Migrate from Wordpress to Github Pages using Jekyll

Why?

• Wordpress is bloated. It won’t even run on a basic free DigitalOcean instance.
• GitHub is free and has powerful version control built in.
• Wordpress is unnecessary overhead. Github Pages are light weight.
• Github Pages are portable. Everything you write is written in Markdown and is portable.
• There’s no need to upgrade or install plugins. The output is static.
• I love git and I love markdown.

Overview

Here’s what we need to do:

• Migrate comments to Disqus
• Export content
• Using Jekyll
• Publish to Github Pages

Migrate comments

• Setup an account
  • Go to http://disqus.com/admin/create/
• Setup Disqus Comment System plugin in Wordpress
  • Go to Plugins > Add new, search, install then activate
  • Go to /wp-admin/edit-comments.php?page=disqus (Comments > Disqus)
  • Click Upgrade, follow the instructions
• Export Comments
  • Go to /wp-admin/export.php (Tools > Export)
• Import Comments
  • Go to http://import.disqus.com/

Export Content

• Setup WordPress to Jekyll Exporter Plugin in Wordpress
  • Go to Plugins > Add new, search, install then activate
    • Fatal error: Call to undefined function Alchemy\Zippy\mb_strtolower() in /home/user/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/jekyll-exporter/vendor/alchemy/zippy/src/Zippy.php on line 196
      • If you get this error, you need to install PHP with mbstring.
  • Go to /wp-admin/export.php?type=jekyll (Tools > Export to Jekyll)
    • Save the jekyll-export.zip to your computer

Using Jekyll

Install jekyll

• gem install jekyll

Create the new jekyll install

• jekyll new <yourname>.github.io
  • ie: jekyll new jpswade.github.io
• You may want to initialise your git repository at this point and make your first commit

Get a theme (if you like)

• http://jekyllthemes.org/

Extract your Wordpress content

• From the jekyll-export.zip extract everything to the new folder
• Note: You may want to merge your _config.yml

Examine the content

• You may find that you want to manually update the contents before it’s published.

Add Disqus Comments

• Get the Universal Code
  • eg: https://jpswade.disqus.com/admin/settings/universalcode/
• Add the Universal Code into _layouts/post.html

To build your Jekyll site

• jekyll build

To serve/view your site locally:

• jekyll serve

Publish to Github Pages

Setup your .gitignore

• Add any project files (eg: nbproject)
• Add _site (we only push the source not the built site)

Setup your CNAME (optional)

• Create a file called CNAME
• Add your custom domain to it (eg: wade.be)

Push your git repo to github

• If you’ve not already created a repo in GitHub for your site, do that now (eg: jpswade.github.io)

There’s lots more you can do with Jekyll.