Pulse 4.6 - now with blog import and draft postings

[pulsecms]

pulsecms version 4.6 is here!

Check out the notes on what's new and how to get it:

http://help.pulsecms.com/article/10-version-history

️ Wahooo~!

Migrate your blog from #wordpress, #tumblr, #blogger or any platform, and start using Pulse today:
https://migrate.pulsecms.com/

Also lots of other fixes, updates and a cool thing ... Pulse drafts!
Thanks @dirk for this:

Set individual blog posts on or off

Go party and grab this FREE update now and update your Pulse sites!!!

[pulsecms]

[jdloudon]

Fantastic - thank you. I have just made a new site for a client that has a properly shonky old Blooger site and was about to set about import posts individually so this is a miracle. If only I could get it working.

I have tried posting the code into import box:

http://clientsite.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

and server has a think about things then comes up with this message:

Service Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

I am using a brand new and fast VPS with PHP 7 installed. Any idea on what is going wrong?
Thanks
James

[pixelart]

Got all excited when I saw the new blog import function until I found it doesn't work with the Armadillo blog!!!!

[pulsecms]

Thanks @jdloudon - I didn't think it would be that heavy resource intensive. Runs well on cheap shared hosting

Just ran it on a test site and seemed to be ok...

Could be something in the "temporarily" and they were having issues - so try it again later and report back!

[pulsecms]

I'm glad you're excited @pixelart!
Not sure how Armadillo formats pages - can you share a URL for testing?
Cheers

[pixelart]

Here you go for the blog page:
http://bailey-cox.com/news_blog/

and the rss feed:
http://bailey-cox.com/news_blog/feed.rss

[jdloudon]

Hi, I thought maybe because it was a big blog I was trying to import - so I tried to import from a blog with only 4 posts and the same thing happened.
Have I got the right procedure going on? Are there any specific PHP things or limits I should tweak on the server?

[Torsten]

A blog import is a good idea, so thank you for your effort. But I am sorry to say that it is not as easy as adverstised. Let me explain.

I have a WordPress blog and tried to import it into Pulse. First issue was that the RSS or Atom feed contains only the newest blog posts – as many as configured in WordPress to be shown on the blog home page. Secondly – what about the blog titles and the categories? The titles become scrambled from friendly names like for example 2016-my-pretty-article to numbers (1.txt, 2.txt and so on) – the posts will not be found easily later. I think the blog module in Pulse is great if you start blogging from scratch. But importing hundreds of posts and dozens of categories? Impossible!

I think that as long as an importer is not able to read from the WordPress database, it does not make too much sense.

I am really sorry for not being enthusiastic, and I have no intention to drag you down or whatever, but I think any feedback is important for you. Anyway, Pulse is great, and I love working with it – but I don't think it can replace an existing blog with many entries, no matter if that is WordPress, Serendipity or any other.

[pulsecms]

Thanks @pixelart - will take a look

Not really @jdloudon - as long as you have Pulse running OK it should work. Can you do it locally?

Ah @Torsten - you're such a killjoy Not constructive at all and sends out the wrong message. This is easy and does import blogs posts. I've used it on x2 sites already.

As you know, categories / tags are coming in 5 and the titles (1.txt etc) will be changing in 5 also to make it more user-friendly. This is how Pulse is at version 4 and so not a helpful comment at this time!

You're right though, the blog module in Pulse is perfect for scratch. But so is the importer if you are migrating to a new site. Like in 80% of Pulse projects. Client comes along "hey build me a site, but can you keep my blog?" Pulse user replies "sure dude. Here we go" (ports blog, builds new site, makes money, everyone happy).

Plus, the migration tool itself is just 1.0 so we'll continue to make it better with deeper integrations as we go. That said, why would we make an importer to read from the WP database?

