How To Convert Your Blog From Tumblr To WordPress

Tumblr is a free hosted blog platform that is easy to use. It does allow you to import posts via RSS feeds from other sources, but may be limiting for users wanting to have a business or want to do more with your website.

Some places use WordPress, but also use Tumblr for their blog, OR they allow Tumblr to post from their main website’s feed. It is merely a matter of your preference, but there are far more options to using the blogging capabilities in WordPress versus Tumblr.

How To Convert Your Blog From Tumblr To WordPress

In order to convert your blog from Tumblr to WordPress, you need to go to you WordPress Dashboard, and then to Tools > Import.

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This will lead you to choose from several options to import posts from another platform.

Click on the link to Tumblr and it will ask you to install the plugin to import posts.

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Once the importer has been installed and activated, it will lead you to a page with directions on how to set up the importer. You WILL have to register for a developer API in order to authorize the Tumblr importer plugin to work.

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Registering for an API is simple. You do not have to fill everything out as specified by the directions given on the plugin. When you have registered for API, you will be given a Consumer Key and a Secret Key. Those two keys are what you need in order to make the authorization for the importing happen. It is imperative that you make sure the link for your site and the callback link is the same. In fact, the directions will tell you what exactly to put in the Tumblr API registration form.

Once you have submitted the Consumer key and Secret key, it will lead you to Tumblr briefly and it will ask you if you are allowing your Tumblr site to be accessed. Click to allow and then sit back to wait for the plugin to do it all for you. It may take some time, but there is a status area that you can check back and see when your site is done importing from Tumblr.

The only issue that any person not so tech savvy may have is understanding how to register the API. The Tumblr API registration form is not long at all, so take it slow when filling out. Please do note that in the case that you have imported Facebook or Twitter statuses, your posts may have titles that say ‘No title.’

Have you converted a site from Tumblr to WordPress? Have you run into any issues?

How To Move Your Blog From WordPress.com To WordPress.org

So, you want to venture off onto your own self-hosted WordPress install and you are currently on WordPress.com. However, you are unsure on how to move your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. How do you do that?

First, you have to really understand the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Overall, WordPress is free and open-source software that you can download and use however you wish.

WordPress.com allows you to have a free hosted site or you can pay to access more features with their hosting. You cannot advertise on your hosted site and on the basic plan you are limited to free themes and specific widgets and plugins. If you upgrade your account, you can have access to other themes and plugins, or even installing a premium theme you bought elsewhere.

WordPress.org actually allows people to download the entire WordPress content management system so you can use on your own web hosting space. You have control over your entire site and can change your theme, install plugins, and monetize your website. With your web hosting, you pay a web host for your space and have to acquire your own domain from a domain registrar.

How To Move Your Blog From WordPress.com To WordPress.org

The great thing about both WordPress.com and WordPress.org is that the backend of site looks similar in most areas. In order to export, you go to Tools > Export.

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Select all content to download all posts, pages, images, menus, terms, custom post types, and more. Then click the button to Download the export files. This will give you an XML file.

Once you have downloaded the file, you can now import it to your WordPress.org website. You will go to Tools > Import. After you have clicked the link for importing, it will lead you to a page that asks what you want to convert over. You will want to click on the link for WordPress. In WordPress.org sites, you will be asked to install the WordPress importer plugin. Install and activate it.

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Please note that sometimes larger sites may timeout when importing. Sometimes you will have to reload the XML file few times to get things going or you might have to split your XML file into several smaller files. Larger websites DO take some patience to import, so be patient. Some web hosts will only allow you to upload so much, and will not allow you to increase your memory. By either re-uploading the XML files several times OR breaking up that file and importing the WordPress.com site’s content in pieces will work.

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Once you have imported, do not delete your WordPress.com site. Remove old posts, and then publish one post to let readers know where the site is. Please note that this is the freebie method. In order to actually redirect the site, you will have to purchase the WordPress.com upgrade for Site Redirect. You will find this in your WordPress.com dashboard under Dashboard > Change Blog Address and under the blog you want to change, you will click on the Change address. You will have to also go to Store > Site Redirect and purchase it, which is a per year fee.

