I stopped by BlogBinders today to see what it would take to turn the blog into a book. As it turns out, just the posts (not the comments) in a regular-sized paperback would about to over 1100 pages. Just 2004 was more pages than could be perfect-bound. Wow, yeah!
In case you were wondering, you can get BlogBinders to work with WordPress even though it’s not advertised. Just pick the MovableType option for a blog type, then put the xmlrpc.php page for your site into the XMLRPC field. For this site, it’s just “http://www.asymptomatic.net/xmlrpc.php". The xmlrpc.php file comes with WordPress and is installed in the blog root. The blog index is always “1” for WordPress.
After significantly reducing the date range of posts and previewing the generated proof, I was left wanting. No comments? No ability to filter posts? No images? No sidebars to insert LinkLog (elsewhere called “asides”) entries into? Bah!
I remembered seeing a project before, and tried searching for it again. WP2PDF actually works with WP 1.5! There are a couple little glitches, but if you just want a one-off, it works great. It includes comments in the body text, which is cool. I did not explore any way to filter posts or do sidebars, but since the whole code is available to view, you can add anything you want.
The best part is that when you get the PDF produced, you can run it over to CafePress for printing and distribution. The base cost is $7 less than BlogBinders and you can design the entire book cover as opposed to just a small logo and teaser copy.
A few changes to the code and I’ll have a book for 2004 ready in no time!
