Migrating from other CMS

Hello I am new to Bricolage.  I was wondering if there were
any  
import programs to help migrate an existing website to
Bricolage.
I know I probably can't migrate everything, but it would
help a bunch  
if I could provide say a tab delimited file, with story
urls, page  
titles, keywords, etc
and have those stories created.  It would reduce the amount
of work  
involved in migration and the chance of typos breaking
existing links.

Thanks

Rob

Robert Knaak <rknaakplexi.com> writes:
> Hello I am new to Bricolage.  I was wondering if there
were any
> import programs to help migrate an existing website to
Bricolage.  I
> know I probably can't migrate everything, but it would
help a bunch
> if I could provide say a tab delimited file, with story
urls, page
> titles, keywords, etc and have those stories created. 
It would
> reduce the amount of work involved in migration and the
chance of
> typos breaking existing links.

Sound "challenging". 

Idea 1 - The theoretical full automatic way:

   Bricolage stories have a defined structure of elements
and
   subelements. You would need to prepare these structures,
which is
   easy, and then divide your existing content from the
other CMS into
   the prepared structure, which I imagine is much harder.
It probably
   depends on the existing CMS, whether it defines it's
content in a
   similar way as in Bricolage. Once done, you might be able
to use
   the soap interface to fill the content as XML or via
other Bric API
   directly fill into the database.


   ==> I can't imagine that you can prepare this process
so good that
       you really save time.


Idea 2 - use the existing site as source for a cut'n'paste
carnage

   - Prepare your Bricolage as if you would create the site
for the
     first time (with header, footer, etc.). Do this
carefully - it's
     your new sites structure.

   - Define at least one story element structure which uses
a WYSIWYG
     editor (Xinha) for the main page content (excluding
navigation,
     headers, footers; just for the inner content).

   - Save you existing content from the other CMS into easy
to use
     text/html files (or better: one big file). Try to
generate as
     clean as possible code (that you can easy cut'n'paste
     later). Maybe even just text only, but with
recognizable
     structure (headers, paragraphs, etc). Your browser or
tools like
     "wget" might help you there.

   - Then just sit with some people and create all pages as
new
     stories in Bricolage, using the WYSIWYG area to
cut'n'paste your
     existing content and finetune the structure (h1, h2,
paragraphs,
     etc).  For the raw cut'n'paste per story, it might be
practical
     to use Xinha's non-wysiwyg view, then switch back and
defined the
     structure.


   ==> That's how you could create large amounts of
initial content
       anyway. It will work, because although you just do it
yourself
       manually, you do it well prepared.

What is the other CMS and about how many pages do we talk?

GreetinX
Steffen
-- 
Steffen Schwigon <schwigonwebit.de>
Dresden Perl Mongers <http://dresden-pm.org/>

Deutscher Perl-Workshop <http://www.perl-work
shop.de/>

On Mar 6, 2007, at 01:15, Steffen Schwigon wrote:

>    ==> I can't imagine that you can prepare this
process so good that
>        you really save time.

It depends on how many stories you have. If it's just a
hundred or  
so, then probably not. But if you have thousands or tens of
thousands  
(or, dare I say it, hundreds of thousands?), then this is
the only  
way to go. I've done it a number of times. It's a bit of
PITA, but  
the only real way if you have a lot of content to move over.
The  
steps are:

   1. Create some sample stories in Bricolage and use
bric_soap to  
export them as XML so that you have some templates to use
for  
generating import XML.

   2. Export content from your existing CMS (using SQL or
XML export  
or whatever. I've mainly used SQL, though once or twice I've
had to  
parse existing (badly formatted) HTML files; most CMSs suck
for export.

   3. Massage the data into the XML format exemplified by
the XML  
files you created in step 1. Often this means separate XML
files for  
each story (with media embedded in the XML) to get as much
in a  
possible, then you can go back and fix the broken XML files
by hand  
and try again.

   4. Import into Bricolage via bric_soap. If possible,
clone your  
production Bricolage server to another box and do the import
there  
over and over, gradually tweaking the format of the export
to get it  
right, until it's all find, then you can import into the
production  
Bricolage with confidence.

HTH,

David