Videolamer Search Project Redux: Importing the Site

Task: Cleanup Wordpress installation
Estimated Pomodoros: 1
Actual Pomodoros: 1


When the import process completed, Wordpress reported that some content was not retrieved.  I decided that I would try to obtain and add these files manually.  While I was add it, I figured I could do some additional housekeeping within Wordpress.  For instance, I could delete the video and audio files that were imported.  I could also reset the passwords on all the user accounts (in case I needed to access them).

I only managed to complete the second of these three tasks.  I gave up on password management after realizing that there were 40 different accounts on the site (and after I realized that with the admin account, I could do whatever I needed to).  I gave up on adding the missing content after realizing that all images in VL articles are referenced by upload date.  If I added them myself, they'd all be dated for today.  Sure, I could then go to the affected posts and update the links, but I decided instead that a dozen broken images wasn't going to be a dealbreaker. In retrospect, one could argue that this goes against my promise to be patient, but my decision was based not on the amount of time it would take, but on the fact that it felt kludgy and inaccurate to patch them back in.

This task ended up being a waste of time in the long run. Not enough usefulness for the time spent.
 
Task: Create new MySQL Column
Estimated Pomodoros: 1
Actual Pomodoros: 1

This was another worthless task. The VL site uses a PHP function to display a small excerpt of each article on the home page.  I really need a similar excerpt to display on my site, so I thought I would create a new database column that contains a close approximation.  Not a bad idea in theory, and I actually got it to work, but I forgot that the actual article contents contain HTML tags.  This meant that my excerpts would look very funny when displayed as text.  I know there are ways I could strip out the HTML, but I'm not sure if it is worth it.

This task was especially useless considering that before I began it, I thought that I could simply process the excerpt on the fly via Javascript or something.  Why I decided to do work this task, then, is beyond me.  I think I shouldn't have drank that beer while working.  Or maybe I simply need to take a break and come back later.