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July 5, 2004

from HTML to Wiki?

I have a very popular site that consists entirely of Ani DiFranco lyrics. I've been maintaining this site since 1996. People send me lyrics corrections; i adjust the lyrics, etc. Each page is a simple HTML page. This is sooo the ideal case for a wiki. Only, the idea of converting everything to Wiki format, getting rid of all basic HTML and losing all of my URL addresses does not appeal to me. Right now, an ideal tool would let me list all HTML pages that should be converted into a Wiki and it would retain everything that it knows about the page while simultaneously wiki-ifying it and not losing the pages and thus pagerank.

Category:

Posted by zephoria at July 5, 2004 1:10 PM | TrackBack

Comments (10)

Christopher Allen:

Why not use my editthispagephp.sourceforge.net -- all you need to do is install a single include file, and then install a "stub" for each file you want to have user editable. Then just page in your HTML from your old pages.

To keep your old file names, you may need to coerce your apache into running PHP on HTML files first, then you can use .html rather then .php. If want more details on how I did this on my apache server, let me know.

BTW, EditThisPagePHP also optionally supports RSS, comments, and trackbacks.

Posted by Christopher Allen | July 5, 2004 1:55 PM

Posted on July 5, 2004 13:55

misuba:

Some mod-rewrite voodoo in your .htaccess file should take care of your URLs, if your Wiki is worth its salt. (Yes, I'm pretty sure that sentence was English.)

Posted by misuba | July 5, 2004 3:10 PM

Posted on July 5, 2004 15:10

Rich:

Why don't you ask your readers to transfer the site step by step to the wiki? This might be the easiest and fastest way.

Posted by Rich | July 6, 2004 11:33 PM

Posted on July 6, 2004 23:33

Rich:

Why don't you ask your readers to transfer the site step by step to the wiki? This might be the easiest and fastest way.

Posted by Rich | July 6, 2004 11:37 PM

Posted on July 6, 2004 23:37

Betsy Devine:

Just be sure to keep a backup non-wiki, in case spammers replace some lyrics with various unsavory URLs.

Posted by Betsy Devine | July 12, 2004 6:57 AM

Posted on July 12, 2004 06:57

Lawrence Krubner:

I've a friend who read your site everyday single day during her last breakup. I remember trying to cook dinner at her house one night and every 15 minutes she called me over to read me more lyrics that she thought said what she felt.

I've other friends who don't read the site so often, but simply love it.

I think they'd all love the chance to do some input, if the input method was easy. I'm not sure what Wiki you're thinking of, but most would be way over the head of many of my friends. The friend I mention above only recently learned how to copy and paste text.

Posted by Lawrence Krubner | July 14, 2004 12:07 PM

Posted on July 14, 2004 12:07

zephoria:

Lawrence - most of my Ani readers email me with corrections (which i always look into, even if it takes me a month). There are about 8 people who do high-end corrections, send me new lyrics and are uber uber helpful in keeping that site accurate. It'd be more for them and anyone who would want to learn. But i'd still take on emails. Still thinking about how to do it best...

Posted by zephoria | July 14, 2004 12:25 PM

Posted on July 14, 2004 12:25

Alan Levine:

Create redirects for the old HTML URLs to their new wiki versions, see:
http://wsabstract.com/howto/htaccess7.shtml

Re-directs are one of the easist ways to cut down 404s. Old URLs are preserved, requests from them are transparently bopped to the new address, and decent robots are able to communicate the change.

A less elegant way would be to first make a backup copy of all your old HTML files, and edit each one to contains a simple "this page as been moved to a cool new wiki" and use a META REFRESH tag to bounce to the new URL.

Posted by Alan Levine | July 15, 2004 1:39 PM

Posted on July 15, 2004 13:39

stefanos:

does ani want to submit some poetry to our magazine in nyc? we are going to have an arts magazine titled sousavaillence put out. it would be a special edition of gathering of the tribes

I sent you an email about a similar event at union square and if you find it interesting, please post it.

stef

Posted by stefanos | July 16, 2004 3:24 AM

Posted on July 16, 2004 03:24