About
MvManila (Move Manila) is a set of scripts to convert a Manila blog to WordPress (and TextPattern, maybe Movable Type) using the XML-RPC interface of the Manlia blog. The scripts download the Manila blog’s text posts and pictures to the machine running the scripts and after further processing you copy the resulting file to your Wordpress installation, upload all the pictures and import the text into the new blog. Unlike the simple “importers”, I convert URL’s so that your pictures and links to previous and future posts show up properly. I convert comments, of course.
Some things can’t be converted however. Blogrolls, links to Manila’s internal handlers (mail to’s) and user written macros or plugins, Converting Categories/Departments is hit or miss — mostly its OK. I don’t fix up or convert CSS. If you’re using Manila as a CMS instead of a simple blogging engine, this won’t get you there – but it could help.
MvManila has a simple “not for commercial use” License. Use it for moving your blog, Fix it if you need to, If you want something else contact me after reading the LICENSE.txt file
Requirements: OS X or Linux shell scripts in Ruby and Tcl. You probably have them if you installed the developer tools. They aren’t cutting edge scripts. All I ask is you let me know if you use them, what problems you had. If you ask, I’ll help you run the scripts
For a modest fee, I’ll do the work. Contact me at ccoupe@mvmanila.com or at ccoupe@cableone.net. It really is modest and usually a flat rate quote, but some sites aren’t so simple and I can’t quote a price here. If I have to install mysql, php, and WordPress, it won’t be so modest.
The online documentation tab above and in the downloaded tar balls explains what you have to do. You really want to read the documentation to see what the scripts do and the kind of issues you might find or worry about.
My Profile
I’ll try to keep this short and I’ll fail. I’m Cecil Coupe. I’ve been blogging for a lot of years. I convert blog history for fun and one day some profit. Mostly for fun.
I’ve got a lot computing history. Back to 1969. I know more assembler languages and bare metal coding than I can forget. I managed tech support for a big agribusiness, back when employees could take a path different from my option and I didn’t shoot them. Sometimes they were right.
I started blogging with Manila and when EditThisPage.com went “for pay” I moved all my posts to Movable Type (MT), self hosted on my Linux box. I wrote some primitive Python scripts to grab the posts from Manila and make them Movable Type import format text files. It was good enough for me.
When I got tired of rebuilding the MT site for every edit to a post I switched to the new kid, Wordpress (1.2rc1). When ETP pulled the plug on paying subscribers I used my scripts to help a few bloggers move to something that understood MT import format. Of course, the scripts grew to deal with things I’d never used in Manila but other bloggers care about.
The scripts sort of resembled a process and system but still a collection of hacks. I put some documentation together (your README.txt level for scripters) and wrote on my blog that I’d do the Manila to Wordpress conversion for a modest fee and I put the scripts on the web for others to use, if you want to do it themselves. I got a client or two and the scripts kept evolving to deal with the wild things a Manila blog or server can do. That’s the 2.X version of the scripts.
More clients and the scripts got even more hacky. Been there and it’s the wrong place to be. Time to rethink. Make a real system that can grow. MvManila 3.0 is not published yet and may never be published. It’s my bag of tools and it works pretty well at converting a lot of blog things that may not involve Manila. Wordpress to Wordpress for example. Changing permalink structures (within reason). It’s even possible (but not well tested) to edit a blog in place with the tools. I’ve even used it to generate some MySQL commands to fix a blog with an unfortunate 2.7 conversion oversight.