Wordpress, domain, and movable type question

Hi

I'm kind of out of my depth here due to my lack of tech savvy, but I need some help. Desperately...

Over the weekend my Movable Type blog was spammed big style and is now not working. It's still viewable on the web, but I can't rebuild it, delete comments, or more importantly post anymore. I'm in the process of trying to fix it, but sadly with zero success.

So as a last resort (and seeing as Dreamhost has added the 1 click install!) I'm thinking of transfering my blog to wordpress.

So after that long winded preamble, here (at last) is my question. I currently have one domain (tokyotimes.org) with dreamhost which contains my Movable Type blog. Now if I install Wordpress in tokyotimes.org/wordpress will this delete the Movable Type stuff? You see I want to keep it viewable until I get the new wordpress one up and running to replace it.

If I can't install wordpress this way, does anybody have any suggestions? I really want to get things moving quickly, as after building up a decent number of regular readers, I don't want to lose them.

Thanks for your time, and I hope this makes at least some sense and my question aren't too stupid!

As with MT, there is an install directory and a blog directory, which is where your blog is rooted. If desired, these directories can be the same, but I prefer to keep them separate.

By the way, did you used to build your MT blog into tokyotimes.org/mt/ before? When I go to that directory, I see your blog, but only up through September 2004.

So, you can definitely install WordPress into tokyotimes.org/wordpress/ without an issue. You should even be able to use the tokyotimes directory as your WP blog directory.

MT creates an index.html file in its blog directory. WP creates an index.php file in its blog directory. The Apache web server is normally considered to search for a default main page in a specific order. Usually, it will default to index.html before index.php.

So, you could point your new WP blog at your root directory, and test it out by directly accessing http://tokyotimes.org/index.php. When you are ready to switch over, you could rename index.html to something else, like mt.html.

Which brings me to another issue. I'm assuming you will want to migrate the content over from your MT blog to your WP blog. I blogged some notes on how I did the migration.

http://www.wombatnation.com/2004/05/switch-to-wordpress

Robert
http://www.wombatnation.com/

I would think the easiest way would be to

a - back up all your MT data (this is VERY easy using phpMyAdmin)

b - do the WordPress install on a NEW MySQL database (new host, new user) (if you try using the existing database, the install could choke -- in fact, because of a stumble I made the other day, DH is creating a failsafe preventing you from automatically installing over an existing database)

c - import your old MT data into WordPress (there seems to be a script out there to handle that for you. See the SP site.)

d - enact some spam protection (there's another thread here about that, but more than blacklist, you can use things like captcha boxes and requiring users to register to post comments -- it seems the WP site list has become a spammer target)

Sorry if this is too basic. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your replies.

I went ahead and uploaded wordpress into tokyotimes.org/wordpress and everything went ok. Thanks Robert!

Shortly I'm going to import my MT posts. When that's done and I'm happy everything is ok, I want to switch over permanantly to wordpress and get rid of my MT blog.

Now this is probably a dumb question (so please don't laugh at me!) but how do I make tokyotimes.org my wordpress blog (instead of tokyotimes.org/wordpress), and at the same time get get rid of all my MT stuff?

Thanks!

One way you might want to go is to first make a subdomain -- like wordpress.yourdomain.com -- under your add domain tab. (You get a bunch of subdomains with your account, so there's no extra cost.)

Then, once that's up, install your wordpress there.

Then set yourdomain.com to mirror wordpress.yourdomain.com

Your site will look like yourdomain.com, but technically it will be running under your subdomain.

You also could run a redirect page on your domain root, pointing everyone to your subdirectory, but maybe that's not as elegant.

Hope this helps!

Thanks mediagirl

I have already set up wordpress in tokyotimes.org/wordpress and my original MT blog is still at tokyotimes.org

Will I have to delete the MT blog before I do any redireting?

A redirect would replace your index file, but the rest of your old site could remain until you're able to back it up. In fact, even if you were to set the domain to mirror, your server directory would remain accessible via ftp or shell.

To create a redirect, put this in the head of your index page:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/index.html">

Change the 0 to another integer to delay the redirect (in seconds).

Since WP is so easy to install, I thought the other way could work more smoothly as nobody would be the wiser that your wordpress is not on the root. They would simply see your root domain.

I believe there's also a way of doing that via Apache. See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_alias.html

Anyway, good luck!

Seeing as I've done an install once, and like you say it's easy, I may go ahead and try your original idea. Sounds like the best plan.

Thank you very much!!

My problem seems similar, though I'm going from Blogger to WP. Everything on that end turned out apparently fine, and I got WP up and running under the /wordpress directory, but when I tried to switch my index.php file to the root directory (so that I wouldn't need the "/wordpress" attachment at the end of my domain, naturally), everything has gone haywire. I went through the WP tutorial for switching the index file to another directory, but now NOTHING comes up, and when I try to get into my admin file to double check settings in there, I get a long error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_settings() in /home/.caicos/tgaver/haveyoumettony.com/wordpress/wp-admin/auth.php on line 44

(I read before about losing that "dataglob" (?), and was going to ask about how that affects the rest of what I've loaded later, but seeing how I can't even get to my wp-admin panel, that can wait. *laugh*)

Any suggestions for what I can do to A) get back in my admin panel, and B) get my index.php to show up when my domain is entered? Right now http://www.haveyoumettony.com brings back a whole lot of white.

Thanks in advance!!!

have you met tony?

Tony, I'm having no trouble viewing that page at all. Try clearing your browser cache and all WordPress-related cookies.

Yeah, I think the problems were all coming from my wp-config.php script. Once I replaced the one I tweaked with the original, everything popped right up. Thanks for checking, though!

(For more information on why you should backup all your files, consult your local library! *laugh*)

have you met tony?

And for more information on how to backup your WordPress database, see: http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/backup/ ^_^