ICTworks

ICTWorks would like to give a huge thank you to Jordi Cabot and the team at Go WordPress for helping to bring the site up to date by migrating to WordPress. I won’t convince you that one blog platform is better than another, but if you’ve ever wanted to move your current setup to the latest version of WordPress you really need to have a look at their services. They’re just phenomenal, and their basic service is available to NGOs for free.

So what’s different?

If you’re a long-time reader of ICTWorks you may have noticed a few changes in the last few months. We’ve updated the site with a new design and layout, all on top of new technology. Originally ICTWorks was built on Drupal, but after several years we needed additional functionality, plugins, support… We decided to move to WordPress.

Migrating websites is always time-consuming. Articles, photos, comments, users… A simple blog can have thousands of entries with no upper limit. Considering (for once) our interns’ sanity, we started looking for an automated way to make this happen. After searching through a bunch of half-fixes and scripts I stumbled onto Howards Owens’ recommendation of Go WordPress and decided to have a look.

How the Go WordPress process works…

Go WordPress doesn’t harp on scripts, versions, permissions or anything technical. They give simple instructions and email you back everything you need. If you’ve done WordPress’ famous 5-Minute Install, you simply follow their instructions and load the database they send you. It’s that easy.

I contacted Jordi about their pro bono NGO deal and he was more than happy to take us on. He asked me to send in our current database and to set up a new WordPress site. I sent in the database (with ICTworks’ user information removed) and the next day it came back with instructions on how to load it into the new site. No third party access needed or odd plugins, just a script to run that loaded all of the data. The script took about 5 seconds to run, and when I hit refresh there were almost 1000 articles in all their categorized and tagged glory.

The pro bono initiative is limited to Go WordPress’ basic package which moves the posts, categories, tags and comments, but not the users or images. A bit of DB magic and copying a few files got our authors and images working resulting in a new site with 95% of content up and running in just a few days. The rest was wrapped up nicely by hand.

What does this mean for you?

If you’re looking to move your site over to WordPress (from Drupal, Joomla, PHP-nuke, Sitefinity, MoveableType, etc.), consider using Jordi and the team at Go WordPress. For most websites their basic pro bono initiative is incredibly robust and will do the trick… for larger migrations with lots of images and authors, paying for their premium package is a simple way to get the job done once and for all. If you’re being held back by your current site and dragging your feet on hiring someone to struggle through an upgrade, just get over it and hire Jordi. It’s that simple.

Still not sure? If you have any questions about the process or need additional information, just post them here.

And from the team here at ICTWorks, thank you Go WordPress!