test lektor as a static blog site with content from the existing blog

The current roadmap has a goal to replace the loathed Drupal blog site with a static site. There's already #40183 (closed) convering the comments portion of the site. This issue will track importing the main content consisting of blog posts and calendar events into lektor.

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Do we want to consider the possibility of using other SSGs like Hugo, which we're using for status.torproject.org?

I'm asking because there might be Drupal migration script for some CMS that might make our job easier...

@gus @emmapeel opinions?

Since the blog won't have localization -- and this one of the reasons we use Lektor and the i18n plugin --, I think we could consider other SSGs.

IMO, Lektor would be nice because then we have the same stack everywhere. But, if there are some scripts ready, it would be interesting to explore Hugo, because iain (irl) already did some implementation using our styleguide: https://github.com/irl/torproject-hugo

Let's discuss internally with others who will use the website (comms team, tbb devs, ux team). Maybe we could use one of the All hands to talk about this.

@anarcat I've had a look at this over the weekend. Overall I think it would be very easy to migrate to Lektor. I can write a small script that can hook into the Drupal database at Pantheon and pull the article date, title, HTML content, URL slug and author and place it in a Lektor content file. I was planning to do the first draft today!

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before you start writing code, could we write a spec?

typically, for a migration like this, i'd pick a service page (e.g. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/service/blog), add a "Discussion" section, and start banging at it. The service template has a good set of headings to follow. in particular, you'd set goals/nice-to-have/non-goals, detail the proposed solution and so on. we can also brainstorm the spec here, but it's good to write it down somewhere safe.

i wonder if it might be good to put the migration script in a git repo and run it from CI, rendered as a gitlab pages, that way you have a direct, iterative way of seeing progress...

I agree with Gus. Let's use one of the All Hands to review what we want from the blog and how to use it.

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I agree with @gus, but please let's not consider a third SSG unless it has a template that complies with the styleguide.

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I've pushed some code for Lektor here, including a rough import script that uses Drupal REST services. Next steps:

• Downloading inline images from posts
• Setting up Lektor tags
• Setting up Lektor redirections for node/* URLs

Please do use the tpo/tpa group for such projects, unless you really, really do not want your coworkers to collaboratively be responsible for it. :)

Yes of course, I fully intend to move the project under the proper namespace soon. I just wanted experiment a bit before putting in the proverbial collective hands.

So, my tests indicate that migration from Drupal to Lektor should work fine. All the required content can be pulled from Drupal and inserted into Lektor fields. I published a proof of concept here on Pages: https://lavamind.pages.torproject.net/tpo-blog/

I'm closing this issue so we can track progress on building the new blog in #40004

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closed

changed milestone to %Launch support's Forum and Blog migration