Steps to take to move from WF to WA..?

[lhl]

I have some reasons that I would like to move my self-hosted WriteFreely site to a hosted WriteAs site.

a) Can this be done?
b) What are the steps involved, beyond setting up an account?

[matt]

It can definitely be done. The process would be:

• exporting data from your WF site
• importing to Write.as via the API

I’m throwing together a small tool to help with this now. What operating system do you use (e.g. Windows, mac, Linux)?

[lhl]

Excellent. I’m on Linux.

[matt]

Great. You can download the tool for Linux here: wfimport (64-bit). To use it to migrate to Write.as:

• Create a Write.as account
• On your WriteFreely site, go to the Export page and click either the “json” or “prettified” option to download all account data
• Download and extract the wfimport tool linked above
• Run it on that exported JSON file with the following command, replacing username with your Write.as username and exportdata.json with the downloaded filename:

./wfimport -u username exportdata.json

• Enter your Write.as account password

At this point it’ll import all blogs (“collections”) and posts to your Write.as account.

Note: if any blogs in your data export share an alias with a blog you already own, those posts will be published to your existing blog. Otherwise it’ll create a new blog and publish the posts to it. Also, if that alias is taken by another Write.as user, the blog simply won’t be imported at all right now.

Here is the source code for this tool. Let me know if you run into any issues.

[lhl]

OK.

This is the response:

Logging in to write.as...OK
Getting your collections...OK
Reading file...OK
Parsing file...OK
Read user matt export.
Found 1 collection(s).
Found 0 draft post(s).
matt has 37 post(s). 
Creating collection matt...error: Collection name is already taken.
Logging out...OK

[lhl]

OK.

I changed the "alias":"name" in the exported .json file. Doing so allowed me to successfully import the posts to the WriteAs Blog.

Just need to re-import all the images to go along with the posts now…!

[lhl]

A new learning curve, sort of…!

When using a Custom Domain name, How do I login? I don’t see any menu options…

[matt]

So the custom domain is really only for readers – all management is done on Write.as when logged in. You’ll notice when publishing / navigating to blogs, the URL will be write.as/example/ instead of example.com. That’ll give you control over your posts, but readers will always see / be redirected to your custom domain.

[lhl]

Many thanks @matt for making this happen.

My main reason for making the switch is so that I can make use of SnapAs for my photography. I was a reluctant user of PixelFed - which if one wants an Instagram replacement is SO much better, but I just needed a place to have my images on show…

As a now Pro user of WriteAs the costs for me work out pretty much the same as what I would be giving to Amazon for the AWS server usage.

As much as I like to have control over my software, I believe that yourself and the WriteAs team/products are true to your word and philosophy and the hosting/updating etc will be well managed.

[matt]

Happy to do it!

That definitely makes sense. And I really appreciate you trusting us with your hosting. As you go along, keep us in the loop with your experience / feedback on Snap.as so we can keep improving it