Blog Archiving

Back up your Site!
You should create a full backup of your entire web hosting; see this tutorial for backing up your site via cpanel. In addition, it is a good idea to download via the file manager the following content from within the wp-content directory:


 * wp-content/themes/your-theme-folder (the directory that contains your active wordpress theme)
 * wp-content/uploads (keep all the files/folders within this directory, it includes any media files uploaded to your site)

Once you have backed everything up (and if class is over), you can cancel your web hosting account.

Archiving Your Blog to UMW Blogs
Have you backed up everything? Did you skip the section above?

Create a new blog at http://umwblogs.org (access available to all UMW students. Make a new blog there, ideally named using your current domain name. For example, if your current ds106 site is hosted at mysupercoolstuffds106.me make a new site for your self as mysupercoolstuffds106.umwblogs.org

Make sure you edit your ds106 profile to include the archive blog url. Log in to http://ds106.us and go to

My Account--&gt;Profile--&gt;Edit

Enter this url under the "Blog Archive Field"

Now let's do the export. In your current wordpress blog, export all your work via the Export Tool (use the option for all content)

Tools--&gt;Export

Now go to the admin area for your new site at UMW Blogs, and go to

Tools--&gt;Import

You should use the option to use your current UMW blogs user name as the author, and check the option to download all media.

After that all your posts, pages, menus, and comments should import cleanly. You need to check to see if the images still link to the old site or the new one. The theme is not terribly important, just that all your content lives here.

If this is the only archive you will make, since your domain is still paid for a full year, you can have that domain redirected or mapped to point at your new site- doing this ensured that no links to your content will be broken (as long as the domain is paid for).

See these steps for how to map your domain to a blog hosted on UMW Blogs. On UMW Blogs, you will find this tool at

Tools--&gt;Domain Mapping

If you do not map your domain to UMW blogs, we will need to have you make one more setting change so we can resyndicate your blog. IN your new UMW Blogs site go to:

Settings--&gt;Readings

and in the field labeled "Syndication feeds show the most recent" change the value from 10 to 100.

Migrating Your Blog to Another Host
This process will work in general for any other web hosting service you go with, but specifically is aimed at Spring 2012 ds106 students who have a special free option for a new service we are beta testing.

You need backup everything on your existing web hosting to your local disk as mentioned above, eh?

See the guide for migrating your site to Hippie Hosting - your instructor will provide the free coupon code that can be used to sign up for this service. You will also be using the plesk panel there (similar to cpanel) to install a new fresh copy of wordpress.

To use your existing domain name you will have to pointing it to the new nameservers provided in the instructions above- e.g. you will have to go back to the site you initially registered your domain (likely http://hover.com/) and change the DNS entries to point at the new host name server addresses

Note it may take up to 48 hours for the new host to be recognized Once you have created a new blog in the same space, login and import your old blog content:

Tools --&gt; Import

After that, you will need to upload your exisiting theme and plugins to this new blog via the file manager or via FTP.

Important note: If you are uploading your work to a new domain on a new server, you will have to check to see if the links and images are still working after the import.