In a nutshell, I used Mephisto for the conversion. First I spent about a week mapping Mephisto’s DB to WordPress’ DB. I went straight into the Mephisto Rails project and created a new model that pointed to my newly created WordPress database. I then created a controller in Mephisto that looked exactly like this:

(note: if this is a pain to read, you can also view it here)

class MephistoController < ApplicationController
    def index
        start_time = Time.now
        logger.info 'querying mephisto articles'
        @articles = Content.find(:all, :conditions=>"article_id IS NULL")
                logger.info 'querying mephisto comments'
                @comments = Content.find(
			:all, :conditions=>"article_id IS NOT NULL")
        logger.info 'querying mephisto taggings'
        @taggings = Tagging.find(:all)
        logger.info 'querying mephisto tags'
        @tags = Tag.find(:all)
        logger.info 'processing terms'
        for tag in @tags
            @wp_term = WpTerm.new
            @wp_term.term_id = tag.id
            @wp_term.name = tag.name
            @wp_term.slug = tag.name.downcase.gsub(" ","_")
            @wp_term.term_group = 0
            @wp_term.save
        end
        logger.info 'processing term relationships'
        for tagging in @taggings
            @wp_tr = WpTermRelationships.new
            @wp_tr.term_taxonomy_id = tagging.tag_id
            @wp_tr.object_id = tagging.taggable_id
            @wp_tr.save
        end
        logger.info 'processing term taxonomy'
        for tag in @tags
            c = Tagging.count(:all, :conditions=>"tag_id = #{tag.id}")
            @wp_tt = WpTermTaxonomy.new
            @wp_tt.term_taxonomy_id = tag.id
            @wp_tt.term_id = tag.id
            @wp_tt.taxonomy = "post_tag"
            @wp_tt.parent = 0
            @wp_tt.count = c
            @wp_tt.save
        end
        logger.info 'processing posts'
        for article in @articles
            c = Content.count(:all, :conditions=>"article_id = #{article.id}")
            @wp_post = WpPost.new
            @wp_post.ID = article.id
            @wp_post.post_author = 1
            @wp_post.post_date = article.published_at-7.hours
            @wp_post.post_date_gmt = article.published_at
            @wp_post.post_content = article.body
            @wp_post.post_title = article.title
            @wp_post.post_category = 39
            @wp_post.post_status = "publish"
            @wp_post.post_status = "open"
            @wp_post.ping_status = "closed"
            @wp_post.post_name = article.permalink
            @wp_post.post_modified = article.updated_at-7.hours
            @wp_post.post_modified_gmt = article.updated_at
            @wp_post.post_parent = 0
            @wp_post.guid = article.published_at.strftime("http://blog.gillumiante.com/%Y/%m/%d/")+article.permalink
            @wp_post.menu_order = 0
            @wp_post.post_type = "post"
            @wp_post.comment_count = c
            @wp_post.save
        end
        logger.info 'processing comments'
                for comment in @comments
            @wp_com = WpComment.new
            @wp_com.comment_ID = comment.id
            @wp_com.comment_post_ID = comment.article_id
            @wp_com.comment_author = comment.author
            @wp_com.comment_author_email = comment.author_email
            if comment.author_url == nil
                comment.author_url = ""
            end
            @wp_com.comment_author_url = comment.author_url
            @wp_com.comment_author_IP = comment.author_ip
            @wp_com.comment_date = comment.published_at-7.hours
            @wp_com.comment_date_gmt = comment.published_at
            @wp_com.comment_content = comment.body
            @wp_com.comment_karma = 0
            @wp_com.comment_approved = '1'
            @wp_com.comment_parent = 0
            @wp_com.user_id = 0
            @wp_com.save
                end
        logger.info 'finished!'
        end_time = Time.now
        @lapsed = end_time-start_time
        render :layout=>false
    end
end

I then proceeded to visit the /mephisto/index page on my mephisto blog, which fired this baby off. It took all of about 9 seconds to complete.

