Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, August 7, 2006:
Now Powered by Expression Engine
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
After much internal debate, I’ve finally moved this blog over to Expression Engine by pMachine. Wordpress served me well, but it was time to move on. I first considered upgrading to wp2 but it seemed like a lot of work so I figured I’d look around and see if anything else caught my eye. EE was first on my list to check out since I had just finished redoing my back end systems using their fine Code Ignitor framework.
EE is far more powerful than WP and I’m looking forward to taking advantage of some of those features down the road. Also I figured it was time to move this blog to something that had more formal support. Some of the posts on this blog have generated 10K+ revenues for HelpSpot and when you have that kind of money riding on a blog post it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to know there’s somebody to call if it breaks.
There were really only 2 tricky parts. First was converting all my posts. I don’t really understand why but EE can’t convert from WP so you first have to export to Movable Type format and then it can import that. There seem to be 2 scripts out there which do this, though only this one worked for me. The other big hurdle was setting up all the 301 redirects since the URL structures are different and there was no nice way to make the EE ones like WP ones. I’m hopefully that I have all that setup right but we’ll see. If not you won’t be reading this 
Discussion
I get to be the first one to comment!
Your new blog looks great. And you actually DID act on that evil thought (of converting helpspot to code igniter format)?:O
Hopefully this wouldn't mess up your search engine rankings for the posts.
Created by Ali on 08.07.2006 10:00 pm
Actually I didn't convert HelpSpot, I just converted my ecommerce system and customer system which I had thrown together very quicly before launching HelpSpot.
Created by Ian on 08.07.2006 10:04 pm
Looks great Ian!
Created by Scott Meade on 08.07.2006 10:21 pm
Hi Ian,
Just a suggestion for a future article, if you could tell us why you chose EE over WP in more detail that would be great. I've also been looking at potentially moving over, read a few reviews, and I understand it's more powerful, but it wasn't enough yet to make me jump over.
I understand that support and upgrading were important aspects, but you also quickly mentioned some great features that you were hoping to take advantage of in the future. Do you mind if I ask what those might be?
Created by Stephane Grenier on 08.08.2006 12:30 am
The move worked out ok for Planet MicroISV, as would be expected you flooded it this morning, and I disabled all the "new" posts. Your new redirect has two slashes at the end, it's not hurting anything, except maybe the need for two requests when someone asks for a single / and gets redirected to the two slashes version.
The blog definitely looks nice and I'd also welcome a more detailed comparison of EE with WP.
Created by Baruch on 08.08.2006 2:09 am
OK, I'll work up a post on why I moved in more detail.
Baruch, what double slash? On which URL the RSS feed?
Created by Ian on 08.08.2006 7:32 am
Hi Ian,
Btw, of interest, I checked out CodeIgnitor from one of your previous posts about a month ago, and I was so impressed with it that I used for a major part of my website (a new free tool).
Hence why I asked for your view on EE, I always find your referals to good technologies/tools very accurate and helpful.
Created by Stephane Grenier on 08.08.2006 9:45 am
That's great Stephane. I presume this was for your free analysis tool? Nice job with that, I'd love to think of a similar thing to generate myself, but I can't find anything that straight forward in my field (aka useful for the user with just a few minutes input).
Created by Ian on 08.08.2006 9:58 am
Hi Ian,
It absolutely is!
I'm also looking at revamping the sales process, much like you, to use this framework when I do the next enhancement. It's very nice to work with and very clean.
I agree with you, it's hard to come up with something for your industry... Actually for me it took me a while to even come up with that, which in retrospect should have been intuitive! If I think of something I'll definitely let you know.
Created by Stephane Grenier on 08.08.2006 10:12 am
Ah, that explains why your RSS feed hiccupped the last 10 posts or so back up! It looks nice, but the color scheme no longer seems to match the HelpSpot page as well. Or was that intentional, to better distinguish your professional and personal lives?
I gotta say, though, I'm totally up in the air as to whether EE or WP has the goofier-looking smilies... 
Created by Jesse Smith on 08.08.2006 6:08 pm
The blog is really narrow now and once you scroll down half the screen is wasted in white space. It would be better if the rightmost column was underneath the one second from the right.
Created by lee on 08.10.2006 11:23 pm
I agree, this was just the nicest template I could find for EE on very short notice. Actually I like it, but it does need to be wider.
Created by Ian on 08.10.2006 11:34 pm