Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

robinna · 2008-01-01 15:28:37

Hi there,
I hope this is the right topic area. I’m seeking a cms but with a very strong blog component and either a photo gallery (with categories + ability to crosslist in categories) or support for gallery (maybe).

A LITTLE BACKGROUND:
I’ve been using Expression Engine for years (before that MT before that Greymatter), but now I’m considering migrating to something else. I use wordpress at work (we’re actually migrating to wordpressMU so that we can easily admin multiple instances of wordpress blogs), so I have an idea of how that works (and how it might work). I want something more robust than just a blog. I mostly like ee (although I couldn’t get coppermine to import into the ee gallery, so I never used that part), but the licensing seems to get more restrictive in every upgrade, and dang, I am tired of paying upgrade fees.

I know wordpress can do what I want with some tweaking, but I’ve been reading about textpattern and it seems like it might fit my needs better. The template structure seems very similar to ee, which I love. I’m also not ready for Drupal (I’ve been testing it, and beating it into a template which is remotely artistic in look is not easy; I want more control over my templates!).

I would really like to create a more integrated overall site. Unfortunately, it’s been slowly falling apart for years. ;-)

SEEKING:
To pull the 3 major components of my whole website into a more cohesive management system:
1)the ee blog (less than 1000 entries spanning 7 years); 2)the coppermine image gallery (less than 2000 entries); and 3) 5 or so static pages (more or less; handbuilt w/some php to pull in scripts & rss)

Anything else is old, old, and needs to go to the trash bin.

Oh, and my site for anyone who wants to see it is (ignore the ugliness please) at robinart.com

Thoughts? Suggestion? Help?
thanks,
robin

Last edited by robinna (2008-01-01 15:35:18)

jstubbs · 2008-01-01 17:31:01

robinna wrote:

To pull the 3 major components of my whole website into a more cohesive management system:
1)the ee blog (less than 1000 entries spanning 7 years); 2)the coppermine image gallery (less than 2000 entries); and 3) 5 or so static pages (more or less; handbuilt w/some php to pull in scripts & rss)

1. No problem, TXP can handles hundreds of articles and is very light and quick
2. The Coppermine gallery would have to be standalone, but this is not a problem, as you can just link to it from TXP, and use the same template design if necessary
3. Static pages – no problem. In TXP, this can be achieved in many different ways. One easy way is to create a section and only assign one article to that section.

Hope this helps.

colak · 2008-01-01 17:53:05

The problem of course is how does robin pull the blog posts from the existing site. To my knowledge there’s yet an import script for ee.

Regarding the coppermine image gallery I would try to slowly migrate the images to txp and use one of the gallery plugins

hcgtv · 2008-01-01 18:27:57

Hi Robin,

What can EE export out to?
Edit: (http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Export_Entries/)

Also, what do you mean by the EE license gets more restrictive?

Last edited by hcgtv (2008-01-01 18:37:34)

robinna · 2008-01-01 20:45:10

All~
ee can export files (well sort of). It’s not exactly the easiest process but I now do have a rather file of my entries + comments. The instructions on the ee forum are not quite right (or perhaps, they assume that you will know to edit for your specific installation… anyhow… ) So, I’m not so worried about getting entries out of ee, it’s getting those entries into a new product. I will be posting a screencapture video of the whole process to youtube, if I can get the import part to work. ;-)

As for textpattern + coppermine, I’m really interested in getting away from coppermine. Gallery looks promising, but I’ve had a look at the wide screen image gallery for textpattern, and that looks pretty cool! I’m also using flickr these days, so I don’t know that I need something like a full scale photo gallery anyhow. ;-)

I hate to talk to smack, but coppermine is not a nice community to be part of. There is help in the forums, but it’s always at the risk of getting taken on the carpet. Anyhow. ‘nuff said. If I’m doing a site redesign, I want out of that. ;-)

As for licensing of ee… well. I’ll be honest (and this is just my opinion/experience). Part of it is that I was part of the ee user group when ee was getting off of the ground. I was given a free copy by the ee folks in exchange for leaving Movable Type (the offer may have included any blog software except blogger, but I was using MT so that’s all I really remember…) I don’t clearly remember all of the details and parameters as it seemed like a great thing at the time; however, if I had known or been made aware of the fact that ee would split into 4 different versions, with different functionality (and relatively restrictive) licensing, I would have not been so keen to jump ship. I also don’t feel that there was much of a desire to grandfather any of the “giveaway” version people in, either. ;(

The free (core) version (made available sometime after I already migrated to the personal license), is lacking the photo gallery, tech support (!) and also I believe, some of the spam stuff. Considering every time I upgrade ee something breaks, I really need the tech support. I know enough php to fix things, but I need help wading through code that complex.

The personal license (now 99$ onetime + 20$ yearly upgrades) , is NOW very restrictive in terms of what constitutes commercial. In the one of the more recent upgrades, I read the commercial license (out of curiosity) which now encompasses INDIRECT commercial activity on a WEBSITE.