Did you start on WordPress.com and move to your own self-hosted WordPress.org site? Was it easy for you to migrate your website? What issues did you run into, if any?

How To Schedule Your Posts in WordPress

Scheduling your posts in WordPress has a lot of benefits. You can utilize this method in order to go on vacation and your blog with automatically publish your pre-written posts when you want it to.

You can also do this even when you are not on vacation and use it to strategically target specific audiences at certain times. For example, if you know you have more people from a certain country visit around a time block, you might want to schedule posts so they will see that post first.

How To Schedule Your Posts in WordPress

scheduleposts-wp-screenshotThe scheduling method uses cron job, so you can schedule posts to publish at an exact time. You can schedule many posts at any time you wish.

When you are adding a new post, or even editing a new post, you will see a box to the right called ‘Publish.’ Click on the edit link next to the area that has a date. It will open up a small form so you can adjust the month, the day, the year, and the time. You can shedule to publish a post to the exact minute you desire!

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Once you have scheduled, just hit the button and you are ready to either write another post or go have a nice vacation. :)

Do you use the schedule method for your posts in WordPress during your vacations?

How to Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death

So, you visit your WordPress site and somehow find that it is completely blank. You could have a problem viewing your entire site, or maybe just the front-end or the back-end. What is wrong? Well, this is known as the WordPress white screen of death.

The white screen of death occurs due to some error, it could be:

  • Memory exceeded on PHP
  • Error with a plugin (in some cases, you may get an actual error output message, and this would be different from the white screen of death)
  • Failed installation or upgrade in /wp-admin folder
  • Error with caching in the case you run a cache plugin

What To Do First When Troubleshooting The White Screen of Death in WordPress

The primary protocol for problems with WordPress boil down to doing 1 or both of the following:

  • Disable plugins one by one via FTP or your web host filemanager
  • Change the theme to the default WordPress themes available

Well, if you cannot log into your site, you are going to have to try another route. If you are familiar with using FTP (File Transfer Protocol), log in and go to your wp-content folder. In order to disable plugins one by one, go to the plugins folder and rename each folder. For example, you can rename pluginname to pluginame1. Do this until your site appears. However, you can also disable all plugins at once by just renaming the entire plugins folder to a different name.

In the case that is not the issue, try switching the theme to one of the default themes that WordPress has, like Twenty Eleven and Twenty Twelve. Of course, you will need to do this by FTP, and go into the wp-content folder, and then into the folder named themes. Within the themes folder, you will see the names of the themes. The one you have activated is the one you will need to rename in order to activate it.

As a side note, especially to any WordPress developer, often you may have inserted plugin snippets that take the place of plugins, and you can either take out the extra code or just change the theme.

Once you have done any of the above, check to see if your site appears. If so, great… if not… you need to troubleshoot some more.

So, That WordPress White Screen of Death is Persistent…

You have disabled plugins and changed your theme. You still have that white screen of death. You might need a little help with WordPress to debug the situation, so you can use the following code. This code goes in the wp-config.php file.


error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors', 1);
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

Once this has been placed, you can refresh your site and there should be a message to tell you if something is wrong. If it is telling you something cannot be found, it usually means you are missing a file. If the message says that something is missing, the error message is telling you something in the code is missing. You will need to reload a fresh file.

In some cases, it could be the memory or the cache. You will have to clear the cache on your site, or adjust the php.ini file to increase memory size. You can increase the memory by adding the following line in your wp-config.php file:


define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

If that does not work, your web host may not allow you to do this and you will have to ask if they can do it for you. It is not a huge request and only takes moments. Worst case scenario is that they say no. If they do not, you might want to seek a more reliable host that allows you some control over your site.

Have you ever suffered from the WordPress White Screen of Death? Was your solution solved with one of these methods, or did you have a different error?

#SharingSundays Recap 2013 Volume 8

Back on track with #SharingSundays! This is a weekly event that allows bloggers to shamelessly plug one of their most recent articles on my Facebook fan page. Come on, while it is a fan page about me, not everything can be about me. You all have helped my site, and many of you are bloggers, so this is a way for me to help give back to the blogging community.

