My b2evolution Version: Not Entered
First, YOU GUYS ROCK! I love the platform... it has been amazing for what I am doing. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Second, I have about 150 city specific real estate investor blogs right now and I am wanting to add between 100 and 150 more. Each blog is very similar, but is for a different city and state. I use each city blog to post real estate deals for sale on each one and have a single blog with articles that I aggregate to all of them.
Ideally, what I would like to do is this:
Create the blogs by running PHP/MySQL commands because I will be creating the new blogs based on data I have in another database (of the cities I want to service).
I have a little checklist I use to make them manually now, but there has to be a way to write a couple queries to insert (or update) the database and create them based on the list I have.
I want to be able to create a new blog using "evopress skin", with data from my database for the:
- Title
- Shortname
- URL "filename"
- Tagline
- Long Description
I usually turn comments off on these blogs so I would want to do that.
I usually select the "evopress" skin for all the blogs.
I remove the "Page Top" widget and add a "Public Blog List" widget to the Sidebar. Ideally, I put the "XML Feeds" at the bottom of the list and have the "Public Blog List" widget second to last.
I create two categories for each blog using data from my database.
For the URL, I use an absolute URL (separate purchased domain name for each). And I select "Use extra-path: post title".
Under blogs to aggregate, I usually aggregate "1,2,BlogItself" where BlogItself is the number of the blog itself.
The last thing is "Short Description", "Keywords" and "Single Post Footer".
I can create the PHP code or direct SQL commands from my other database if I knew the format I needed to create the blogs in the b2ev database.
Has anyone does this before? Is there an outline or anything?
I really, really, really appreciate the help.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
James
General Support
b2evolution CMS Support Forums
How about I teach you to fish and you haul in the big one?
So make a brand new naked installation. Tweak it as you see fit (like how your real installation will be only without all the blogs), but do make sure you have one blog in it that will be your 'control model' for this experiment. Now backup your database. There is basically nothing in it right? Good! Now add ONE blog with all the groovy bits you want for each of these eventual 150 blogs. Do another backup only save it with a new name. Now add a third blog with all the same groovy bits and back it up again.
Grab WinMerge if you don't already have it, and put each of these three files into their own folder called something like AAA and BBB and CCC. Now compare folders AAA and BBB in WinMerge and it will show you the differences in the databases when you added one new blog.
Aw crap I always get this stuff wrong. When you do your backups do it using "export" from phpmyadmin and have all the boxes checked for "drop if exists" and stuff like that. The more the merrier in this case, as you will be ignoring anything that isn't cool stuff that shows diffs.
Anyway WinMerge will show you bits that are different, and because you used phpmyadmin's export feature it will be showing you SQL queries with value strings that are different. Ta-Da! Now of course compare AAA with CCC and BBB with CCC to make sure you're on the right path with what queries will need to be faked up for your 150 blog builder. Once you feel you've seen enough to give it a shot then try it out on your fake installation. Assuming it works there then move it to your real blog.
Oh and do be aware of situations where it is adding specific blog numbers or line items in a table. Obviously that level of detail needs to be a bit fluid for both your testing and real installations, but yeah for sure you can *see* the queries that you will need to use to simulate having been to the back office.
Long ago I faked in hundreds of posts this way, and my (now dead) "phpbb forum account to b2evolution blog with permissions" hack was built this way.
Hope it helps!