I’m assuming (yeah, I know) that it only applies to the whole website if ee is being used as a complete CMS; not just as a blog. Also, since I have sold on websites outside of my domain (etsy, ebay, other art sites), I have always thought I was in compliance.

Still, INDIRECT, well, that COULD cover just about anything.. endorsements, links to products, links to websites which are commercial (if I link to the wall street journal, is that a violation? Surely, they are in the business to make money!), reviews (I occasionally do book reviews & link to amazon), etc. I’ve never had any complaints from the ee folks about being in compliance and I’ve posted my blog several times for tech support, but still…

I’m tired of worrying about whether I am in compliance and I don’t feel like wasting anymore money on upgrades. For me, it came down to licensing, cost (249$ onetime + 50$, a year for upgrades for the “freedom” of a commercial version, if I wanted to go in that direction), and my overall experience using ee.

Anyhow, this is just all based on my opinion and experience. There are happy ee customers; I’ve certainly seen them on the forums. The tech support is mostly good. Templating is nice and some of the addon products (wiki & forum sold separately) are nice, too. Unfortunately, I just don’t think ee is a fit at all for musicians, artists, writers (for profit), or other small businesses who are getting started. It seems kind of silly that a big co. and a little co. or individual artists would pay the same fee.

So, that is how I ended up here. ;-)

Last edited by robinna (2008-01-03 05:03:30)

robinna · 2008-01-01 21:32:45

Oh, as for what file format the export file is in. I am just not sure. It saved it as a index.php file but I can’t figure out what the file format should be. XML makes sense, but I’m a little clueless in that respect.

jstubbs · 2008-01-01 21:42:50

Robinna, welcome to TXP. Over here, people are genuinely helpful, and it appears there is less going on that over on EE, but I am not sure that’s the case. I personally find TXP much more flexible than EE, and responses to questions are more readily answered. That’s just my opinion.

For your questions:

Flickr is a good option for TXP, as there is a very good plugin for it, called vdh_flickr

I am currently putting together a site running vdh_flickr, and can help quite a bit. The previous version of the site used PhotoPost, and so we know what its like using heavy software like Coppermine that needs upgrading all the time. Put Gallery in that category too. Heavy.

There is also pixelpost for photo blogs, Photostack which is also easy to integrate with TXP, then another one I like (but have not used) is JuxtaPhoto

I can’t help you with exporting from EE to TXP, but I am sure someone else can.

Welcome to TXP!

jstubbs · 2008-01-01 21:45:30

Re exporting – can you check if EE supports export to something like WordPress? If so, TXP has import features from the following:

MT
MT (MySQL)
Blogger
B2
WordPress

Edit: Export your EE to WP, then import from WP to TXP

Last edited by jstubbs (2008-01-01 21:46:28)

robinna · 2008-01-01 22:12:50

Thanks jonathan regarding the flickr info! I’m still working on importing works to flickr (so many images, so little time); however, I will definitely continue to use flickr. In the meantime, if I can dump my nonimported images into gallery that would be great.

Unfortunately ee offers no real support for exporting which is one reason I’ve stayed as long as I have. The only import option is from pmachine (one of their former products), movable type, and then straight xml file (which I suppose could be used for anything). So, not real helpful to even get posts into ee, let alone get them out. I’ve built the export template using instructions from the ee forum, and I now have all of my posts in a rather large file (currently named index.php, but it will need to be renamed). However, there is NO built-in export to any other software. I suppose it makes sense, given that this is a money making venture for them (but not very friendly).

If I can get my file imported into wordpress, then I know I can get it imported into textpattern. ;-)

thanks again for all of the help & suggestions,
robin

Last edited by robinna (2008-01-01 22:15:20)

maverick · 2008-01-01 22:25:26

The EE link above that hcgtv provided says that the templates export to MT Export format.

There is a discussion thread underway regarding Txp import capabilities, what is needed, what needs updating, etc. Perhaps it might be helpful?

Mike

robinna · 2008-01-01 22:39:52

ah, I missed the part about exporting to MT export format (whatever that means). So, if I choose MT as the import format, I should (fingers crossed), be ok?

I’ll post what happens. I’ve got textpattern installed (wow, that was easy!) and I have my entries exported from ee. So. next step is to try the import. ;-)

jstubbs · 2008-01-01 22:53:23

What are you exporting to? WP? If so, importing later into TXP should be a breeze…. but having not tried it personally, I can’t say for sure.

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#1 2008-01-01 15:28:37

Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#2 2008-01-01 17:31:01

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#3 2008-01-01 17:53:05

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#4 2008-01-01 18:27:57

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#5 2008-01-01 20:45:10

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#6 2008-01-01 21:32:45

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#7 2008-01-01 21:42:50

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#8 2008-01-01 21:45:30

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#9 2008-01-01 22:12:50

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#10 2008-01-01 22:25:26

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#11 2008-01-01 22:39:52

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

#12 2008-01-01 22:53:23

Re: Migrate from EE to Textpattern? Advice? Help?

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