I’ve done this enough times to figure out how to do it without screwing everything up.

Suppose you start a project on a free WordPress.com, and, as it grows, you want to move it to a self-hosted platform version of WordPress, like I did with this site and NEast Philly and my thesis and others.

So, in case you need to do the same, here are the steps:

1. From the Tools option in the WordPress.com sidebar, choose to Export.
2. Download the XML Export file, being mindful that all fields in the drop down menus are chosen, so you are downloading everything.
3. Open in Wordpad and change your file extensions with a Search and Replace. i.e. So, in the XML file from my thesis site, I replaced ‘phillypolitics.wordpress.com/’ with ‘thesis.christopherwink.com/’, meaning that the links would then associate
4. *Make sure permalinks are the same from your WordPress.com to your new site.
5. From the Tools option in your new self-hosted WordPress platform, choose to Import.
6. Browse and choose to Upload the XML file that you downloaded from your WordPress.com and then edited in Wordpad.
7. **Easy-to-miss step** Upon selecting your XML file, under ‘Import Attachments’ be certain to check off the box next to ‘Download and import file attachments’ so that your photos and other uploaded media will be transferred to this new database. (I’ve missed this step before to much frustration).
8. Delete the old jawn — Take down the old WordPress.com or, if you want to transition some search engine love, you can block the WordPress.com from being picked up by search engines but keep it alive for old links with a post pushing to the new site and eventually delete.

From Flickr user IceNineJon

Image of Old City Philadelphia cobblestone courtesy of Flickr user IceNineJon.

Niche news sites need to be brought together to strengthen the future of journalism.

Last year, we at Technically Philly started that hunt with a Knight News Challenge application for News Inkubator, a business services hub and incubation space for independent news startups. We didn’t make the cut, but we have taken to bootstrapping the concept by starting with an advertising network.

Today is the 2010 Knight News Challenge grant deadline, and we’ve continued that focus.

We took time to learn that our News Inkubator proposal was too broad and focused on trying to find smaller, more actionable steps, particularly ones that could work with other larger investment.

In doing so, we’re introducing Cobblestone, a proposed tagging WordPress plugin that will feed a searchable, dynamically updated, mobile-friendly directory platform homepage with content from various partners.

See our Knight application here.

Though we think it has real monetary value — considering it is based on a Technically Philly directory aimed at a membership model — this is a decidedly more editorial-first focus. Get the niche sites together, and we can build revenue together.

Perhaps the first question we expect to be asked: why is this different than Google alerts and RSS feeds?

Cobblestone gives tag-specific and cross-partner content some place to live. Once the alerts of Bill Green or the feeds from each of the partner sites pass in time, they are lost. This creates a true homepage.

Below, see our application, which you can also see here:

Project Title: Cobblestone: A shared Crunchbase to unite local independent news sites

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge: $65,000

Expected amount of time required to complete project:1

Total cost of project including all sources of funding:$65,000

Describe your project: Cobblestone is a shared, Crunchbase-like, editorial directory that will unite local independent news sites. The tagging WordPress plugin will feed a searchable, dynamically updated, mobile-friendly directory platform homepage with content from various partners.

For example, if established niche news sites like PlanPhilly and NEast Philly both “tag” Philadelphia City Councilman Bill Green in a story, there should be a central place to find those stories on a timeline of news about the councilman from all local news outlets . Tag pages, like ones for city council members, will bring together a fractured ecosystem of independent content providers by sharing a search-engine optimized homepage. This project will create tag-specific pages for all local people, companies, organizations, groups and places that will feature a chronological feed from all those content producers. The homepage will update as new stories are published and will have advanced filtering capabilities.

What unmet need does your proposal answer?: While Philadelphia has a diverse group of news outlets, these sites are often not connected in any way that extends beyond a hyperlink. Providing a shared directory will be the first step in exploring the ways local media can collaborate with one another. Cobblestone’s homepage can also act as a place where content consumers can discover news again, offering the serendipity of past news media.

How is your idea new?: During the past year, many mainstream and independent media outlets in Philadelphia have pursued content partnerships. Cobblestone is the next generation of content partnership by offering a shared taxonomy structure that lives well beyond the story’s publish date.

Large local news sites, such as The Texas Tribune, have a robust directory, however the directory is only powered by a single news outlet. Crunchbase only serves a single niche. However, what if every local news ecosystem had its own Crunchbase bringing together the work, insight, knowledge and audience of local niche news sites? Cobblestone’s homepage could also serve as an experiment in the next generation of aggregation and curation on a local scale. The homepage could eventually have “trending” topics and taxonomy that would highlight the most relevant news source for a specific topic, much like Google News.

What will you have changed by the end of the project?: By the end of our project, Cobblestone will have created a tangible relationship between independent news sites in Philadelphia. Additionally, Cobblestone’s homepage will track content powered by the city’s most meaningful content producers while completing an open source product to be shared with other hyperlocal ecosystems.

