This time to change, after many years, I left Pluxml. Pluxml is an excellent CMS, it is easy to install, configure, fast, there are a lot of themes and plugins. There is no database, but I had some little issues as ..

The decision was not easy to take, I have looked for another option since June 2018. Oh yes, the Pluxml was a good solution for my needs.

During this time, I created my own xml-rpc/PluXml using C#. I have created some posts using Open Live Writer. This was a great solution to create new post, but I still had problems to re-edit posts. I would need to refine the xml-rpc solution.

{.alignleft} Why Grav ? Grav is an excellent CMS, it is easy to install, configure, fast, there are a lot of themes and plugins. There is no database… same of Pluxml… but I can use Markdown to create new post. Well, I can use any text editor to edit using Markdown. This is freedom. Grav is a good solution for my needs, especially the offline post edition.

Problems… Migrate my Pluxml blog to Grav My first thought was to search on Googol for a solution.

I found this : https://web.archive.org/web/20210118042349/https://www.killiankemps.fr/en/blog/migrating-from-pluxml-to-grav/

Nice solution with Python, I really tried to use it, but it didn’t work. The dependencies were missing, and I checked the code, and I saw that there was an after-transformation. I still needed to edit each post, and make some corrections. He said it took him a day to create the code to migrate. In fact 6 hours… I could fix it and use it.

Well, I thought, I am stuck at home - Dec 2020 - , I am on vacation, only 6 hours, I can do it too.

Let’s go…

Which language to create migration code ? I chose Powershell… best choice, definitely not, but I can improve my proficiency in Powershell because I am still learning…

The 90% of the code made in 4 hours: read the files, split html, tags, categories. For the conversion HTML to Markdown, I used Pandoc.

The remaining 10% of code took 18 hours to be made.

  • Pandoc has problems with local images.
  • Some tags are not accepted by Grav.
  • Problem handling shortcode.
  • Broken links.
  • Problems with encoded images.
  • Date format.

Nothing is perfect.

  • The link comments were lost.
  • There is not “pages statiques” as Pluxml. (I will miss it so much.)
  • I cannot just copy Grav files to a new place and run.
  • I hate and I love the Grav cache.

The problem with this type of migration code is that it is made to run only once. I could do it better and clean. https://github.com/sozezzo/PluXml_to_Grav

At this time, I hope a long life for Grav, and thank you very much Pluxml.

I still have a lot to learn about Grav, Markdown, twig, yaml, etc.

Later I will see if I made the right decision or not.