LightPress

LightPress has been designed from the ground up as a full replacement for the WordPress front-end. This includes a permalink and

system for "pretty" URLs. The only interaction with WordPress is through the database. This means that LightPress is fully compatible with WordPress 1.5, including the new 1.5.1 release.

Now this is fine if you're starting a site from scratch, but if you're converting an existing WordPress site you may not want to mess with your permalinks. I've made the conversion and hopefully I've done most of the hard work for you! The 1.0.2 LightPress release includes a file called

which converts WordPress-style queries into a format that LightPress prefers. So without further ado, here's what you need to look at.

1. Don't overwrite your WordPress

   .htaccess

   file with the version included with LightPress!

2. Edit your LightPress

   index.php

   and insert the following line at the beginning of the file:

   include_once('wp-compat.php');

3. If you're using one of the supplied LightPress templates, you may want to add the following lines to your WordPress

   .htaccess

   file below the line reading

   #END WordPress

   :

   RewriteRule ^rss2.xml feed.php [L]
   RewriteRule ^rss.xml feed.php [L]
   RewriteRule ^atom.xml feed.php?feed=atom [L]

4. Make sure you setup your permalink settings correctly in

   config.php

   . The important settings are:

   • post_prefix

     – permalink for each post

   • category_prefix

     – permalink for viewing categories

   • archives_prefix

     – permalink for dated archive

   • static_prefix

     – permalink for pages

   • search_prefix

     – permalink for searches

   • author_prefix

     – permalink for viewing posts by a particular author

   You'll want to edit

   post_prefix

   to match what you've set for your WordPress permalink option. The conversion is pretty simple, for example vapourtrails.ca uses:

   • WordPress:

     /%year%-%month%/%postname%/

   • LightPress:

     'post_prefix' = '%Y-%m'

   In the above

   %Y

   is replaced by the 4-digit year and

   %m

   is replaced by the 2-digit month. The actual post name is handled by using the template tag

   {post_permalink}

   in your templates.

   You should also set

   archives_prefix

   and

   static_prefix

   to match any leading text in your permalink structure (blank in my case, but some people use

   archives

   , etc). Finally, set

   category_prefix

   to match your WordPress category permalink setting (the default is

   category

   )

5. Edit your templates to use the new structure. In most cases you'll have to change very little, but one important spot is inside the Pagination templates:

   • Edit the file

     plugins/pagination_multi.xml

     (located in your active template directory)

   • Change the links to use

     /page/

     instead of

     /record/

   • Change the template tags

     {page_next}

     and

     {page_previous}

     to

     {paged_next}

     and

     {paged_previous}

     , respectively.

And that's it! Once setup, you can continue to let WordPress edit & update

and LightPress won't skip a beat.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to use the LightPress system...