SHORT VERSION: SITE IS MOVED TO https://www.albikar.org/wparchive/
LONG VERSION: I think I’ve hated WordPress since I first started using it, and that hatred has only grown as it has morphed into an unusable mess with an obtuse interface. I think it might be fair to say as well that the idea of “blogging” has gone pretty much by the wayside, and the manner in which people navigate information these days is quite different than back then.
For years I’ve wanted to take the archive of data and take back my content. WordPress makes this exceptionally difficult since the full data backup is basically one massive XML file, in my case, 6 MB not including images. This is great for another computer to process, especially another WordPress site, but otherwise it is almost impossible for those without a lot of programming ability. It might be possible by hand, but with 315 or so posts and pages here, along with images and comments, this was not something I wished to take on.
Recently I started working with my data output from Ravelry, and managed to basically recreate my Ravelry project entries on my portfolio site without needing to do anything but download original data files. This got me thinking again that it should be possible to do this with my WordPress data, though the task seemed way more daunting in my mind.
It took about a week of non-stop coding and experimenting, but now 150 lines of Perl computer code basically has recreated the full blog (even posts that were hidden) in just a couple of seconds, including downloading all of the original images from the web site. That was the easy part. Cleaning up a decade or so of broken links, outdated HTML, and that sort of thing took up much of another week. But it is finished! I have my site back!
I’m going to treat this site now back in my control as an archive that I hope will be much more usable than the ad-ridden WordPress site (Note: ads are not connected to me!). I’ve broken down the entries into categories that are visible and browse-able from the get go, and the navigation structure helps as well in this browsing aspect. I’ve also separated out a section for Arabic-only posts.
Things left to do: Include the comments, which contained a lot of great discussion; add a search feature; add an actual, working, old-school index; refine the navigation for the “month of posts” entries such that they are reversed in order; continue cleaning up broken links and the like.
The new web site can be found at this link: https://www.albikar.org/wparchive/. I encourage you to bookmark this site as the structure there won’t be changing, though I am still editing pages and cleaning up. This WordPress site will be closed down in a few weeks.
A huge thank you to everyone who has been reading here these years, communicating, discussing, extending support. It has meant the world to me, and I am exceedingly grateful! See you over at the new site!
Daniel Drennan ElAwar 