blog.flimflan.com

Tips for migrating .TEXT to dasBlog

A little while ago, I made the move from the .TEXT blogging software to dasBlog. Migrating the actual content was pretty straightforward (as mentioned in the previous post). The problem was that any existing links to my content that existed out in the wild would no longer resolve, since .TEXT used a different URL format for identifying posts. Additionally, the URL for my RSS feed changed, so any aggregators that tried to pull from my site would get an error, and probably eventually drop me.
It turns out that both of these problems were relatively easy to solve. I credit the dasBlog development team for making a flexible platform.

To allow .TEXT permalink posts to resolve, I simply added the following entry to the end of the newtelligence.DasBlog.UrlMapper section of web.config:
<!-- .TEXT archive compatibility -->
<!-- Translates
  FROM: /blog/archive/2004/07/27/194.aspx
  TO: /blog/default.aspx?date=2004-07-27
-->
<add matchExpression = "(?&lt;basedir&gt;.*?)/archive/(?&lt;year&gt;\d{4})/(?&lt;month&gt;\d{2})/(?&lt;day&gt;\d{2})/(?&lt;postid&gt;\d+)\.aspx"
 mapTo="{basedir}/default.aspx?date={year}-{month}-{day}" />       

Now, an old .TEXT url out in the wild like /archive/2004/07/27/194.html will correctly resolve to the corresponding post in dasBlog.


To allow the .TEXT feed URL to resolve (Rss.aspx), I changed this existing entry in the UrlMapper section from:
<add matchExpression="(?&lt;basedir&gt;.*?)/rss\.ashx"  mapTo="{basedir}/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss?" />

to:
<add matchExpression="(?&lt;basedir&gt;.*?)/rss\.as[hp]x" mapTo="{basedir}/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss?" />

Now if only there was a way to migrate that skin I spent so much time on...