Successful photoblog migration

By Jacques Bron on Thursday, September 04 2008

Hello,

This post is about the migration of my photoblog from my own server, using OneReaction Photoblog software, to Pixyblog, a new photoblog hosting platform and community.

A bit of history: back in 2004 when I started to look for a good photoblogging software, I choose OneReaction Photoblog, which was the only photoblogging software running on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform. Developped by Ryan Pardue, OneReaction Photoblog was originally working with an XML back-end and then with an SQL Server database. It had many interesting and original features. One of these features was a companion Windows application, called OneReactionSendTo which allowed users to post photos without having to log on the web site.

Unfortunately, Ryan Pardue has abandonned this project since 2006 and the software is still in version 0.5, which means it has a few bugs and some features that need to be improved. At that time, I had some interesting email exchanges with Ryan, asking him to release the source code in order to have the community work and enhance the project. Unfortunately, he didn't want to.

I was stuck with a nice piece of software, but which had some flaws that became more and more frustrating. Re-writing a new software from scratch was an option, but I don't have enough time for that.

Logically, I looked at other options, like using another photoblogging software like the excellent Pixelpost or joining a photoblogging hosting platform and community, like PixyBlog, Aminus3 or Photoblog . I chose Pixyblog for several reasons:

• Their software has been developped from the ground up and offers a powerful scripting language for templated pages.
• Their project has been in beta for several months before they released a public version, which is a good sign of strong software planning and development methodology.
• They have support from very talented photographers like David Nightingale from Chromasia and John Washington.
• Their project is a nice combination of customer oriented offerings and a community website that helps promote individual photoblogs and members interaction.
• They have a very reactive support team that helped me convert my existing photoblog even before I susbscribed to their service.
• I prefer paying $10 per month and have a reliable service than get a free service with more risks of downtime or bugs and often an inexistent support.

So after rj from Pixyblog gave me directions for converting my existing photo titles, descriptions, comments and categories into an XML document suitable for import in Pixyblog, I wrote a small piece of software that did the job. After that, I sent rj a 83 MB zip file containing my 500+ photos and the XML document and in less than 24 hours, my new photoblog was up and running with all my existing entries and comments. I must admit that I'm impressed. I want to thank rj and the people at Pixyblog for their great product, their efficiency and their professionnal support.

In a future post, I'll give more information on the technical part of this photoblog migration for which I have used Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 with LINQ to SQL, which helped me create the XML document very quickly.

By the way, if you do like what PixyBlog has to offer and would like to subscribe, you can get a 10% discount on any PixyBlog subscription by entering ZGXCEP0Y7LSK  in the 'Referred by' field on the signup form. Enjoy!

See you soon on PixyBlog, on this blog or on my new photoblog !

P.S.: You can get a 10% discount on your PixyBlog subscription by entering the following referral code: ZGXCEP0Y7LSK.