11 replies to this topic

[bwelford]

In the distant past, I set up two simple websites using a Dreamweaver template. All went well and over the years from time to time I would use Dreamweaver to edit the templates and update the web pages.

I was using an ancient version of Dreamweaver that did the job. Suddenly it has stopped working and I can no longer find the DreamweaverMX.exe file that was doing the job.

Normally I now work with Wordpress, so I am reluctant to pay out $400 for the latest version of Dreamweaver, when these two websites are the only ones I would use it for.

For each website, I have a template file .dwt and a series of web pages using this template. Can anyone suggest the least effort way to migrate this set of template + web pages into a free open-source software that will do the same job.

I should emphasize again I am looking for minimum effort here. I do not want to have to handle each web page separately, if that can be avoided.

[jonbey]

Someone asked a similar question on wordpress.org and got a short reply, http://wordpress.org...plate?replies=2

which I hope means that it is something relatively easy to do, so break down the template into parts and pop them in the relevant places, widgetizing the sidebar, footer etc. too.

[DonnaFontenot]

I don't know much about dreamweaver, but I'm guess you're not going to find a low effort way to handle this. Sure, converting the DW template to a WP theme might be relatively painless, but then what about all the content? Is there an easy way to move that into the database? If I had to guess, I'd say no.

[jonbey]

This may help: http://codex.wordpre...porting_Content

this

Importing from [X]HTML
Using trial and error one can make an e.g., perl script to concatenate [X]HTML files as RSS <item>s, saving into a single file.xml, then import that as RSS. Note however to first remove any newlines between <p>..</p>s, as mentioned above.

The format allowed is quite simple in fact. Just make each HTML file into an <item> as below and concatenate them together:

<item>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<category>Kites</category>
<category>Taiwan</category>
<title>Fun times</title>
<content:encoded><p>What great times we had...</p><p>And then Bob...</p></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>...
Just be sure the <content:encoded> line is a single long line with no newlines embedded.

If your HTML is well-formed, you can try using the Import HTML plugin.

and / or:

Importing from a Site of Static Pages
A discussion in February 2011 on the wp-hackers email list involved importing 6,000 static pages into WordPress. A number of responses recommended using the PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser to facilitate the porting of the pages.

[DonnaFontenot]

Kudos! Color me wrong.

I may play around with that plugin myself and see how well it works. http://wordpress.org...ort-html-pages/

[bwelford]

Thanks, Jonbey, that's a great answer. I'm not sure how well formed the HTML is so it still implies a good deal of work, but it is a route that I may well pursue when time permits.

I guess WP is the simplest CMS (content management system ) that I could consider. I assume Drupal or Joomla would imply a longer learning curve.

[jonbey]

glad it was useful (or hope that is actually works, no idea really!)

[AbleReach]

With a little hunting and luck, you will be able to find an unused upgrade from MX to CS3 or CS4 for about $200. CS4 upgrades only cover the last MX - MX 2004. CS3 does all the MXes.

If it's worth $200 to you, this is a good time to go for it. CS5.5 is due out the end of May and some of us will be snapping up older upgrades to avoid falling off of the upgrade track. I think CS5 is the last edition to allow upgrading from CS2.

On Amazon, try searching for Dreamweaver in the Web Design software category, then restrict the search to in stock and within the likely price range, before ordering the results by release date. Then, it's a simple matter to look at the end of the results first. --> example

[jonbey]

and there is some sort of Wordpress-Dreamweaver addon too, I did not mention it before as I suspected it to be for newer versions - but I assume that it makes it easy to create a wordpress theme from a dreamweaver site.

[DonnaFontenot]

I just tested the plugin to import html files. It worked like a dream. I had to first use httrack to grab a mirror of a small site I have. Why? Because it uses php and includes to put the pages together (header, footer, menu, etc.). So I needed the site to "be put together" as static html pages first. That took about 5 minutes to build a mirror of a small site (31 pages). Once I had static html pages from that site (page1.html, page2.html, etc.), I ran the plugin on a brand new install of wp (test site). I could choose either to create pages or posts (not both), so I chose pages. I then had to tell it how to recognize "just the content". My content was surrounded by a div with an id of "content", so that was easy, but as long as your content is surrounded by some sort of consistent tag, you can just specify that. 10 seconds later, I had a new wordpress blog with 31 pages of content that matched the content of the old site. Now, if this were more than just a test, I'd then recreate the template (or use a new design, cuz why not, it's a good time for a facelift, right?), make a few tweaks including possibly some redirects if needed, and voila.

Thanks jonbey. I may never need to do this for real, but if I do, I'll think of you fondly.

[AbleReach]

Donna is my go-forth-and-do-it hero.

:notworthy: :woohoo:

[jonbey]

Glad I helped, although really, thank the Wordpress community!