<tt>Latest updates, linked to kos’s diaries, thru February 5, are at the end of the post.</tt>
Revising this one repeatedly, as kosaks have been able to get some of our concerns heard and as timelines have changed, is not feasible, so existing text is, to partial extent, of historical interest now..
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Per this diary by kos about the site migration to Wordpress (see also comments in that thread), and at this post querying on the fate of posting history, images, and drafts, we’ve been told some key facts about the the image library and everyone’s draft folders, the contents of both of which will NOT be carried over to Wordpress. We may each have only until March in which to devise ways to save/conserve draft and image material we’d hate to see disappear.
Daily Kos Staff has commented:
<big>Addressing the headline question: “will the 25 yrs of Daily Kos posting history be carried over to WordPress? Images and all?”
Yes, published stories will be migrated.
Yes, images in published stories will be carried over with the stories.
We will begin posting stories with information regarding the details of the migration in January, after the long holiday. </big>
Kosaks with powerful computers, Cloud access, or certain kinds of Google accounts, etc can copy and save their drafts and favorite images that way, to still have’em usable at wordpress.
For those of us without those options — e.g., many low income or disabled kosaks don’t — here are some tried and true other methods, and read down the thread for more.
🟢 One method I’ll be using is to copypaste drafts and images into emails to myself.
🟢 For entire categories of images, the volunteers of new dk group <big>SAVE THE IMAGES</big> are posting diaries collectiing worthwhile images from the library for search-ability and copy-ability when we’re in Wordpress. Diary titles state categories/subcategories. Use that link to reach the homepage, hit the FOLLOW button there to get those posts in your Activity Stream, explore the collections posted so far, and see what categories are spoken for. Each diary has an explanation of its scope, brief or lengthy. In the threads, if you have basic dk editor skillz, you can ask to join and say what category of images you want to diary for the group, or ask about getting reblogged there without joining. At the homepage, click on admin strawbale’s name to kosmail to her direct.
🟢 Another alternative is to repurpose the shells of old diaries of your own, if you’ve posted a fair number and consider the content of some not really worth preserving. This is based on our being told the site’s posting history WILL carry over, complete with images. It’s a method I’ve been using for years for saving all kinds of information, images, etc, and actually posted about clear back in a 2015 diary … but I’ve repurposed it this week! Some of the earlier details aren’t relevant now, so today I’m recapping for the Wordpress migration need.
<big><big> Here’s your EDIT button.</big></big>
Briefly put, you go way back in your own personal DK posting history to find old diaries with content not worth saving, use the diary edit function to go into them, delete ALL the old content out, copy IN the valuable draft material you don’t want to lose in the transition, rename the diary something like “Storage”, update the tags, SAVE DRAFT a final time, then PUBLISH CHANGES. (More how-to details below.)
How much text, images, videos, etc., can you save in an emptied-out repurposed old post? LOTS
The same maximum as if it was brand new. Which is, well, lots. Even if you pack a considerable number of images in. So, you can put probably the contents of a good number of drafts into a single storage-repurposed old post rather than need too many old ones to do this with.
You can tell if you’re approaching maximum carrying capacity when the <small>SAVE DRAFT</small> button up in the top right corner of the big honking black&orange toolbox starts taking a countable 4 seconds saying <small>SAVING….</small> before it says <small>SAVED</small> and then switches back to <small>SAVE DRAFT</small>.
As always, you should hit SAVE DRAFT very often, and that’ll also give you a good feel for when that SAVING...SAVED time-span starts to increase beyond, say, 2 countable seconds, as an indication that you’re starting to approach maximum carrying capacity. When it takes 3 seconds, you’re definitely getting there; if it takes 4 seconds, don’t put anything else in; better to not even go there.
<big>BEFORE YOU HIT PUBLISH CHANGES</big>, do remove all pre-existing tags and replace them all with just one, single, highly unique tag — the sillier and more ungrammatical and non-meme/non-trope your tag, the greater the odds it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the ‘verse, far less in DK, so you don’t have anyone else’s posts to weed through when you’re looking for yours.
h/t Angela Marx
PUBLISH CHANGES is that orange-on-white bar/button low in the toolbox. Confirm when it queries “are you sure …?” and in a moment you’ll be looking at that published diary as you repurposed it.
All DK diaries have always been infinitely re-editable, by the way, so if you want to change something after you published your changes, go right ahead. As often as you need to, no problem..