It is free to join my fan page, but you have to be a fan in order to participate. That makes sense, right? Kind of goes hand in hand with the saying “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

So, the reward is actually not only being able to share your most recent blog post, but that the article would be linked in a post, just like this one.

#SharingSundays Recap 2013 Volume 8

Purbita Ditecha shared Instant Preparation Of Virtual Assistant And Business Priority

Jim Landers shared WordPress Sites Hacked!

Karen Woodham shared Blogger Interview With The Pensive One

Shalu Sharma shared 3 Indian Tasty Food Choices for India Travelers Who Watch Their Calories

Marquita Herald shared Do You Feel Like a Fake Even When You Succeed?

Inderjit Singh shared What is a Blog? Why should you start a Blog?

Gurwinder Singh shared Top Three Ways to Build a Better Business

Thank you to those who participated. Please visit, comment, share, and enjoy! See you next Sunday for #SharingSundays!

Caution: Brute Force Attacks Against WordPress Sites

The past few days, WordPress sites around the world have either witnessed slower load or even downtime. Some may have even been hacked or spammed.

This is because there has been a global attack on sites using WordPress, specifically trying to find your password. This is not an attack on just one web host, but several.

So, what is a brute force attack. Well, a brute force attack according to Wikipedia is:

In cryptography, a brute-force attack, or exhaustive key search, is a cryptanalytic attack that can, in theory, be used against any encrypted data[1] (except for data encrypted in an information-theoretically secure manner).

No worries, here are a few things you can do:

1. Change your password to something a little more complex. Make sure to use both uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numbers and symbols. The longer the password, the better, but if you wish, no less than 10 characters should be used. Some places recommend 8, but I like to recommend just a little more.

2. Install Better WordPress Security, BulletProof Security, or some people recommend Limit Login Attempts. You may want to install one of the first two plugins instead of the last since Limit Login Attempts only does what the plugin title says it does.

3. If you are a dedicated server client with your web host, ask the host to install a more robust firewall plugin. They may charge, but it will work better than the default firewall program they usually install.

According to HostGator’s blog post on Global WordPress Brute Force Flood, you can ask your web host to password protect the .htaccess files and all WordPress login files. This offer is for their VPS and dedicated server clients. HostGator also provides a way that you can set this yourself with their WordPress Login- Brute Force tutorial in their Support Portal.

If you are having issues of downtime or load time, even though your host is aware of this happening, at least submit a support ticket so they can track this issue.

Have you had this issue? What have you done to combat this brute force attack.

Blondish.net Podcast: Marketing And Your Business

Marketing and business go hand in hand. You need to market your business. There are many tools or mediums in which to promote your business.

This 20 minute podcast is on marketing and your business. As mentioned within the podcast, this can be for businesses that are online or have a physical location offline. I have shared some well known and not so known mediums in which to promote your business.

For those who have been reading my site, you know I am an advocate for taking advantage of whatever resources are available. I keep repeating this because I know eventually some of you reading will finally understand and finally try each medium out. That is the beauty of marketing. You can try different types of campaigns to see how it will be received by others. Those different campaigns, on top of the various mediums means your presence will eventually be seen.

If you have a business online or offline, and are frustrated…

What are you currently doing to market your business? What mediums are you using to market your business? Are you encouraging and asking for feedback when you conduct your marketing campaigns?

Blondish.net Podcast: Marketing And Your Business

Play

Write For Humans!

Write for humans. It is really simple as that.

Think about it. Humans build the computers and the programs for the search engines. Humans search online and read. The search engines do pick up what you write about, but it is not the search engine that you must rely on alone to receive traffic.

Writing is not easy. It is not something that comes naturally to everyone and does take some time to learn how to develop your blog voice while also thinking about how to optimize your article so it is crawled well. However, you also have to remember that you need to write in order for your audience to comprehend your blog post, engage with you on that article, and maybe even do what it is that you want them to do. That might be buying a product, subscribing to your email newsletter, or following you on a social network.

It is understandable that you want to make sure that your blog ranks well, but do not forget who you are writing for in the end. Search engine optimization is not as hard as people think it is. If you have a well designed theme that is slick on load time, you only have to worry about the content you place on your website. Regardless if you are writing all of the content on your blog yourself or paying someone, write for humans!

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