A heads up: Switching to matthewcornell.org in the near future

Just a quick notice that I'll be moving this blog to www.matthewcornell.org in the next few weeks, and you may see some side-effects - including re-postings - as I play with backing up [1] my posts. (Side note: I'll be outsourcing this transfer - see The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow for another example.) I checked back and see that this is #193, and my first was on 4/5/05.

Reader question: Any tips for doing this? I'm planning on using FeedBurner (which frankly I haven't 100% figured out), and my site's built on Drupal.

There are many unknowns, which means there will be some LessonsLearned (see Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year). FYI I'm using GetAFreelancer.com this time - the project is move Blogger blog to existing Drupal-based site, and I've selected the winner.

The reason I'm coverting is to drive traffic to get more work. Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned [2].

Resources

• [1]And yes, I do have the original HTML backed up, plus comments saved as email. A few possibilities: How do I create a backup of my entire blog? and Download All Your Blogs with Blogger Backup, Easy Restoration
  
• [2] A little post preview: My interview at Academic Productivity, plus my recent interview with Kerry Gleeson.
  

Comments

[Rafal]

Since my html and web design knowlegde is limited and I don't qualify to be called amateur my suggestion is to stick with blogger.com. if it's satisfying your needs. There is an option to use blogger platform and host it on different address.
This might save you some hassle and money... Thanks

[Brick Andrews]

My one concern would be all the existing links out there to ideamatt.blogspot.com. I am assuming you will have some kind of redirect (if only a big, bold announcement on this page) from the existing url to the new url.

Are you still intending to have a blog? It seems like Drupal is a CMS. I have used Joomla for content management before, and while I found it was excellent for a general purpose website, the blogging capabilities were just not the same as a true blogging platform. My solution was to install Wordpress on my hosting account for my blog, and simply link from the "blog" menu item in Joomla to the wordpress homepage (which you could put in its own subdomain, for example, blog.matthewcornell.org.

Wordpress makes it easy to transfer your content from one install to another, so I cannot really comment on blogger.

[Matthew Cornell]

Rafal: I'm switching to get Google to associate my expertise (personal productivity, GTD, etc.) with my domain. I considered your approach, but I think it's the opposite from what I need. matthewcornell.org already has content - I just need to move IdeaMatt there... Thanks for your comment.

Brick: Excellent point re: redirects. I specified that text links be put for each one to the equivalent on the new site. I had not thought about an automated redirect.

I'll definitely continue blogging; it's important to me for many reasons. I'll also be creating an Ezine (ugly word!) that'll be tightly focused on client needs, including FAQs, tips and tricks, and case studies (e.g., "a day in the life of a __"). Re: Drupal, I've decided to use the blog module that's available. I did consider wordpress, but I've gone down the Drupal road. Good and scary!

[Timo]

While you are at it: I would love to have a full feed for your blog, not only the first paragraph. I always find those partial feeds quite inconvenient and prefer reading everything from within my feed reader (i.e. Google Reader).