Migrating to my own domain soon

Finally, I’m growing up (blogging-wise) and being brave – - I have decided that I would like my own domain name.

Here’s documenting what I’ve done these past few days.

THE BASIC FIRST STEPS

•  Choosing a host – WordPress has a few suggestions. I chose Bluehost because it’s on top of the list.

• Signed up at Bluehost – $6.95/month for 24 months. Price package includes domain name and web hosting. They have a very efficient support staff you can chat online for ANY headache along the bumby immigration road, anytime.

• Installed WordPress through Fantastico – WordPress is a semantic personal publishing platform that is very easy to use. Obviously, since I am blogging in wordpress.com, I chose wordpress again. I accessed Fantastico though my cPanel in Bluehost. Here’s a detailed tip on How to install WordPress both manually and with Fantastico from Mr. Shawn DesRochers.  

• Exporting File – Export old blog contents by accessing the old wordpress.com blog. Login to wordpress.com, go to Manage then Export. Save the xml file to your local directory.

• Import File – Access mydomain.com/wp-admin. Login and go to Manage then Import. If the xml file is more than 2MB, contact host and ask them to increase the file upload size. Alternative way would be to split the xml file into 2MB chunks but to take advantage of the wonderful Bluehost support team, I asked them to do it for me, which, they gladly did.

After importing the xml file comes the big wordpress bug. The comment authors did not appear and in the Comments Edit section, every comment has the very strange code <![CDATA[Comment Author]]>

HOW TO FIX THE COMMENT AUTHOR PROBLEM

1. At line 334 of wp-admin/import/wordpress.php add one line so that it looks like this:

$comment_author = $this->get_tag( $comment, 'wp:comment_author');
$comment_author = str_replace(array ('<![CDATA[', ']]>'), '', $comment_author;


2. Then, add

ini_set("memory_limit","24M");

all the way at the top of /wp-admin/import/wordpress.php

of course after the <?php

3. In the rss.php file, in the
foreach ($categories as $category) { section, if you add the following line:

$category = str_replace(array('<![CDATA[', ']]>'), '', $wpdb->escape( trim($category) ));

at the start of the loop, then the CDATA is stripped out of the section.

This solved my problem with the comment authors not appearing. It took me more than 2 days to figure this one out. Searched through pages and pages in google and finally found a workaround. It’s not easy to feel so alone doing this kind of stuff. WordPress forums had little resources and did not respond to my queries so I took matters in my own hands.

I hope this will help all you who stumbled this kind of problem.

The new blog on my own domain is still under construction as I have not decided the layout yet. Maybe by the first week of September it will be bug-free and ready for launching (acting bigtime!).

When it is ready, I am going to announce the new URL here. Any move should be exciting and this one is no exception!

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