I'm upgrading a Blog4Umbraco installation from v1 to v2.0.26. Well, actually the 'upgrade' isn't possible, so I'm just uninstalling v1 and installing v2.0.26 in it's place.
All has gone well - I have v2 running now, and am looking for a simple way to import a hand-ful of posts into the new blog. There's no import tool as such and the articles I've found on importing posts to maintain historical dates are pretty involved (hacking the event on creating a post etc). What I wondered is, is it possible to just manually create the folder structure in the blog? Would that create issues? Obviously if there were loads of posts this would be completely inefficient, but in this case there are only a few, and I'd rather not get deep into the source code just for this.
Hmm, how about creating the posts today, then renaming the date folders. I may need to then change the date-created field in the database directly, but can anyone see a problem in doing this? Any other solutions?
In the v2.0.26 of Blog4Umbraco, the blog is originally placed in a date folder based on the Create Date. It is possible to move it later, but realize that the Create Date is also used when determining the order of Blog Entries and when showing the Date of the Blog Entry (in the XSLT). If you don't have too many posts, you can change this maunually. If you use CMS import, I believe you can set the create date. This won't affect the folder structure due to the order in which things happen, but you can later create new Date Folders and move them and not worry about getting into the Database.
There is also some movement on Blog4Umbraco regarding the 4.5 version of Umbraco, so you may want to wait for that to be finalized and the upgrade to Umbraco 4.5. It looks like the Date Folder Fix will be included in that version.
Thanks webangelo, that's very helpful. So if I create an article manually, change the date folders which are created to match the original article date, then change the datecreated field directly in the database, then repeat for each article, that should do the trick? It'll have no negative implications?
First, updating the CreateDate manually is not officially recommended and any time you manually update the database, you do so at your own risk, so back up first. ;-)
Remember if you use the CMSImport tool, you can set the CreateDate
without doing it manually. It'll place all of the entries into a date folder based on the date you do the import, so you'll just need to move the nodes into
the correct folders afterwards. I would actually recommend going this route to avoid the direct DB update. One thing to note on the CMSImport, at least the last time I used it, it added content as the admin, so that is who the blog shows up as being posted by.
BTW, looking at what Per is doing with the Blog4Umbraco package it looks like the it will be smart enough to install the correct XSLT depending on whether you are on 4.0.x or 4.5. So if you are willing to wait, it looks like it'll still support 4.0.x and 4.5 in the next official release.
Blog4Umbraco: Manual insert of archive posts
Hi,
I'm upgrading a Blog4Umbraco installation from v1 to v2.0.26. Well, actually the 'upgrade' isn't possible, so I'm just uninstalling v1 and installing v2.0.26 in it's place.
All has gone well - I have v2 running now, and am looking for a simple way to import a hand-ful of posts into the new blog. There's no import tool as such and the articles I've found on importing posts to maintain historical dates are pretty involved (hacking the event on creating a post etc). What I wondered is, is it possible to just manually create the folder structure in the blog? Would that create issues? Obviously if there were loads of posts this would be completely inefficient, but in this case there are only a few, and I'd rather not get deep into the source code just for this.
Thanks
Hmm, how about creating the posts today, then renaming the date folders. I may need to then change the date-created field in the database directly, but can anyone see a problem in doing this? Any other solutions?
Thanks
In the v2.0.26 of Blog4Umbraco, the blog is originally placed in a date folder based on the Create Date. It is possible to move it later, but realize that the Create Date is also used when determining the order of Blog Entries and when showing the Date of the Blog Entry (in the XSLT). If you don't have too many posts, you can change this maunually. If you use CMS import, I believe you can set the create date. This won't affect the folder structure due to the order in which things happen, but you can later create new Date Folders and move them and not worry about getting into the Database.
There is also some movement on Blog4Umbraco regarding the 4.5 version of Umbraco, so you may want to wait for that to be finalized and the upgrade to Umbraco 4.5. It looks like the Date Folder Fix will be included in that version.
Thanks webangelo, that's very helpful. So if I create an article manually, change the date folders which are created to match the original article date, then change the datecreated field directly in the database, then repeat for each article, that should do the trick? It'll have no negative implications?
First, updating the CreateDate manually is not officially recommended and any time you manually update the database, you do so at your own risk, so back up first. ;-)
OK, if you still want to do it manually, here is a post that may help. http://www.christophertl.net/1331.aspx
Remember if you use the CMSImport tool, you can set the CreateDate without doing it manually. It'll place all of the entries into a date folder based on the date you do the import, so you'll just need to move the nodes into the correct folders afterwards. I would actually recommend going this route to avoid the direct DB update. One thing to note on the CMSImport, at least the last time I used it, it added content as the admin, so that is who the blog shows up as being posted by.
BTW, looking at what Per is doing with the Blog4Umbraco package it looks like the it will be smart enough to install the correct XSLT depending on whether you are on 4.0.x or 4.5. So if you are willing to wait, it looks like it'll still support 4.0.x and 4.5 in the next official release.
--Chris
Hi all,
With CMSImport 1.0.3 you can select a user. This user will be assigned to the content instead of importing all items as Admin
Cheers,
Richard
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