Our project will also serve as the basis for actionable sustainability ventures, like a shared membership model and create a robust, central landing page and service for the region’s news and information, growing the serendipity of community awareness of readers.

Why are you the right person or team to complete this project?: We have meaningful experience in the three primary pillars of this project. Technically Philly has an existing WordPress-based Directory platform that pulls our content and offers outsider user editing and functionality. (http://technicallyphilly.com/directory)

For an advertising network, we have brought together independent niche news sites (http://newsinkubator.com/proan), all of whom are readily interested in collaboration. Finally because of our coverage and our roles in various communities, we have relationships with Philadelphia’s legacy and independent media partners, in addition to developers and designers, all of whom can help ensure a locally-focused, collaborative and successful project.

What terms best describe your project?:

Collaboration.

Here in Philadelphia, there is an existing news ecosystem. The challenge is using the combined efforts of these sites to create an economically sustainable and editorially innovative news and information resource for the citizens of Philadelphia. We hope that other cities can also use our technology to create similar products for their hometown.

Community.

Cobblestone will bring together various niche audiences of Philadelphia that care about similar public and community affairs but are increasingly segmented. By bridging these disparate sects, growing collective audience and pooling resources and research, Philadelphia will have a strengthened news network and a more empowered citizenry.

Context.

Much like how a person’s Facebook account aggregates social activity, Cobblestone’s pages will act as a news feed for the people, places and organizations that matter to Philadelphians. Because Cobblestone will be powered by local independent media, readers will be getting their news produced by niche media without existing in a “silo” of a single news site. This will help readers understand how news and information impacts different communities and Philadelphia as a whole.

Have you applied to the Knight News Challenge previously?: Yes

Credit to Sean Blanda for the Cobblestone name.

Today, Technically Philly has announced its directory.

Directories are normally pretty boring. We think ours won’t be.

It’s certainly a small step, but, leveraging WordPress custom taxonomies with some incredible thinking power of Sean Blanda and plenty of sweat equity from myself and Brian James Kirk, we have launched pages for the nearly 1,000 companies and almost as many individuals we’ve covered at Technically Philly in the past two years.

[I can't overstate complimenting Sean on his leadership and creativity in launching this long plotted perspective. It helped to hear people excited about the idea at our Philly Startup Leaders Fishbowl back in March]

Let it be clear that this is a start, not a finish, as this directory has a lot of growth to come. Chief among future announcements will be its role in a membership and sponsorship platform. We just wanted to hear from people. Whatcha think?

Why we’re doing it:

• Revenue — As said above, the difference between a page looking like, say, this one and this one will be a membership/sponsorship cap to our revenue build. This is a long time in coming.
• Community — There is truly a value in creating landing pages for our content (and others). This is another big step in helping to connect this region’s technology community.

Why this matters:

• Its locality — For the same reason, that Cityfile and Crunchbase work despite the powers of Wikipedia, newspaperdotcom directories and others in the crowded market, locality in a community wins. We’ll rank well in search for many of those in our directory. We have some unique features to come too, so this is a distinctly Philadelphia product.
• Its connective spirit — you just might see this being the fabric of a bigger push to connect independent publishers in Philadelphia.

What’s to come?

• Sustainability — We roll out a membership platform for individuals and sponsorship model for businesses to update and have greater control of their pages.
• More Content — We still have lots of holes in the logos, headshots and descriptions to start. We also will try to tie in feeds to Wikipedia for the bigger names in the directory to keep this project alive.
• Process transparency — Sean Blanda speaks at Wordcamp Philly this Saturday to talk about the process and will surely write up the details on that blog of his.

I use a lot of WordPress themes. Here are some I might like to give a go in 2010.

Many of the themes I found from WPHacks.com.

Evolution Theme

Source | Download | Demos: Blue, Green, Red

Daily Press Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Digital Statement Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Maggo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Padangan Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Blue Block Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Dark Zen Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Premiere Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Hamasaki Theme

Source | Download | Demo

I spent portions of a couple school years while at college helping get a newspaper underway at the Franklin Learning Center, a strong, diverse magnet school in the Spring Garden neighborhood of Philadelphia.

So, I was excited to take some time away from my freelancing work once a week to work with the journalism club at Frankford High School. It was a short walk, and I could just fill in the time lost at night.

I was suddenly the professional journalist half of a Prime Movers program that formerly had me as the student journalist.

I made it a half dozen Thursday after-school meetings, enough to meet the core group of seven or so students and help them launch a WordPress blog for their content, but some rather large, fairly unexpected changes have happened.

I bought a house in a neighborhood that made the trip a 15-minute El ride (and added some responsibility) and, as a larger conflict, I then accepted a full-time job.

So, now I’m reaching out to a host of colleagues to fill as many of the coming weeks with insightful professional journalists (if you’re in Philly and are interested, contact me). Still, though I’ve worked with high school journalism clubs before and only worked with the Pioneer Times of FHS for a couple months, I certainly learned a thing or too — in addition to, I hope, teaching some of those kids something.

