How-To: Transfer a Series from Blogspot
Most of this page is a text-based introduction to the new website. Prefer a video demo with no words? Here's a recording of how I made the new site's Starship Exeter page, complete with all the Google searches I did to find extra information (and, yes, the video is supposed to be silent):
Thank for for your help! Here in Phase I of the migration project, we are focusing on getting all the more traditional fan films, audio dramas, and parodies into the new StarTrekReviewed.com. In Phase II, we'll clean up the rest of the minor works and non-films Barb has collected over the years, like The Wrath of Sulu.
Our team member Martin Bahr has given us a huge head start on Phase I by collecting and inputting the titles and runtimes for all the traditional fan productions we are aware of, so we have the basic skeletons and we just need to fill in the details. (Mostly.) Here's how to do it:
1. Log into the admin console using the provided username and password.
2. Go to the Ark Import - Unsorted page, located here and also linked on the right navigation bar.
3. Pick a series. Any series. Click the link to go to its skeleton page, which you are going to help fill out. For this example, I'm going to do Starship Valiant.
4. Thanks to Martin, you will have the series name, the title of each episode, and the length of each episode already populated. Currently, the Starship Valiant page looks like this:
click any image on this page to see it full size
5. Now click the pencil icon next to the series name. You can only see this pencil icon while logged in as admin. The pencil means "edit". So if you click a pencil next to a series name, you'll edit the series. (Click a pencil next to an episode, and you'll edit the episode.) That takes you to a screen that looks like this:
6. Copy all the information we have on the production from the Blogspot STR page. Starship Valiant is on Blog 42, so I'll open that up in a new tab. I'll also open up their website, which sometimes contains handy information.
6a. Finding the correct page for the production on Blogspot STR can be hard. Blogspot STR is not easy to navigate. (That's why we're migrating!) You can use the Blogspot STR Table of Contents, which helps a lot. You can also use the "Search STR Blogspot" button on the series page on the New STR. That's a button we put explicitly to help us (and now you) find the right pages on Blogspot STR. It looks like this:
7. Change the "Minor Work Category" from "Imported from Martin's ARK project" to something appropriate. (Almost always, it should be "Regular Listing." Starship Valiant is definitely a regular listing.)
8. Press Submit and then View Series. You'll see that your data is updated. My Valiant page now looks like this. You'll notice is also now included in the main table of contents under "Major Fan Films."
9. Now let's do the episodes. I'm going to go down to "Legacy - Introduction" and click the pencil. I get this screen, with Martin's data already filled in:
10. ...and I'll just fill all that out based on the Blogspot page, decide what kind of headline this episode should have and hit "Submit." Valiant doesn't do "seasons," or "production numbers," so I'll skip those fields.
10a. You can fill out an STR Review and STR Synopsis only if you want. (I never do, but some very early STR stuff has a review and/or synopsis, and these fields are where you can copy them over.) In "other notes," I'll mention that this pilot episode of Valiant had a special edition re-release.
10b. Our current guidelines for headlines: Is it a film or episode with a story that runs ten minutes or more, excluding credits and other non-story content? It's a major release. Less than ten minutes of story content? Normal release. Not a story? Trailers, blooper reels, teasers, interviews... these are minor releases and do not get a headline.
11. Boom. Now we need to tell people where to actually watch the episode. I've just been sent to this page, where I'm going to click Add a Viewing Link:
12. Fill in the Label and the URL. Series and episode should be pre-populated for you. 90% of the labels are "YouTube" or "Vimeo".
12a. Mention any subtitles or dubs for different languages. This is very important, because the language-specific pages are all coded based on what you say in this field.You can either use the full words ("Subtitles in English, Russian, and Spanish") or the two-letter language codes from ISO 639-1 ("EN, ES, RU subtitles").
12b. Then hit submit.
13. Repeat steps 11 and 12 until you've got all the viewing links in place, then click Return to Series. The page now has all the key episode information:
14. STR often has other neat tidbits about a particular episode, like a trailer or interview or review. There are several of those for Starship Valiant: "Legacy", so I'm going to click "Add News Link" and fill that out just like the Viewing Links.
15. If possible, add an image for each episode. It really livens up the page. Click Add Image. Remember we can ONLY use images that Barb already got permission for, which means they're already on STR. I'm going to right-click on the STR copy of the poster for Starship Valiant "Legacy" on the current STR page, select "copy image link," then copy that link into the Source URL field on the new STR, like this:
15b. STR ONLY uses images that we have gotten EXPLICIT permission to use from the creators. (We once copied somebody's poster and got a legal threat. That's not something we plan to repeat.) So, if it's not on the Blogspot STR, don't use it, unless you can get express written permission from the creator (which is awesome if you do).
16. Suddenly, this episode listing has gone from a skeleton to a clean, complete, database-driven (and therefore infinitely reformattable) episode blurb!
17. Repeat for all remaining episodes. If there are any episodes that the series has created that aren't already there, it's probably because the episode came out after Martin built his ARK and I imported from it. (Quite a few of these are now a little bit out of date.) Just go press the green plus icon next to "Episodes." (The green plus sign means "add.")
18. At the end of all that, if there's anything left on the STR page that hasn't been moved to the new site page you just built, add it to the series-wide "News, Reviews, and Links" section. These are just like the episode news links, but apply to the whole series. It's a nice place to put weird little things like this casting call.
19. Send a notification to James Heaney (you should have his email) to let him know you're done with the series. He'll mark it complete and set up a redirect from the old Blogspot page to the new website.
20. That's it! You're done! Here's what my completed Valiant page looks like: http://startrekreviewed.com/series.php?id=261. Yours will look different, but hopefully somewhat similar!
If you are working on a short series or single film without a whole lot of publicity, it's entirely possible to do an entire series in 10 minutes. On the other hand, longer series (like, unfortunately, a lot of audio dramas) can take hours.
As I write this, there are 153 fan productoins in the Ark Import - Unsorted category. (Well, 152 now that Valiant is done!) I can't wait to see how quickly we can shrink that to zero.
