Converting Blog From Genesis/Blissfull Child to Pagelines...

[cookingruthie11 0]

I am sorry if I have not looked well enough for some video or instruction or post on this type of thing already. I am pretty new at the entire wordpress thing to begin with but heard wonderful things about PageLines and went ahead and bit the bullet and got the developer full blown version today. Due to an abundance of caution.... What I have done is purchased a separate iPage.com hosting account and planned to download our current entire site and then re-FTP the whole thing back up to the new account with iPages. Then give the conversion to the new platform a month to settle in and get converted to what we want it to be and then when it is just right... redirect the URL to the new site or copy it over or whatever... (you I am sure can tell that we are certainly not experts.) We considered doing this within a local folder but just want it to work in the real world setting... Anyhow, our current site is done in Genesis with Blissful Child as the child theme... I have listened to the tutorials and am certain I could just do a clean install of wordpress and then Pagelines. However my wife has more than 280 separate posts already done that we want in the new site or converted. Is this as simple as just choosing Pagelines as the theme within the wordpress install and then going back and figuring out what plugins do not work any longer? Is there a converting from an existing install with Genesis video somewhere I should be looking at? What problems am I going to be dealing with after I do this? Thanks in advance for pointing us the right direction.

[Rob 547]

Well, we don't have a video or specific instructions to convert from one theme to ours. That said, WordPress has an export utility that you should use. It's found in Dashboard > Tools > Export. In your hold hosting package, if you have root access or can access phpmyadmin, export your full database, just to make sure you have a backup copy. Ask the host to support that. Ask iPage to help import that properly, if you need to. But before we go there, let's try to set you up. Install WP on the new account. Use the WordPress importer (you'll need a plugin that they'll help you get) via Dashboard > Tools > Import. You want to import the file you exported. Any images will not be moved. So, FTP into the old account and download wp-content/uploads and all folders under it. Then, FTP into the new account and upload the entire /uploads folder and its subfolders. On the iPage account, in WordPress, go to Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and make the permalink structure match what you had previously. Save. Using the default WP theme, check to see if the posts are there. If so, you're good to go. If not, then you need to go back to the 'move the database' plan. At this point, install your plugins. However, if they are Genesis plugins, they will not work in PageLines because they're coded for Genesis. We have many of our own in the Store. Test to make sure all your posts work, pages are clearly visible and links work. Now install PageLines Framework and begin your testing and any customizations. Install the basic plugins and sections we provide via the forum. Just to be clear, the forum is supported every day, but not 24 hours per day. Live chat is only available Monday to Friday from 6AM to 3PM Pacific Time.