’s impossible for D’Arcy to go offline. 🙂
Hey, D’Arcy, just so you know, there are still quite a few numbers of people are using your old RSS feed addresses on their blogline subscriptions, of course they all get the red exclamation. I suggest you make a few more “alternate link”s in the header section. Here are the links people have problems:
/feed/rss2/ (109 subscribers)
/feed/atom/ (33 subscribers)
Cheers…
@alan: you should avoid following most of the things I do. your twitter addiction could have been avoided…
@tim: thank for the heads-up! I know that the permalinks for posts are also subtly different and I doubt I’ll get them all right, but the feed URLs should be right now. I’ve added Redirect directives to point the old feed URLs to the new one, so hopefully things start working right again.
Always knew you’d come back to the bosom baby.
Let mamma give you a cuddle.
yeah… dude… you’re really freaking me out now… 😉
All right, you’ve had over 10 hours already -what do I need to know about WordPress? Come on, out with it!
Like the theme (although if you use “Play Misty for Me” the circle is complete) and I love the Star Castle game -missed that one on the first go round.
@jim: I’m still getting my head back around WordPress. I’m going to be picking your brain over the next few days (like, how to get Brian’s Latest Comments working in the sidebar, etc…)
If your using sidebar widgets, which once I port to a different theme I am going to exclusively, I recommend this for Brian’s Sidebar Widget: http://www.4null4.de/142/sidebar-widget-brians-latest-comments/
Also, check out the following:
Kingsrss sidebar widget (using SimplePie) it is totally bad ass, as is WP-o_matc (both here http://simplepie.org/downloads/)
Viper Video Plugin for youtube, google, and a host of other video tags on the fly: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/
Check out WordTube (nice sidebar widget for videos included): http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/?page_id=20
Exec-php to play with simplepie php code in posts: http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/
BDP RSS to aggregate many rss feeds together by recent posts, author, etc- http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/?p=87
Optimal (for all your OPML needs) http://www.yabfog.com/wp/optimal/ (though it looks like you have somethat does this running already)
WP-NAVT (WOrdPress Navigation tool -intense plugin for dealing with navigation on pages -love to see what you could do with this, borked on me twice) http://www.gbellucci.us/?cat=20
I like Alex King’s articles plugin, and will be thinking about integrating it more fully on an overhaul: http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress
Nice code markup plugin: http://www.thunderguy.com/semicolon/wordpress/code-markup-wordpress-plugin/
Ok, that’s it for now, but I am counting on you for 10 more soon!
Also, they are called plugins, not modules, and simplicity does not preclude power. Ok, I’ll stop now, I promise.
Jim has clearly drank deep draughts of the WordPress flavored Kool Aid.
WP Widgets are evil! Spawned directly from the devil’s butt… other than that, WP still rocks 🙂
Though when I need more than a superblog I’m still using Drupal… which means I have about 30 WP installs and two drupal. Which also means I am constantly relearning all my basic drupal knowledge… sigh.
@Jim – in fact, WP’s relative simplicity *is* a lot of WPs power… and one’s knowledge of how to implement it, which makes more and more tasks look like tasty nails for the WP Hammer.
In fact, I nominate “WP Hammer” as your Geek DJ name 🙂
with great simplicity comes great responsibility. or something. I’m still using Drupal on dozens of websites that would be impossible or clumsy to do in WordPress. It ain’t a magic bullet (sorry, Jim) but it sure is a nice blogging app.
I was looking at widgets because they let me customize stuff without having to mess around with the template files directly – I remember having to sync my hardcoded modifications into every release of Kubrick and K2 back in the day. shudder… So, should I go back to hardcoded stuff?
@D’Arcy -stop with Drupal already, the revolution has come and gone.
@Chris- “The WordPress Hammer” -I like it.
jim, keep it up and I’ll switch to Joomla just to piss you off… 😉
testing akismet. again. frakking SK2 barfed silently and irreparably…
Nah.. the widgets are fine if they do what you want… I just couldn’t get them to behave properly, constantly borking my layout and having to hand-tweak them anyway. But the feeling is probably exacerbated from mentoring a class full of newbies through the process this last semester 🙂 I also don’t upgrade my theme very often at all… when I do it’s generally a wholesale change, so integration of hand-code isn’t such a problem!
Have you checked out honeypot.org as a potential help with spammers? Between akismet and honeypot (soon to be built into bad behavior plugin as well), spam noise has gone way down…
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Hey Darcy,
too bad to hear that…I rhope it was me being so slow adapting the comment notify plugin to dp5 – moving office, finishing thesis and lots of other stuff kept me away from even responding to your great inputs… really sorry for that..
when you decide to go back to DP, just let me know!
best,christoph
Heya, Christoph! No, it wasn’t you 🙂 I needed a change, and WordPress really is better suited to straight blogging. Which is all I wound up doing on my souped-up Drupal blog anyway.
I’m still using Drupal on every project at work, so I’m not going anywhere. And I’m sure appreciating Drupal’s strengths, now that I’m also faced with how WordPress does things. No Menus. No Blocks (widgets are a joke/hack). No content types. No views. etc… But it’s good for blogging.
Can’t say I blame ya…