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brin_bellway(previously on)
[cut for length]
Over the past couple of days I've made a local WordPress server with a copy of my WordPress-ified Tumblr--images and all--on it.
While it required *some* tinkering, overall it was more straightforward than I expected, though with a lot of time spent waiting for things to download and/or process.
1. Downloaded a Lubuntu 18.04 installation .iso. (Latest long-term-service version of the most lightweight operating system I have experience working with.)
2. Made a Lubuntu virtual machine. (Partly for portability and partly to contain the damage if I fucked something up *super* badly.)
3. Downloaded XAMPP (after seeing it mentioned here), followed the Linux instructions.
4. Received a missing-prerequisites error. Installed the prerequisites listed, tried again.
5. I considered installing the offered Bitnami module for WordPress, but it sounded suspiciously like I would then be dependant on Bitnami's support to keep things functioning, and literally the entire point of this exercise is to have an option that is dependant on *nobody*.
6. Instead, I followed these WikiHow instructions. Very simple, worked like a charm.
7. Installed VirtualBox Guest Additions in order to grant the VM read access to a single folder on the host machine, so that I could transfer things I'd already downloaded on the host. Got an error message, went and found some instructions to follow.
8. I made a clone of the virtual machine, in order to have a copy of the WordPress server as it was just before the import. I figure that for future backups I'll just do a fresh import into a fresh copy. I don't want to try incrementals after what happened last time, especially since a lot of the updates are going to be edits to existing posts and not just creation of new posts.
(I ended up making changes to and/or restoring from this copy several times, as I found other things I needed to do or have done.)
9. Recent reviews for the official WordPress importer plugin are not great, *especially* if you want it to pull images. Looked around for a better image importer.
10. Decided to try Attachment Importer. Recent reviews say that despite not having been updated in several years, it continues to work fine on the latest version of WordPress.
11. Trying to install it the default way gave some sort of FTP error. Rather than bother trying to fix its connection, I performed the manual installation process, which is as simple as putting the unzipped plugin download into the plugin folder ( /opt/lampp/htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins ).
12. Attachment Importer says to first run the official WordPress importer with image-pulling turned *off*, in order to get the posts. Did this.
13. Repeated this process eleven fucking times, because WordPress.com insisted on giving me my export file in twelve pieces. I get that many hosting services apparently have very small upload limits on these things, but I would have liked the *option* of a single large file (the local server takes export files up to 128MB! there's no need to cut them into pieces of ~5MB each!), and didn't see an option for that. I do not understand the workings of WXR files well enough to try to stitch them together after the fact.
14. Ran Attachment Importer. This, too, needed to be done twelve times, one for each export file.
15. Checked the results, with the VM's Internet access turned off. Many of the images worked, but many did not. I suspect that many of my images are not technically considered "attached" to their posts, and were therefore not picked up.
16. Looked for an image importer focused on externally-hosted images. Found Auto Upload Images.
17. Nothing happened when I activated it. Turns out that by default, Auto Upload Images doesn't apply retroactively. Looked around and found these instructions on how to force retroactive application.
18. My server couldn't handle 999 posts at once, ended up knocking it down to 300. Performed the process in the instructions for all 14 of the resulting pages.
(Note: I suspect that Attachment Importer *is* still necessary even after finding Auto Upload Images, because I also have some audio files.)
19. Checked the results again, with the VM's Internet access again turned off. All of the media seems to be working!
20. The intra-blog links still lead to wordpress.com, though. Noticed that the guide for retroactively applying Auto Upload Images mentions they have another guide for updating intra-blog links.
21. Followed the guide. Intra-blog links are now intra-blog again.
---
Was this worth the amount of time and effort involved? Quite possibly not, as such: bear in mind, this copy only becomes useful to restore from if I want to move to self-hosting *without having a live wordpress.com copy available to work with*. But I got a bit more experience in fiddling with software guts, and there's something to be said for peace of mind.
I'm thinking I won't update very often, though: maybe quarterly until I've caught up with formatting and annually thereafter. After all, I could fill in the gaps with tumblr-utils if I had to.
