From Wordpress to Django - Part 1
January 14th, 2009
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Wordpress. It’s just that I like to play with stuff, so I thought it would be fun to create a blog in Django, copy all my Wordpress posts across, and add at least some of the functionality that Wordpress has built in.
Open Source
Throughout this process, so that you can follow along, I will be storing the code in a GitHub repository. Click here to view the BeardyGeek repository
A Few Considerations
There are a few things to think about before getting started:
- Data Conversion - getting the data from Wordpress into my Django models. Do I want to keep the same database structure as Wordpress, or create my own? If I create my own, how will I get the data across?
- Services - how much do I try and implement? The main ones are comments, tags, pings, anti-spam.
I’m sure more will come to mind as I go through this
Conclusion
Well, I’d better stop jabbering and get on with it then! Keep an eye on the blog, or watch the Git repo for updates. I’ll get done whatever my current workload allows.
I’m looking forward to some of you posts about this topic. I use a self written Django application for my blog (basically with the features you mentioned) but didn’t copy my old posts to the new installation.
I’m currently looking for a way to integrate the old posts in my archive so I can remove my old Wordpress installation.
I hope you are successful with this project, I want to convert another blog to my system but don’t want to lose the posts - could be really helpful for me
Topic Spam. Since I run my own software I never had one spam comment.
I use Akismet, you have to press submit twice (confirm you comment) and as a last feature I added moderated comments[1].
Not one spam comment passed Akismet and was submitted twice so I never really needed this. I had about 60-190 spam comments a day.
[1] http://hopelesscom.de/wiki/Moderated_Comments/
Great, looking forward for the rest of the series.
FWIW I’m Trying to do a bit similar but using Bloog as a starting point and putting the result on App engine. I’d love to see what you come up with and I’d like to suggest that you try to get it on App engine as there is a need for more good examples to follow and of course the environment is free! There is an app engine patch a project intended to get more of Django operating on the app engine. My 2 cents worth!
@Tom Brander
Thanks for the suggestion, once I’ve completed this, I’ll look at porting it over to the app engine.
I’m really looking forward to your articles. I just started playing with Django and a nice first project is just what I need.