Just a reminder, It’s probably best to not repurpose dairies from more than 10 or 12 years back, because even if SAVE DRAFT does work, PUBLISH CHANGES might not!
h/t CaptBLI
How to go back in your own posting history to find your recycle-able diaries.
Click on your own avatar disk/circle thingy in the top right corner of any DK5 page, looking something like this ==>
That gives you your own drop-down menu, looking something like this next image … where you click about 6 items down, MY STORIES, to reach a list of’em, most recent stories first. For some of us, that list goes on for pages and pages,
How to pick which of your old stories to recycle
Personally, I look for the ones with the fewest comments, fewest recs, and least longterm-value content. I also prefer posts not reblogged anywhere. Although in that case it’s always possible to kosmail to admins there and ask them to delete it from the group’s posting history.
You’ll need to make it easy for them, though, since this is asking a favor, it can be a hassle, and we’re all on over-load these days. So, go to their group’s posting history, scroll down and dowwnn and as many <small>PREVIOUS</small> pages as it takes to FIND YOUR DIARY, copy the URL of that page of their posting history, and past it into your request, along with the exact title of your diary at the time you request deletion. Everyone’s awfully busy and harried these days, though, so if they don’t comply, maybe it doesn’t matter :)
How to get into your old post to re-edit/repurpose them
Here’s another image of the edit button at the top right corner of all your diaries — the word <big>Edit</big> with a tiny pencil shape beside it. Click there! That’ll get you into what’s basically the draft “layer” to get to work on it.
How to come up with an extremely unique tag for these recycled posts. And why just a fresh new title might not be enough for letting you refind them again when you wanna use the material you saved in’em.
The answer to the 2nd question is that you’ll have to scroll down all your My Stories for maybe pages and pages in order to refind the repurposed-for-storage post[s] if you didn’t tag it/them in a way easy to find.
Presumably, DK5 tags — like DK 4 tags, etc — on diaries will persist into DK6/wordpress. And based on kos’s December 12 post (linked in my first paragraphs above) we’ll have a better search engine there than we do now. For now, though, you can used the existing search engine to see how a very unique tag speeds up refinding these storage posts.
- Here’s our search engine set for a tag-search: click it.
- Hopefully you’ll see the words NothingishEmptytest already typed in on the “Where Tag [contains] line; if not, type it in yourself.
As you see, the above screenshot displays that tag and obviously it’s pretty unique — only one diary was found, super-convenient compared to a less unique tag pulled up a dozen you’d have to hunt through to find yours. (Once I’ve published this diary you’re reading, there’s be 2 results.)
LaBefana, the good-luck Xmas witch. HOVER FOR DATA
So, get really silly with the tag you devise for your repurposed old diaries, e.g., two or three words, rather than a short clever one or two. Silly is far more idiosyncratic than clever is so it’s far less likely to duplicate a tag already in existence. But to be on the safe side, before you actually put your silly tag on your repurposed storage post, use the search engine to MAKE SURE it doesn’t exist yet.
In fact, if you’ve got an excellently silly tag in mind right now, go ahead and use the search engine link above the illustration to check!
Of course, you can always just bookmark your repurposed posts in your browser. S’up to you. Maybe even both the belt and suspenders.
Good luck to all here going forward!
Here’s hoping 2026 will be faaaar better than 2024 and 2026 … and that we’ll be able to be part of making it a better future.
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<tt>UPDATE A FEW DAYS AFTER INITIAL POST</tt>
The Save The Images group has so far posted useable image collections in the following categories:
- Medicines and Supplements
- Snakes
- Stained Glass Part 1
- Halloween Parts 1, 2 & 3
- Street Prophets logo images + [Hang your community] HangYrLinks/Lynxs here, interfaith, coexist, peace, HelpingOthers, Flying Spaghetti Monster
- Microbiota
- Emotional memes and symbols
- Hummingbirds
- Judaica
<tt>UPDATE AS OF January 30-31</tt>
In this sidethread of kos' January 30 post on WP progress, kos has confirmed that comments will be editable. For quite a few kosaks, this seems to be very welcome news. Read the entire post, use the links in it, and skim the thread to get even more current on what’s new. HERE is the full January 30 update by kos
<tt>UPDATE BY KOS AS OF FEBRUARY 5</tt>
<big>You’ll see we get to keep the image library after all, if solely accessible for diaries and stories. </big> (But I would speculate that if we get new draft folders at wordpress, we may be able to use drafts as a pass-through from the image library and across to comments, if it only requires copypaste.)
