New server, new Movable Type, same old inactivity

If you’re seeing this, something must’ve gone right.

I’ve moved Mentalized.net to a new host and upgraded my Movable Type installation from v2.661 to the newest v3.14.

I am now away from IIS and crummy ASP/VBScript and onto FreeBSD, Apache and a multitude of scripting languages. Yay!

Luckily the process of migrating Movable Type from one server with v2.661 and Berkley DB to a new server running v3.14 with a newer version of Berkley DB and mySQL was a simple gazillion step process that took days and made me want to strangle a kitten – well, at least give it an not-so-gentle push.

Jakobs step by step “guide” to switching servers, Movable Type installation, data storage method and scripting language

  1. Upgraded existing MT installation from 2.661 to 3.14
  2. Installed MT3 on the new server
  3. Set up a clone of the old Journal on the new server, manually cloning all settings, changing asp to php where necessary
  4. Copied all template files to new server
  5. Manually cloned the Template settings, changing all filenames to their new paths
  6. Redid those of my templates which had somehow been changed at some point. Pretty sure I must’ve copied an old backup or something.
  7. Changed old SSI includes to PHP includes since it apparently causes less of a strain on the server
  8. Exported all entries from the old journal, using Movable Types built in Export. Did this a few times, noticing that some entries for some reason got cut in the exported file. Beats me why, and it wasn’t consistent.
  9. Changed textile_1 to textile_2 in the exported file
  10. Imported entries to the new journal, using Movable Types built in Import – god, it’s slow.
  11. Redid my human date formatter in PHP
  12. Copied my skins to new server, changed the skinning system from ASP/VBScript to simpler PHP
  13. Installed plugins:
    1. Global Listings (I don’t understand why the Download link is placed in the metadata section, in a paranthesis, in a small font. Like it’s not important ::boggle::).
    2. MTMacro
    3. SmartyPants
    4. Textile
    5. Compare
    6. MTIfEmpty
    7. SimpleComments
  14. Time to combat spam <http://sixapart.com/pronet/comment_spam.html#commentscript>
    1. Changed the name of my comment script
    2. Installed MT-Blacklist
    3. Noticed that my Easier Edit/Remove comment hack is part of MT3, so didn’t apply it :)
  15. Repeated most of the above for each of the weblogs that make up mentalized.net, yuck…
  16. Created a .htaccess to redirect stuff from old URLs to new URLs (".asp to “.php” basically)
  17. Wrote this post

The future

Now I pretty much just need to get the domain transferred and keep watching my logfiles for 404s to figure out what files I still need to transfer. There has to be a bunch of images that are broken now, so please let me know, if you come across problems.