This is a case study with two sides: branding and technical issues. Our talk addressed the how, the why and the benefits of carrying out the migration of At Home with Kim Vallee blog from subText to WordPress. We told you why you would move to Wordpress, demystified the good and the bad of changing all our URLs, reviewed the migration tools and techniques we used plus a migration checklist.

1. The Perfect Migration
to Wordpress:
Why and How
by Jérôme Paradis and Kim Vallée

2. Two viewpoints
Branding
Toolset

3. My Needs
Redesign
New Features

4. BEFORE
Subtext
3-column
layout

5. AFTER
2-column
layout
Advertising

7. AFTER
Flexibility

8. 1 brand, 2 blogs and
a community

11. Saving Time

13. Designing a WP Theme
What loads first
Bookmarks
How it looks like in FB

15. Migration Methods
WordPress Database to
Import database

16. Changing the URL
blog.kimvallee.com
-> athome.kimvallee.com
Branding
Impacts
Structure

17. New URL Structure
/about.aspx -> /about/
Categories
/category/100.aspx -> category/dining/dishing-tips
Tags
/tags/anniversary/default.aspx
-> /tag/anniversary/
Posts
/archive/2008/10/27/asparagus-risotto.aspx
-> /2008/10/asparagus-risotto/

18. Migrating
Images

19. Other Migration Details
Tags
Categories
Comments

20. Open Source Converter
Developed in .Net, C#
subText to Wordpress DB
needs modifications to support other source databases
Plugins support
Comes with Live Writer tags stripper
Features
Moves posts, comments, tags and categories
Generates .htaccess 301 redirects
Updates URL and image links
Can merge and/or rename categories
Can extract first image file as a variable
Contributors interested?

21. External Tools
Must Advertising Statistics

22. Our Favorite Plugins

23. WordPress Related
Post Images
Customization of WordPress Related Posts

24. Top 10

25. WP
Twitip ID

26. Add to Any: Share/
Save/Bookmark

27. Add to Any: Share/
Save/Bookmark

28. Flexo Archives

29. Other Plugins
Search Unleashed
Customize search results
Google XML Sitemap
Tiny Contact Form
WP-Cache
Needed adaptations for Akismet

30. Results
Increased Page Views
More Engagement
More Flexibility

31. Future of KimVallee.com
Mash-up Homepage
Facebook Connect
Lifestream Curator
BackType Connect
Video reports

32. Thank You!!!
Jérôme Paradis
@jeromeparadis
facebook.com/jeromeparadis
http://paradivision.com
Kim Vallée
http://kimvallee.com
facebook.com/kimvallee
@kimvallee