WordPress.com To WordPress.org Migration

Moving a Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org is something I’ve had a lot of questions about – today Jeff Chandler shares tips on hwo to do it.

Everyday it seems like I find a story or two from a cities local online newspaper which delves into the topic of blogging and what it’s all about. The story usually goes through a mini backlog of history surrounding the term, what blogging is and at the end of the article, there is usually a list of suggestions on how to get started with the most popular suggestion being WordPress.com. Using WordPress.com is a great way to introduce yourself to blogging but if you decide that you want to turn blogging into a full time job or just want more control over your work, you’ll need to move.

Thankfully, the move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (WordPress.org being the self hosted version of WordPress) is painless thanks in large part to a great export tool.

To start things off, login to your WordPress.com account and browse to your administration panel. From the menu on the left, click on TOOLS – EXPORT. At this point, you have the option to confine the export to a particular author or all authors. Using the export tool will compile your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. This information is placed into a WXR file or, WordPress eXtended RSS file. Essentially, this file is just a normal XML RSS based file with a couple of custom fields added to it which makes it specific to WordPress. Once you’re finished, click on the Download Export File button and save it to your desktop.

Once you have that file on your desktop, you can breath a little easier considering your half way through the content migration process.

The second part of this guide refers to an installation of WordPress 2.7. Login to your self installed WordPress administration panel and from the menu on the left click on TOOLS – IMPORT. From the list of blogging systems click on WordPress. Next, click on the Browse button and locate the XML file you downloaded earlier. This will upload the XML file into your WordPress installation and will unpack all of the data the file contains. There is one caveat though regarding this entire technique.

Most webhosts for whatever reason still have their PHP.ini configured in such a way where end users can only upload files with a maximum file size of 2MB or smaller. Although it takes quite a bit of content in an WXR file to go over 2MB, 2MB is not a lot of head room. If you find yourself in the position where your WXR file is larger than the maximum file size, I highly suggest submitting a trouble ticket to your webhost and asking them to increase the limit. If they choose not to, then ask them if they can import the file for you. If that doesn’t work, you can pull a trick from your sleeve by uploading a custom php.ini file to your webhosting accounts root folder. This is what my host did for me and afterwards, I took a look at the php.ini file and noticed it had this line in it:

; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.

upload_max_filesize = 7M

Apparently, the php.ini file overwrote the settings on the original file and I was able to bump my limit up to 7 Megabytes. This trick is not guaranteed to work. As a last ditch effort, you can also try adding these lines to your .htaccess file. Just replace the pound sign with a number that is above the size of your WXR file.

#set max upload file size

php_value upload_max_filesize #M

#set max post size

php_value post_max_size #M

Once the WXR file is unpacked on your self installed version of WordPress, you’re ready to walk through the gates of freedom without skipping a beat!

P.S. This strategy also works for those wanting to go from WordPress.org to WordPress.com.

Credits: problogger.net

WordPress Plugins for Google Adsense

Google Adsense is the most popular online contextual advertising program and the easiest way to monetize your blog. Many people don’t know where to start.  Luckily there are lots of plugins that can help you integrate Adsense into WordPress. thus, helps you simplify the process, provide flexibility and as well as exponentially increase Adsense earnings.

Here are some of the useful Google AdSense plugins for WordPress 2.5 and above.

Ad Integration – While it is more a tool to add advertisements you like to your posts, the clearest choice is Google AdSense. This will allow you to change ads on your site without having to constantly edit your templates.

AdSense Manager – Allows you to manage the codes of many different online advertising networks with a focus on Google’s AdSense.

Adsense Deluxe – offers advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts. Easily switch all AdSense ads to a new color scheme across the entire site.

AdSense Revenue Sharing – If you run a multi-author blog, this is the perfect solution for revenue sharing.  It will let you easily create multiple authors and allow each of them to have their own AdSense set up so they can earn the revenue from their posts.

All in One Adsense and YPN – Allows you to insert AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network ads in all of your posts, opt to skip some, randomize where they are inserted to lower ad blindness, and many more options.

Shylock Adsense WordPress plugin – allows you to insert Adsense ads on your blog without modifying the template. Set it up to show different Adsense ads for articles older then ‘n’ days. E.g. insert a 468×60 ad at the bottom of a new article for regular readers, and replace with higher paying 336×280 ad after 7 days for the search engine visitors.

Googmonify – Allows you to set it up so you can add AdSense to all of your posts by just using simple tags to insert the ad units as you like.

Ozh’ Who Sees Ads – Allows you to set several options for when an add gets displayed.  Some of the most interesting ones are if the reader comes from a search engine, was published between certain dates, is older than X number of days and more.

Random / Rotating Ads – By using text files and widgets, you’re able to add rotating ads to the same spot on your blog.  You can even alternate between Google AdSense, affiliate links and more.

Smart Ads – Gives you numerous options for auto inserting AdSense into your site, such as setting a minimum word count, categories to exclude and more.

AdSense Widget for WordPress Sidebar – Google AdSense widget designed for the new WordPress Sidebar Widgets plug-in.

Adsense Earnings WordPress Plugin – displays your adsense earning details within wordpress admin panel.

Author Advertising Plugin – This plugin allows blog admins to create a revenue sharing program utilising one of the many advertising programs out there i.e Yahoo, Google Adsense, Amazon, Allposters etc. It can also be used as a banner manager, author photo/website widgets.. actually it has about a zillion uses. Give it a try and lemme know if you use it for anything really groovy.

Google Ad Wrap – wraps posts and comments inside Section Targeting tags for better targeted ads.