Stefano Demiliani WeBlog

Testing Blog Migration Tool 0.1

This evening I've tryed Vlad's Blog Migration Tool 0.1, a tool for blogs migration (it supports blogs based on .Text 0.95 at the moment).

I'm planning to transfer my blog from here to my personal web server in the next days (I think that at the end I'll have 2 copies of the same blog, here on DotNetJunkies and on my new server), so I've tryed to transfer 10 posts. These are the results:

1) The Blog Migration Tool is really simple to configure... just type the url, login and password of the source and destination Blogs and you're ready to start (good! ).

2) Press the "Migration" button for the transfer... what happens? Apparently nothing... the button seems not pressed, there's no a progress bar that said you that a transfer is started (and the application seems blocked).

3) Maybe a crash? Maybe I've not pressed the button correctly? Ok, retry... I press the "Migration" button for the second time... results? The same as above...

4) Maybe the application doesn't work correctly? I decide to open my destination blog to see if something has changed... what happens? The post were successfully transferred from my source to my destination Blog, but, because I've pressed the button for 2 times, they were transferred 2 times... the same for Links and Categories!!! Terrible noise... I've to manually delete the duplications!

So, this is what I want to say to Vlad: the application is really useful and works correctly, but I think you need to setup some little updates to do a great final products. These are my feedbacks:

1) Place a Progress bar to indicate a transfer in progress (or at least place a WaitCursor). User now can't understand clearly that a transfer is started.

2) Why don't place a checkbox for choosing what you want to transfer? The application now transfers all (posts, feedbacks, links, categories) and this is a problem for a blog transfer in more than one step (expecially for links and categories duplication).

3) The application now, if you choose to transfer 10 posts for example, starts from the 10 most recent posts. Why we can't choose where to start a transfer (for example by post date)?

4) One of the most important feature that is needed with this application is the possibility to transfer a blog in more than one step (for example, on the 1st step I transfer 50 posts, on the 2nd step other 50 posts and so on). The application must avoid posts duplication (and now it doesn't avoid this).

These are only advices... I think that the possibility to transfer a blog in more than one step and choosing what I want to transfer is really a must to do (and maybe not so difficult I think).

I hope you can do something Vlad, your Blog Migration Tool has all the possibilities to be a great tool... good work and say me something about!