A good first step toward experimenting with the Communicating with Prisoners ortext is replicating it. The site archive includes all you need to replicate this site. It includes the site content in redundant forms to increase your flexibility in working with it.

To work with this site, we suggests that you start with a new installation of WordPress. You could import the Communicating with Prisoners content as additional content to an existing WordPress site, but that’s technically difficult to do well. You can get a new installation of WordPress through a commercial online hosting service. Alternatively, you can install WordPress on your local computer and experiment with this ortext locally. XAMPP provides a simple, free local server for installing WordPress and other similar software.

Setting up a local replica of this site based at localhost/wordpress is very easy. Establish a new WordPress installation on your computer at that address. For security, ensure that your local installation is blocked from public Internet access. Then within the SQL database supporting your new local WordPress installation, delete all the tables. Then import into that database the site archive database backup_{date-time}_Communicating_with_Prisoners_{number/letter string}-db.gz Unzip the site archive folders plugins, themes, and uploads and use them to replace the corresponding folders in your installation’s wp-content folder. You can then login to your local replica of the site with username prisoners333 and password compassion For an additional layer of security, you should immediately change the site password. You should also change the email address on the admin Settings page and for the username prisoners333.

This site’s archive includes all the content exported with the native WordPress Export tool. You can use that XML export file to replicate this site anywhere using the WordPress Importer. That approach doesn’t require direct manipulation of the underlying WordPress SQL database. No WordPress technical expert would ordinarily use the XML export file to replicate a site. But doing so can provide a technical learning experience. It also will provide, even if merely done reasonably correctly, an installation sufficient for experimenting with this ortext.

At low cost, you can replicate this site anywhere without having any technical knowledge. One simple approach is to purchase the UpdraftPlus Migrator addon for $30. That software provides a simple, drag-and-drop means to replace an existing WordPress installation with a replica of this site. Other similar commercial software probably also exists.

A person proficient in WordPress installations and migrations can easily replicate this site anywhere from the site archive files without purchasing any software. The underlying standard technical approach involves a PHP serialized-data search-and-replace for re-basing the internal links, a SQL import, and copying folders into your WordPress installation’s wp-content directory. Most commercial online hosting providers offer such migration service for free with a new hosting account. Especially if done for an online server, the migration process can be difficult and dangerous for a person not knowledgeable about standard web programming tools.

An important aspect of this ortext is integration with externally hosted datasets. Within the archive folder uploads, the folder data includes Excel and OpenOffice versions of the datasets. To have datasets hosted at locations of your choosing, you need to update the datalinks manifest.

The replication procedure doesn’t include installing the Ortext BibTex Importer plugin or the Ortext Build plugin. You don’t need the Ortext BibTex Importer and Ortext Build plugins to replicate the Communicating with Prisoners site. You can do a lot of experiments and changes without those two plugins. Not installing on a public server plugins that you’re not using is good security practice. We see little risk in using the Ortext BibTex Importer for importing references on a public site. Good security practice in any case would be to delete the plugin from the public site after you’re finished using it. The Ortext Build plugin involves more risky code. We don’t recommend including it on a publicly accessible site.

This ortext’s authors have released their work under a CCO 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Replicating this ortext is only a first step. The next steps are for you to make something better.

This site provides seeds for ortexts. It’s not a project trunk. We haven’t developed a central collaborative platform for revising and improving this ortext. We encourage others to explore such possibilities.