It's difficult to please people in 2016... but hopefully you can appreciate the blood sweat and tears we pour into Pulse every single day. And your wistful comment here that took 5 mins to write (Pulse 4.6 took 3 weeks) wasn't very helpful. And yes, did drag me down. Thank you.

Remember, you don't have to use a new feature. But plenty of people will.

[Torsten]

@pulsecms Michael, your explanations should have been said in your advertisements, and everything would have been clear and fine. But the newsletter and the video suggest that the blog import is yet a perfect tool in Pulse 4.6. So, please do understand my disappointment.

And yes, I do appreciate your work. And you should have noticed in some of my older posts that I try to be constructive wherever I can.

[dirk]

I just tried a wordpress import. Dates and titles are kept in excellent condition. Of course the file names are changed into the Pulse system and you hardly can keep categories without support in Pulse. Everything is as easy as promised up to this point.

As far as I know you can go through wordpress feed pages with something like: yourwebsite.com/feed/?paged=2.
Why don't you make the script loop through all your pages?
Here is a quick solution. Be careful - depending on how many posts you have it can be a lot of work for the server. Even if we don't use it you have to fill something into the import URL field to start the process.

File: /pulsecore/logic/blog_import.php

<?php
namespace pulsecore\logic\blog_import;
/**
 * import blog data
 * \param $url string
 * \return stdClass
 */
function import( $url ) {
$start = 3;  // Add your last page number here
for ($i = $start; $i >= 0; $i--) {	
     $url = 'http://yourblog/feed/?paged='; // Add your URL here
     $url = $url.$i;
    \set_time_limit( 120 );

\pulsecore\pre_condition(      isset($url) );
\pulsecore\pre_condition( \is_string($url) );
\pulsecore\pre_condition(    \strlen($url) > 0);

$xml = load_xml($url);

$status = (object)array( 'counter' => 0);

echo $url ."<br>";

   # is it ATOM ?
   if (isset($xml->entry)) {
   	$status = import_atom( $xml, $url );
   }

   # is it RSS ?
   if (isset($xml->channel)) {
   	$status = import_rss( $xml, $url );
   }
   
}

return status;
}

[Torsten]

Good idea, @dirk, and thank you for the code!

As I have many existing blog posts and categories, I will keep using Pulse and WordPress side by side, which means Pulse for the static pages and WP for the blogging stuff, which is all right for me.

And again a word to Michael @pulsecms: I was just trying out the new feature and wanted to inform you and the users about the current limitations in an objective way – in my opinion, this is not a destructive behaviour.

[pulsecms]

Richard! @pixelart We have an update coming this week which includes better XML handling, including for RapidWeaver's Armadillo as you mentioned.

A test on your RSS works quite nicely:

Should be out this week - have a few other things to add so see how it goes. Will drop a note in the forum when it's ready

Thanks for the feedback on this and helping us to make it better

[pulsecms]

Great solution @dirk! This is really useful to those with many blog posts in WP. Thanks for sharing this

[pulsecms]

Of course @Torsten I did notice your previous posts and nice comments/support - hence the shock!

That said, I can see your passion for Pulse so that's really important and I appreciate that

But as Dirk said, it does work as advertised / promised so far and we will keep making it better so please keep contributing when you can

We will try and get another update out this week if possible

[jdloudon]

Still no luck with this and I have tried several imports from different installations on different hosts. I am starting to think that the issue could be the firewall on the server because after I give the URL and command it just seems to time out and I think it may be waiting for a response. I can see the error log from server but it does not actually explain much but I have a hunch this could be what is going on.

[Torsten]

Thanks for all your good work, Michael!

[pixelart]

Can't find this feature "Upload images can now be resampled or original quality. Good for creating an upload repository for photographers for example".
When I upload a new image it doesn't give any options to to resample.
Also did you manage to look at the links I sent you regarding Armadillo blog rss not importing?
Thanks,
Richard

[pixelart]

Sorry I missed your reply regarding Armadillo rss- look forward to the update.