Using the XMLRPC interfaces I mentioned in part 1, I needed to parse my HTML content, strip it of the original "template", and upload it to my development Movable Type instance. I used Java and XMLRPC for this, Java because I was most familiar and XMLRPC since that is what MT provides.
The original Gillius.org site was entirely static content. In order to move to Movable Type, I needed to first convert the original site's content in a way that would be compatible with the old one, both in looks, content, and even the URLs themselves. I did choose MT partly because it appeared to be easier to import. I also looked at Drupal and Wordpress as well.
In this first part, I will cover conversion of the blog posts, conversion of the style, and parsing the original static HTML pages into a format that can be uploaded into MT. Read on for the details.
While developing the updated Gillius.org site, I noticed that sometimes the pages would not update when I went to them, until I hit refresh, even after I exited the browser and restarted it. I was using Firefox, which I learned made the problem more apparent versus IE, but I learned that it was my site's cache settings that was having a problem. I've fixed the problem, so if you see content that doesn't look right, missing comments, or is out of date you might have to refresh manually once, but hopefully not again after this. Read on for the details.
Previously, I used to maintain this site as static content (with the exception of the news page). Now I am using the popular blogging software Movable Type to help manage the site. My intention is to start doing a lot more blogging posts, rather than articles/static content that have been seen (and hardly touched) over the last 10 years.
Moving to a proper system now means that you can search the site, leave comments and trackbacks, and navigate by categories/tags/dates. It also means you will see more content as it is easier for me to post now.
In the short-term, my next posts will detail some of my experiences converting my existing site to Movable Type.
As of October 5th, I'm finished with all of the requirements of my master's degree! I gave a presentation of RealDB, which can be seen on its page. Source code is also there, and the project is licensed under GPL v3.
I know that it's been some time, but I plan on bringing back the site somewhat as a blog. I've been wanting to do that more for a time but felt weird putting it here, as it is the "news" section. I might just make the posts here, or maybe I will start up a separate section just for the blog.
After responding to a bug report in the forums, I updated the link on the GNE subversion, which was obsolete since SourceForge changed their SVN URL scheme. Users working with GCC 4.3.0 should now be able to compile GNE when working with version 0.75.
I have created a site for the work on my master’s project, RealDB. More information is coming soon on its site.
Sorry for the news spam, but one last item (seriously)… I’ve also added handheld support to the CSS profile. I used ems in the CSS sizing before for the site and it always looked well, but now I have some handheld-specific tweaks. I’ve tested this functionality against IE in Windows Mobile 2005 only so far. I plan on doing a little more tweaking in the next few days but please make comments if you have any.
I added some print rules to the style sheet, so that the site should print out better on a printer, if that’s your thing. Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions.
I switched the site from a table-based layout to a div-based layout. In order to make my time with CSS easier I had to change the style a little, but I also took some other liberties. I might change the style a bit more soon – I’m not sure I like a few of the colors.