I’ve been using Tumblr as a blogging platform for over a year and was always disappointed with the lack of available themes or any useful plugins. I’ve primarily steered away from any of the Open Source platforms because i’ve always been more comfortable with the Windows stack. But, somehow moving from Tumblr to WordPress just made sense. After all, if millions can do it, it couldn’t be that bad.
A quick Google search showed that the famous 5-minute WordPress installation wasn’t really 5 minutes. I had to install PHP, MySQL, and configure IIS. So, i got started. Installing MySQL was easy – no hiccups. Next i installed PHP and my nightmare started. I spent countless hours trying to configure PHP to work with IIS and the Windows directory structure. Apparently, the PHP5 installation for Windows has bugs. After getting it to install and downloading DLLs from a bunch of random websites while troubleshooting i felt that i had almost completed the tough part. Finally, the PHP install worked and i could see my lovely phpinfo.php showing a successful installation.
Now for the famous 5 minute WordPress installation. After copying the WordPress files into my root directory and starting WordPress, i got an error stating that PHP is not configured to be used with MySQL. This was the end for me trying to get a WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP – wonder if anyone uses this acronym) installation working. Now, to prove that i’m not a WIMP, i did not want to give up on getting WordPress working.
After more researching and starting a fresh Win Server 2008 VM, i came across WAMP server – WOW! I got the entire WAMP stack working after just a few clicks. This was amazing. Next up, the 5-minute WordPress installation – smooth as a newborn’s head. Things were looking extremely promising. I started WordPress, ran through some basic admin settings and next tried importing my Tumblr blog.
Luckily, Hao Chen has built a fabulous tool to convert any Tumblr blog to WordPress. The imported blog does require minor adjustments but the process was totally worth the hassle after everything else i’ve been through.
Now, that i had conquered the seemingly simple WordPress blog, i wanted to switch to a real hosting provider. After searching for a few and contacting their support i found HostMonster to be the most responsive and cheap. So i signed up for a 4 year no contract service and used their one-click WordPress installation to move my blog to the cloud.
In conclusion, i have to strongly mention that the WordPress software has by far one of the best User Experiences i have encountered.
UPDATE: Even though HostMonster is cheap and has good service their servers are not all that fast. Any suggestions on who you host with?
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