Theo
Project Manager
/ Moderator
Oct 19, 2006, 3:47 PM
Post #1 of 2
(2308 views)
Shortcut
|
Article Manager 2 - Upgrading from Artman 1
|
|
|
So those of you running Article Manager 1 can upgrade to Artman 2.
We've created an import utility that migrates your data, moves your upgraded files, and even converts your templates. If you have thousands and thousands of articles in archives, you can actually convert to mySQL and then run the upgrade, importing EVERYTHING directly into mySQL.
For most users, simply installing Article Manager 2 and running the upgrade script ([artman2 program dir]/utils/upgradeFromVersion1_41.cgi) will do nearly everything. Highly customized templates with a lot of tricky work-arounds will have a real project to do. The good news is that Article Manager 2 will scale better, not just because of mySQL, but also because most (or all) of your custom headlines generated by work-arounds (embedded search.cgi queries) can be replaced by static files published by a custom Publishing Rule - or even by simply adding a few quick "templateIf" commands to one template.
In a nutshell, you should:
1) Make sure you're running Article Manager 1.41 (Artman 2 won't import from earlier version). If you aren't running 1.41, you can get it here:
http://www.interactivetools.com/upgrade/.
2) Install Artman 2 - NOT over top of Article Manager 1 - and set it up publish to a whole new staging directory (NOT over your existing publish folder).
3) Import your Artman 1 data using the upgrade script ([artman2 program dir]/utils/upgradeFromVersion1_41.cgi)
4) Work with Artman 2, publishing to a temporary folder so you can make sure you're happy with all your templates, publishing rules, and fields.
5) Update the publish directory to overwrite your Artman 1 files once you're happy with everything! :)
Here are things to look into after importing to Artman 2:
- Article Types (summary only, external link, upload file) have been depricated. However, that data is still carried forward in a hidden field, so if you wish you can modify your templates to accomodate those old Article Types.
- Embedded search queries should be replaced with static files whenever possible.
- Custom templates are no longer stored in Categories. This could be a big one for some users. To compensate for this, you have a couple of options:
- Create custom Category fields to store the differing elements. You can use the templateIf command in conjunction with this to adopt a lot of custom designs.
- Create a publishing rule that uses a different template, and that includes some categories in one rule while excluding those same categories from the original rule. This can be very useful if you need different category indexes to sort differently, for example. Just make sure that the "overlapping" rules use the same placeholder and the same "published as" values, and that the same category isn't included in both rules. More about this in the future, it's a fairly advanced subject, but if you need to adopt this to solve a design challenge then post your questions right away! :)
- Filenames. Article Manager 2 requires filenames for Categories and Articles (optional in Artman 1). Importing names them as your article/category name with the number appended to it. Now the published files can match your old files exactly if desired, but I recommend taking a look at how they are published by default in Artman 2 first, because it's pretty cool: all files for Categories are put into subfolders for those cats.
That's it for now, I'm happy to take your questions. :)
Theo Wiersma
Project Manager
(This post was edited by Theo on Oct 23, 2006, 1:25 PM)
|
