Convert site from wordpress to Plone 4

Question

I have been asked to convert an entire site that is currently using wordpress to Plone 4.1. I have no experience using Plone and I was wondering if anyone has attempted this before? I had a look and can't find much information about converting to Plone and I was wondering if anyone had come across some good advice? This does seem like a rather big task...

Thanks, Fraser

Answer 1

Yes, someone already performed that specific migration:

http://davisagli.com/blog/notes-on-migrating-this-blog-from-wordpress-to-plone

As the author says, another approach to this task it's :

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.transmogrifier

Answer 2

Adam Terry will be giving a talk on the easy way of converting sites like this in 2 days at the Plone Conference in San Francisco. I would recommend attending (for many reasons, not just that talk). Failing that, the short summary of the talk is two tools.

Diazo (or now called plone.app.theming ) - Makes replicating an existing theme much easier.

and

Funnelweb (which does all the collective.transmogrifier stuff for you) - Makes coverting all the content easier.

Note: this is an approach for any site, not just wordpress. It relies on webcrawling a site. An approach which directly reads the database, if you have access, might be easier and cleaner.

Answer 3

This is a massive task, not difficult, but time consuming. Its not really a question that can be answered on stackoverflow, but i can point you in the right direction of some decent doco.

Here is a good place to start - http://noenieto.com/blog/theming-plone-4

Beware, Plones theming engine is very different to anything you will have experienced before. If i was you I would firstly create a static template of your theme and build on that. I have been developing plone skins for 5+ years now, and i always start with a static theme.

Many plone developers are using Diazo / Deliverance to develop plone themes, maybe take a look at those too...

Good luck, im afraid you're going to need it!