I realize the irony of using Mephisto in order to abandon it. But in the end, I wasn’t switching from the Rails based app because of Rails, but because of the app. I am still in love with rails and as you can see, this project would have taken me a lot longer to accomplish had I attempted to write it in PHP, the language of WordPress.

I’ve since realized that Typo’s development activity has gone way up, and Mephisto’s has gone way down. I have been using Typo on another blog venture of mine and am in love with it. Actually, I’m loving it much more than Mephisto these days for several reasons, most of which pertain to user friendliness. I did run into an issue with trackback spam on Typo, which I’ve read as a big complaint about it. But trackbacks aren’t even an option on Mephisto, so what’s the big deal?

The point I’m trying to make here is this. If there’s anyone out there with experience migrating from Mephisto to Typo I’d like to hear from you. There’s plenty of google hits about going from Typo to Mephisto, but nothing in the opposite direction. I’m interested in converting this blog, Tongue and Groove (once again).

Without having enough time to really look into it, I believe Mephisto is using TZinfo Gem to convert the database timestamp to whatever you set your timezone to be in the Settings and Lucid is reading that as UTC anyway and attempting to convert it to the users current time.

So rather that fudging the JavaScript, I decided to reformat the date that Lucid sees and let it do it’s thing. In other words, I plugged the following into the home.liquid, index.liquid, and single.liquid templates:

from

<p class="auth">Posted
<span class="typo_date" title="{{ article.published_at }}">
{{ article.published_at }}
</span></p>

to

<p class="auth">Posted
<span class="typo_date" title="{{ article.published_at | date: "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S MST %Y" }}">
{{ article.published_at | date: "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S MST %Y" }}
</span></p>

where MST is my own time zone.

Hope this helps others, as I wasn’t able to find any other info about it.

Then, as I was browsing through the Mephisto Wiki I stumbled upon the answer. The problem was stemming from the fact that I’m running Mephisto on Apache. According to the wiki entry I found, it’s because Apache likes to add a trailing slash (/) to anything without an extension (stuff that follows the dot “.” in a filename) thinking that it must be a directory. Rails urls (and therefore Mephisto urls) use Pretty Urls instead of extensions and the like.

Apparently, however Mephisto is handling comments is being cached weird in Apache because of it. The easiest, and highly effective, solution is to plug the following in your public/.htaccess file somewhere (I put it at the bottom):
DirectorySlash Off
Since it took me 4 hours to find that post with the answer, I thought I’d post it here as well and hopefully those looking for a solution can find it in one of the two places quicker.

I’ve been working on migrating this old blog to Mephisto blogging system. Mephisto runs on Rails which I have blogged about before and still continue to love and swear by.

The old blog I wrote in PHP a few years ago. I was just getting sick of re-inventing the wheel every time I wanted to add and maintain a new feature. I wanted a new system that I didn’t have to build and maintain so that I could focus more on the actual content. Mephisto also allows you to use Akismet for spam defense. Akismet is typically used with WordPress and does a great job of keeping comment spam out of your blog. I was spending way too much time removing spam from the old blog, so Akismet is a welcome change!

Also, for the sake of time, I decided to download a theme for Mephisto rather than design one myself. I chose the Lucid theme which is actually a port of the Lucid Typo theme (Typo is another Rails based blogging system). I have tweaked the default theme quite a bit to be better suited for SEO as well as handle my google ads. I also changed the default color from Ruby to Mint. But if you like the Ruby better you can change it in the upper right corner. You can also change the layout from static to liquid. These options are a few of the reasons I chose the Lucid theme.

Last but not least, I’ve finally made the transition from using Webalizer as my tracking software, to using Google Analytics instead. Google Analytics is a robust tracking application that is comparable to expensive tracking apps like Omniture but is offered as a free service. I’m extremely impressed with Google Analytics’ capabilities and how easy it is to implement. I’d recommend it for any website, big or small!

Let me know what you think of the new do.