From LifeType to WordPress

It’s not easy … there’s a lot of works to do the move and I really like LifeType a lot. Anyway, I suppose it’s time to move on after the crash. So here is a what I did to make the move (without any use of migration scripts).

• Install the Zoundry zBlogWriter, set up the blog and xmlrpc.php configuration to connect to the old blog. Download all the old blog posts to your PC.
• Install the WordPress in a new directory in your server. For example, http://www.xxx.com/wordpress/
• Within the new WordPress installation – create the same set of categories, set up the same Permalink format you had from the old blog engine. And if you prefer, find and install a good-looking theme.
• This step is very tedious … be patience. From within the zBlogWriter, set up the new blog configuration. And now edit the blog posts from the old blog, and republish the post to the new WordPress blog one by one. Make sure you select the same categories and use the “reset” function to set the same old blog time.

• One of the LifeType features is you store all your photos in its “Resource”. So the next step is to create a new directory in your server (I name it “blogphotos”) and move/copy all the photos from the “Resource” (in Lifetype, those files are stored in a directory /blog/gallery/) to the new directory.
• The above steps will not migrate the comments (!). So the next step is to find the right post in the new engine and then recreate the comments one by one (by referencing to the old engine). But since the comment time are wrong, so go to the WordPress admin, edit the comments and enter the correct time (again, by referencing to the old engine).
• After all these steps, you will have two working blogs – your old http://www.xxx.com/blog/ (the LifeType) and the new http://www.xxx.com/wordpress/ (the WordPress one). Now rename the old blog directory to something like /blog_lifetype/ and your new blog to /blog/.
• You now have the new blog working … but the second last step is find out all the posts that with missing pictures – since your new blog don’t have a LifeType’s resource directory. Now re-edit all these posts, and point the photos to the new directory you created before – i.e. the /blogphotos/ (smart, isn’t it?)
• And what’s the last step ? That is … publish this post !!

Hope it helps.

Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies. View all posts by Michael Yung