Class photo from a Frankford High School long since gone

Frankford High School is a school that, like the neighborhood it served, was once lily white and has seen a dramatic complexion change since.

According to School District of Philadelphia data, as recent as the 2003/2004 school year, a quarter of it’s roughly 2,000 students were white, but now fewer than one in ten are. While Asian and Latino numbers have remained relatively stable over that time, a school that was half populated by black students in 2003 has now settled around more than 60 percent.

That usually makes for some strife, and an uptick in lower income students and suspensions seems to have followed.

But it certainly isn’t known to be anywhere near as dysfunctional and (relatively) dangerous as other big public schools in Philadelphia. Rather, it has active after school programs — like the journalism club and its celebrated culinary program, which the focus of a feature-length documentary that debuted last year. Additionally, while the student population’s look has changed, the school still has an active alumni group and some notable ones among them.

It was with this knowledge that I first came to the school in October to meet journalism club adviser Beth Ziegenfus, who, by measure of the 10 or so students attendance on that first day, was well-liked and caring.

I shared with them the coverage of their neighborhood, from community blog Frankford Gazette, to the localized coverage of NEast Philly to the Northeast Times.

Also, over the next few weeks, I came to know a handful of the group’s regularly attending members, tried to dispense as much general knowledge on journalism, writing and multimedia as I could and, yes, became certain of a few truths.

Read the take aways from last stint helping to lead a journalism program.

1. All kids aren’t ready to give up the printed product — It’s in college that most people become really Web native, with the dispersal of high speed Internet, online assignments, IM and other college standards. This will, of course, continue to shift, but my FHS kids were all interested in seeing their byline in print. (Something I’ve experienced before.)
2. Kids in a journalism club are going to be among the best of the best, so treat them that way — This is certainly something I’ve already experienced, but it’s always nice to be reminded. Kids who are going to give up their after school time for journalism are going to be
3. Make it more than journalism — Journalism and the Fourth Estate and Democracy and all that bull shit doesn’t interest 99.9999999 percent of high school students. Talk about deadline and lede writing and multimedia and Web development being great for succeeding in college
4. Do let kids play with multimedia — All the kids got excited about running around the school with a camera for video and photos. (Get them excited first, then bring on the learning)
5. Talk to high school kids like adults, because they (practically) are — Come on, you remember hating that teacher who treated you like a child. Give them the benefit of the doubt, understand that they may know something you don’t and act like it.

I hope to make it back there, at some point, if some flexibility comes my way at my new job, but, unfortunately, a three p.m. start time in a neighborhood that is probably 30-35 minutes from my work doesn’t make that seem likely anytime soon.

While I wouldn’t want anyone to go and brand on the same theme, I do like the idea of showing folks how top flight products can take hold on little more than a template. Below, I share a handful of WordPress themes I’ve seen used and used well.

Take it as motivation to find your own. Let me know some others you dig, by sharing in the comments. I won’t use yours, if you don’t use mine!

Typebased Theme used by Technically Philly

Source/Demo | Download

From here.

Freemium [Demo] used by NEast Philly

StudioPress Theme by My PICC Line

Source | Download | Demo

Premium News Theme by The Temple News

Source | Download | Demo

One Room [Demo] by, well, by me here

One of the very obvious and very frustrating results of transitioning from my WordPress.com hosted professional site to this beauty is the loss of all that Google juice.

While it is certainly nothing for the record books, the old version of this site was very steadily growing its traffic, at a healthy 7,259 page views in May (as seen above), the last full month I operated that version.

Once I directed my ChristopherWink.com domain to my own servers, the archives that I migrated from my old WordPress.com version to here are without any links. Instead, their WordPress.com cousins continue to have the priority in search engines and in incoming links (which, because I didn’t use domain mapping, almost surely directed to christopherwink.wordpress.com, instead of just christopherwink.com).

So right now, my old site is still pulling 150 or more page views a day, currently more than I am here. Of course, that traffic will continue to wane there and, the hope is, slowly build here, even though I managed to lose quite a few RSS subscribers in the transition too.

While it was long overdue to become self-hosted and fully launched under my domain, I’m not going to get entirely over the loss of traffic to archived posts, which still get actual meaningful comments from time to time.

I have a lot going on, far beyond the transition here, but I do expect to post more about the transition from a WordPress.com hosted site to a self-hosted WordPress.org-style version. I think it’s a fairly common practice that is under discussed on the interwebs and I now have some thoughts on.

At the very least, I have a new project: to follow that nice arc of growth from my old site and well surpass it.

In the late 1990s, a host of Web sites democratized the Internet, giving the average Internet-user the chance to have his own online home.

In 2003, MySpace used the model and brought in a new age of social networking.

Last week I posted that MySpace is on the way out, and briefly mentioned that WordPress and Blogger are taking over the role of providing free, easy-to-manipulate Web presences.

Does that make them the next Angelfire or Geocities? Are they just another trend ready to be overcome?