47 posts tagged with "ramblings"

One of the trickiest things when re-imaging your view of the world or changing how you interact with it, is how you present yourself.
Do you continue as you were or try something new, new is always scary and in the technical world it can also include some unintended consequences.

In starting anew, I chose to break the shackles of a blogging platform (WordPress in my case) and transformed to a new Ghost blog hosted on Azure.  This has not come without significant peril and confusion, mainly because all information about hosting ghost yourself is several months/years out of date due to changes in the Ghost platform and also on Azure.

Sure, I could have gone for a hosted blog, I certainly don’t mind paying for it, but where is the challenge in that :D.

TL;DR​

• Exporting from WordPress to Ghost is easy, but you need to find an alternate way to download the backup.
• Importing your WordPress backup in to Ghost will take a lot of trial and error, mainly to breakup the backup in to smaller backup files for import.
• Getting Ghost self-hosted is no simple task, but there it help. If you’re not sure, the only real option is to pay for a hosted Ghost.

The State of Azure​

Azure used to have a quite rounded set of free features, however overtime this has reduced to the point where it only supports static pages, simple web apps and PWA’s and more critically does not support custom domains.  Thankfully though, HTTPS comes as standard (once you turn it on) and is still free,

But given having a “azurewebsites.net” url does not scream a “professional” blog, I chose to upgrade to the basic tier which gives you a little more freedom.  It’s not quite “free” but the cost is fairly inconsequential and comes with a host of nice features.

The state of Ghost​

Ghost has upgraded and added a tone of features in recent years, however, this has come at a cost of self=hosting.  Not to say you cannot still host it yourself with the latest and greatest, but it is no longer trivial.
For myself, I have stayed a version behind, as it is still possible to host a Ghost blog on Azure with Versions 2 & 3, although as you’ll see, not quite as easily as it used to be (Azure used to have a Ghost app deployment included in the Portal, but no longer)

I’m keeping an eye on a few great Microsoft MVP’s who are still tinkering, in the hopes one of them can unlock the gateway to V4.  Another option would be to switch to using containers instead of hosting the website, but I’m not quite ready to make the jump yet.

One good thing is that once your have got your content into Ghost, it is a lot easier to transfer it to another Ghost site.

Migrating from WordPress to Ghost​

Now here is where the fun begins.
Ghost do provide a handy plug-in for exporting all your WordPress articles (only posts and pages are supported, forums and other features are not, so if you want to keep them you will need other services to export/host them).  You will have to convert any Categories you have setup to tags, as Ghost only supports tags, but again there are tools for that (but you will have some clean up tasks later).

Now, here is where the fun begins, WordPress will create your exported backup, however, you will then likely find your current host does not support downloading such a large file over the web and sadly instead of a helpful message, you will likely just encounter a “server error”.  This left me scratching my head for quite a while to figure out what is going on and it was only when I tried to backup my site to host locally, did I find the mythical ZIP file backup on the server ready for use.

Hidden in the plugins folder in the WordPress site’s files, the ZIP file was prepared and ready for use, but as you will find, this is only the beginning of the journey.

Importing WordPress in to Ghost​

Once you have your WordPress backup file, you then hit the reverse problem  when trying to import the backup file into your Ghost site, Ghost it seems has a 20mb’ish limit on import files, but all is not lost. (My backup was over 500mb, mostly images)

If you extract the zip file, you can break up the files and create several ZIP backups for imports, mostly images and other “stuff”.  Import the images first and leave the Jason backup file till last.  Once all your images are imported, only then import the Json text content which will automagically switch to using your imported images locally.

As a tip, WordPress auto-generates several scaled images for every image on the site, so go through your unzipped backup files and remove all the scaled images, leaving only the base image. Ghost does a much better job of handling scaling for images anyway.

