News @ Gameslate

Well not much to say about it here, since I already said it there. I'm making minor adjustments and naming MMOROG back to NecroRogIcon, the name that really suited my blog best.

There.

*brushes dust from his hands*

I've finished porting over MMOROG to Drupal.

It was a bit more work than expected, this wasn't a simple and quick data transfer between blog software, but the reward to effort ratio is pretty high and I'm very pleased with the directions I can move MMOROG in now.

That site has had a long history, I consider it my morphing home on the web since '94. Oh initially of course it was just a homepage in the ancient sense, but I updated my commentary on it so often that my friend Xandria finally convinced me to move to a blog format (we called it journaling back then, lol not so long ago) in '99. It migrated from a funky and ill-conceived cache-driven archive to Movable Type and then Wordpress and now I'm looking forward to its healthy future with Drupal.

Basic site timeline:
Blog / Site Transitions: Rog's page » Rog-Cam » NecroRogIcon » MMOROG
Software: Static pages » Custom PHP » Movable Type » Wordpress » Drupal

I've cleaned up the CSS and markup of the page considerably, opting for full XHTML strict instead of the old HTML 4 Transitional. The CSS validates. The XHTML layout validates, but the content is bound to break validation unless I go through and individually clean up every article (the old Movable Type ones are particularly munged). There's also a line from the webstats software I use (Visitors, configured to document screen resolution) that is really disliked by the validators, but that's a necessary evil because it's specifically tracking the errors for its data.

I'll happily be adding new stuff to MMOROG soon.

Okay time to work on the next site. =)

So far most of my efforts here have been either learning, or tweaking / fiddling with stuff. All of the little things add up for sure, I've been at this awhile already. Here's the first big task though: migrating the data from my old blog on Wordpress to Drupal.

If I were transferring between most any other blog software, it would be easy. Wordpress, MovableType, b2evolution, TextPattern, etc. all convert well between each other, most of them include a healthy dose of import/export tools or the solutions are readily available via plugins.

But ugh, Drupal's modular nature comes at a price: it doesn't play nicely with the others. The few Wordpress->Drupal conversion programs that I found were outdated or assumed a very basic setup on both ends. Granted, my Wordpress install is customized a fair bit, so I can't blame it all on Drupal. Regardless, I'm coming to the realization that a personal solution is all that's going to cut it.

Thankfully, I enjoy mucking about in SQL. Multiple join queries are my element.

This little blog experienced some hiccups today. I reordered a few things on the backend after that paradigm shift in my Drupal setup.

That's the downside of putting content on a work-in-progress site, free-flowing-as-I-go experiment or not. "Under construction" signs on the 'net are passé for exactly this reason.

If you're reading this through a feed, pop by the website and update to the new feed link, because I've moved it. I've thrown in a rewrite rule that should keep the older feed working for a bit, but I'll drop that once the rest of the site goes "live". Google and whatnot should understand that a 301 redirect means "check that new place next time" but I'm not sure if feed readers are as smart.

Yep, I'm breaking so many rules of the good development process here by running this "live" blog on a development server, but that was part of the idea of documenting it right where you can see it transform.

I've come to realize, that in the process of learning Drupal, I'm likely to take two steps forward, then one step back. Hence, this blog isn't the world's most stable thing, because it's running on that install.

For the sake of stability it would probably be wiser to put this blog on a separate install while I develop, you know-- with the old testbed / sandbox server versus "live" / production. But it's a grand experiment in progress isn't it? While I talk about the transformations behind the scenes, this blog will actually transform!

Okay it might not be as exciting as all that, but it's entertaining me in some small way at least.

Getting back to the point, Drupal has both a simplicity and complexity paradox which I'm sure I'll be explaining in more detail as things go. The choices involved do require trying out a few things and not everything sticks. It's like throwing mud at a fence to make... okay that analogy sucks. Stay tuned and I'll come up with a better descriptor soon.

I've enabled comments on this blog, allowing them as semi-anonymous for now, the CAPTCHA I've inserted should hopefully limit the spam. That's temporary until Gameslate user registrations are ready at which point logging in will be required before commenting.

Now, if anyone is reading, they can let me know what they think.

Enjoy. =)

As I just mentioned on MMOROG, my focus during this redesign of multiple sites dictates that I retire my Wordpress installs.

For MMOROG in particular, that means hefting over 8 years of posts, comments, categories and more recently: tags. I'm not sure how much of an undertaking that will be yet, it depends how complex the Drupal database schema turns out to be. I've already figured out that some basic Wordpress -> Drupal converter isn't going to cut it with my customized installs.

There's still a temptation to keep Wordpress running, to just bridge the content some way, but I'm determined to integrate across the board with the new system. Besides, I've barely kept the comment spam flood at bay for years with Wordpress and I've never been happy with exposing the WP login to my comment users, although I will with Drupal.

My attack plan to avoid spam is fairly simple: Registrations will be required and a CAPTCHA during the registration process. Email validation is included too, though I'm tempted to disable it, because I'm going for the holy grail of simplicity & anti-spam. On the other hand, email is required for anyone that needs password-retrieval, so I'm going back and forth over that one.

Speaking of comments, you may have noticed the absence of them on this blog. Until I'm comfortable with publishing the core Gameslate site, there won't be registrations and therefore no comments until then either.