Differences between the scratchpad in WordPress and Manila
Here are some general notes about the change from Manila to WordPress and some of the differences you might notice. It’s probably going to take me a long time to get this blog fully functional. I appreciate your patience.
- The post headings are no longer linked. WordPress doesn’t allow linked post headings. I am putting the links elsewhere in the posts. It’s going to take a while before I can go through every old post on this blog to make sure the links behind the headings are somewhere in the posts. Luckily, thanks mostly to JB’s suggestions a while ago, I started putting the heading links elsewhere in the posts because some aggregators like to eat them.
- The post headings are the permalinks.
- The permalinks on the old version of j’s scratchpad should transfer to the new blog. The URLs with dates in them should also still work. That structure seems to be preserved in the new posts, too. For an example: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2007/02/15/.
- The feed URLs have changed. I don’t think there are feeds for individual categories like there were in Manila. The feed for the weblog is http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/feed/. The feed for the comments is http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/comments/feed/. Please help me spread the word. I know some of you know other scratchpad readers.
- Some comments are forced into a moderation queue. I don’t always have time to go through the pile of comments each day. It’s annoying, but it’s preventing some of the comment spam.
- The import from Manila caused all the stories to be linked from the navbar. I don’t want the navbar to include them all and be that long and, perhaps, neither do you. I think I have figured out a solution, but I have not yet had the time to work on fixing the problem.
- Some posts end up being truncated. Truncated posts often do not have working links in their short form. I have not found an option on this weblog to stop the truncation. Perhaps I can’t find it because it isn’t there …? This post will probably be truncated. The [...] at the end should link to the complete text.
- I’m getting some feedback from experienced WordPress users. The biggest thing it indicates to me is that the version of WordPress most people use, a single user version, has lots of cool, handy, practical features WordPress Multiuser lacks. It is not the same software. I do not have server privileges like many WordPress users do. Maybe that’s unfortunate, but WordPress MU works for the blog community here in ways many single user versions loaded on one server would not. Keep the feedback coming. I like to pick people’s brains when I’m learning something new. I appreciate the helpful suggestions.
- I have not yet had the time to even attempt to look for images and files on this blog and find out what happened to them. I know their location is noted in the import documentation somewhere. I need to go back and reread all of that about ten times.
- Bylines didn’t come over in the import and I haven’t yet found a way to put them on the posts. As I’ve been going through older posts, I’ve been manually adding bylines. Again, this process is going to take some time. I appreciate your patience. I want to give credit where credit is due. The scratchpad has some fabulous contributors.
- The dates of some of the posts changed with the import. Manila links two dates to the posts. The date the post is created and the date the post goes live. Most of the time, the two dates are the same. Sometimes, they differ. WordPress uses the date the post is drafted. If you are looking for a specific post by date and you don’t see it, please try another way to search this blog. If you don’t find it at all, please let me know.
- The Manila scratchpad is still online at: http://blogs-manila.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/. If you have a link from the Manila version, you can’t find the post here, try inserting -manila into the URL. It should still work.
- I’m sure I’ll come up with lots of other notes for you. If there are things you want me to point out or that you’ve noticed, feel free to comment.