The final round-up​

You will no doubt have several clean up tasks post import, ranging from:

• removing duplicate tags
• renaming unrecognized tags (most I found were also duplicates)
• cleaning up unwanted posts
• Theming, styling and Adonis
• A million other tasks to configure ghost

Your last steps will then be to start finding new paths to get content in to your new site, from Writing in Ghost, to using one of the many integrations (I tried the integration with "write.as" but ended up manually migrating the post here).

I wish you well on your new blogging adventure if, like me, you have decided to make a change.

I've always been a steadfast supporter of helping to educate (and be taught by) the developer community, wherever I can on whichever subject, software or service I am currently embroiled in. It was always my mantra, even from the very early days, some 20 years back.

However, in the latter years, although I have been "out there", supporting who I can and wherever they are, I have not been as forthcoming with my blogging efforts.  There are numerous reasons for this, trials, tribulations and for those who know me best, some hardships and the eternal battle with impostor syndrome.

But as ever, to grow we must push on and keep doing the small things which help keep us on the straight and narrow, all the while busting the door open to new opptunities. Confused, I hope so, as I am usually in a constant state of bewilderment, until I find that one article, document or person that sets the record straight.

New Adventures​

Part of the longing to get back in to blogging/vlogging/etc has been the start of a new career with an absolutely awesome team at xRealityLabs, headed by the totally amazing boss that is Gareth James. (If you have not had the chance to meet him yet, you probably should!)

Finally I can say the training wheels are off and I can fly free to be the developer I need to be, both by day and night, no more splitting myself in two in order to achieve my lofty personal goals.

New Stories (and some old ones too)​

This being the restart/reimaging of my blogging adventures, I'll be kicking off with some of the useful things I have been digging into for the past few months, all with the aim to help developers new and old with their game development adventures (although some tips are good for all).

Here is a sneak peek and some of the things to come:

• Automation for Unity Builds, large and small
• Building projects using the Unity Package Manager, tips'n'tricks
• More MonoGame fun (because XNA is in my soul)
• XRTK news, tips and tutorials (because XR is our future)
• Some of the recent Unity UI Extensions updates and features

I might even venture towards how this new Ghost blog was setup, except that this adventure is still continuing, expect some bumps along the road as I figure this one out.

Let the games begin​

Time to get this party started, all those in favour say "aye".

(Written on an iPad, using Ghost, Hosted on Azure and some rubber bands for good measure.  Imagine me saying that a year ago)

And to those who are still listening and have followed my decline over the years, Thanks for sticking with me as I turn this ship back around on to a new course.

Thought I would give this a go as some cunning bods have taking the decade old code of the awesome Windows Live Writer (WLW for short) and open sourced it, creating Open Live Writer

One of the biggest Tech Conferences in the UK is returning this year, refocused, re-targeted and yet still as big as ever. Compressed down to just two days (1 business and 1 technical) it offers a fast paced and intensive experience to get everyone up to speed.

Today (September 10th) marks another notch in the VS Code journey to become THE lightweight multi-platform editor, the one editor to rule them all.

At the time of writing this, I am nearing the end of my second journey in to book writing. (in a very short period of time) In response to a survey I put out about where to put content (a non-UI tutorial in a book about the new UI system), I am publishing the appendix for my forthcoming Unity title named Unity 3D UI Essentials :

I’ve been very quite of late, especially on my Blog. Now this isn’t because of anything sinister or just laziness, I’ve just been really REALLY busy.

I’m not usually one for cross promoting sales or offers from vendor sites, there are better ways to do it.

Things have been quite recently what with the Holidays and all. In fact WordPress even gave me an early present when I updated they kindly reset my entire site back to it’s theme defaults, how nice of them.

Since I am a glutton for punishment, before and shortly after working on the WP7 app for work, I got involved with a talented developer in Auz called Chris Hughes.

As I’ve been quite a few weeks now I thought it was about time I let the cat out of the back of what I’ve been up to. If you are been following me on twitter @DDReaper, then you should have a hint already.

Over @ pixel prospector there is a vast (and I do mean vast) list of links to help out the aspiring indie dev in the whole marketing area. Why is this important, because if people do not know about your game they wo not go looking for it.