[cut for length]
Over the past couple of days I've made a local WordPress server with a copy of my WordPress-ified Tumblr--images and all--on it.
While it required *some* tinkering, overall it was more straightforward than I expected, though with a lot of time spent waiting for things to download and/or process.
1. Downloaded a Lubuntu 18.04 installation .iso. (Latest long-term-service version of the most lightweight operating system I have experience working with.)
2. Made a Lubuntu virtual machine. (Partly for portability and partly to contain the damage if I fucked something up *super* badly.)
3. Downloaded XAMPP (after seeing it mentioned here), followed the Linux instructions.
4. Received a missing-prerequisites error. Installed the prerequisites listed, tried again.
5. I considered installing the offered Bitnami module for WordPress, but it sounded suspiciously like I would then be dependant on Bitnami's support to keep things functioning, and literally the entire point of this exercise is to have an option that is dependant on *nobody*.
6. Instead, I followed these WikiHow instructions. Very simple, worked like a charm.
7. Installed VirtualBox Guest Additions in order to grant the VM read access to a single folder on the host machine, so that I could transfer things I'd already downloaded on the host. Got an error message, went and found some instructions to follow.
8. I made a clone of the virtual machine, in order to have a copy of the WordPress server as it was just before the import. I figure that for future backups I'll just do a fresh import into a fresh copy. I don't want to try incrementals after what happened last time, especially since a lot of the updates are going to be edits to existing posts and not just creation of new posts.
(I ended up making changes to and/or restoring from this copy several times, as I found other things I needed to do or have done.)
9. Recent reviews for the official WordPress importer plugin are not great, *especially* if you want it to pull images. Looked around for a better image importer.
10. Decided to try Attachment Importer. Recent reviews say that despite not having been updated in several years, it continues to work fine on the latest version of WordPress.
11. Trying to install it the default way gave some sort of FTP error. Rather than bother trying to fix its connection, I performed the manual installation process, which is as simple as putting the unzipped plugin download into the plugin folder ( /opt/lampp/htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins ).
12. Attachment Importer says to first run the official WordPress importer with image-pulling turned *off*, in order to get the posts. Did this.
13. Repeated this process eleven fucking times, because WordPress.com insisted on giving me my export file in twelve pieces. I get that many hosting services apparently have very small upload limits on these things, but I would have liked the *option* of a single large file (the local server takes export files up to 128MB! there's no need to cut them into pieces of ~5MB each!), and didn't see an option for that. I do not understand the workings of WXR files well enough to try to stitch them together after the fact.
14. Ran Attachment Importer. This, too, needed to be done twelve times, one for each export file.
15. Checked the results, with the VM's Internet access turned off. Many of the images worked, but many did not. I suspect that many of my images are not technically considered "attached" to their posts, and were therefore not picked up.
16. Looked for an image importer focused on externally-hosted images. Found Auto Upload Images.
17. Nothing happened when I activated it. Turns out that by default, Auto Upload Images doesn't apply retroactively. Looked around and found these instructions on how to force retroactive application.
18. My server couldn't handle 999 posts at once, ended up knocking it down to 300. Performed the process in the instructions for all 14 of the resulting pages.
(Note: I suspect that Attachment Importer *is* still necessary even after finding Auto Upload Images, because I also have some audio files.)
19. Checked the results again, with the VM's Internet access again turned off. All of the media seems to be working!
20. The intra-blog links still lead to wordpress.com, though. Noticed that the guide for retroactively applying Auto Upload Images mentions they have another guide for updating intra-blog links.
21. Followed the guide. Intra-blog links are now intra-blog again.
---
Was this worth the amount of time and effort involved? Quite possibly not, as such: bear in mind, this copy only becomes useful to restore from if I want to move to self-hosting *without having a live wordpress.com copy available to work with*. But I got a bit more experience in fiddling with software guts, and there's something to be said for peace of mind.
I'm thinking I won't update very often, though: maybe quarterly until I've caught up with formatting and annually thereafter. After all, I could fill in the gaps with tumblr-utils if I had to.
