Tag Archive for 'wordpress'

Broken blog

Published
by
Cody
on March 30, 2008
in Blog
. 2 Comments

As usual, my WordPress upgrade (to the much-hyped 2.5) gave me grief. Unfortunately, much of it was my fault. For some odd reason, my FTP client moved files on the server instead of copying them, so my backup was essentially useless (I copied the original blog directory to another directory). Thus, when I deleted the new directory when it got messed up, I deleted everything. Themes, plugins, even images. Can anyone say “stupid mistake”?

Luckily, any pictures I used on the site are on my computer, but that just means I’ll have to re-upload them and fix any posts using images (such as the most recent post before this). And on the bright side, I can start anew without the clutter of useless themes and plugins. On the downside, I don’t remember what all the useful plugins were…

And yes, Bagel, I know I could have avoided this by just having a blog on WordPress.com, but I’m too stubborn for that. I just wish I had made better backups…

UPDATE: All right, I’ve got a new theme going, but I’m still missing a lot of stuff. And I still feel stupid. Argh. At least WP 2.5 is nice. It’s a good thing, too, considering the trouble I went through.

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How to easily upgrade WordPress

Published
by
Cody
on February 7, 2008
in Blog and Guides
. 3 Comments

If you’re like me and run your own copy of WordPress that’s not actually hosted by WordPress.com, upgrading can be a little bit annoying, especially with the minor security fixes that come out every so often. Luckily, there’s a fairly easy way to do this, as Zack of All Trades illustrates. You can do this if you have access to an SSH or Telnet shell. Some hosts don’t offer it, but others do, so you’ll need to check with your web host to see if you can access your account via a shell client. It’s is not for the weak of heart.

I wouldn’t recommend this method for major upgrades, but I suppose it’d work out just fine. I’ve used it for the past few minor updates and it’s been great. Less time spent using an FTP client and more time spent…uh…writing, I suppose. Maybe. Sometimes.

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WordGrief

Published
by
Cody
on September 26, 2007
in Blog and Rant
. 0 Comments

So I upgraded my blog to the latest version of the ultimate blogging goodness that is WordPress. One of the cool things this version (2.3) has that everyone’s been talking about is tags. This is Web. 2.0: you have to have tags. Categories just don’t cut it anymore.

Anyways, tags are cool. I’ve been using Ultimate Tag Warrior 3 for all my tagging needs but when I upgraded to WP 2.3, I decided to give the built-in tagging features a whirl. Of course, this entailed extensive modification of the theme to switch everyone over from UTW but things were made easier by a neat little tag importer that took all my tags from UTW and put them in the WordPress tagging table.

A few minutes of use almost sold me. It looked just as nice as UTW, and since I don’t use tag clouds, the features were good. However, I stopped short when I couldn’t find any kind of management for the tags. There is no (easy) way to add, delete, or modify tags other than going into the database or editing every post individually.

But this was just the tip of the iceberg. As I was writing this post, I began to get strange errors telling me that I was missing a table in my WordPress database. I couldn’t even save my post. Investigation led me to this support article. Apparently, the developers saw fit to completely rename three tables in the WordPress database, which means that many plugins and themes are using outdated code which will cause errors just like the ones I was getting. Now I’m forced to use the featureless WordPress tags because UTW is one of the incompatible plugins crashing my blog, as is the nifty AJAX archives plugin I had managing my archives page (which is now the boring old version until I can figure out what to do with it).

Alas, this isn’t a new thing with WordPress. It seems that every major upgrade brings with it major problems for existing installations. I’ll have my blog just perfect with everything all figured out. Then I upgrade and I can’t use half of it. That’s the price of staying on top of things, I suppose. I guess my biggest frustration is being forced to use the inadequate WordPress tagging feature, but plugin authors will probably catch up soon enough. I hope.

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Argh!

Published
by
Cody
on May 15, 2007
in Blog and Personal
. 0 Comments

WordPress 2.2 broke my theme. I just upgraded to the newest version and suffered a setback when I found that the theme I was running is slightly incompatible with how WordPress uses widgets. See, if you know much about WordPress blogs, you realize that most themes feature widgets, which are useful little gadgets that you can drag and drop around in your sidebar to change the functionality. A few people (mostly developers of the popular K2 theme and its derivatives) decided to use something different for managing stuff in the sidebar, and they called their stuff modules. So, modules and widgets…the same, but not. The main problem is that the two are utterly incompatible. Enable widgets on your blog and the modules break. I personally like the modules better, but apparently WordPress decided to go with implementing widgets. No surprise there considering the widgets were originally developed by Automattic, the company responsible for bringing WordPress to the masses.

Anyways, the theme I was originally using was Unsleepable, which is based off of K2 and thus uses modules. It’s actually a version that was released a while back and then taken off the developer’s site due to bugs. I managed to fix my copy and it served me well. However, today when I upgraded to WordPress 2.2 from 2.1, I noticed one big problem: all my module configuration was gone, and there was no way to get it back. The little menu tab that let me mess with the theme’s modules wasn’t there at all. There was something new, though: a widgets tab.

In previous versions of WordPress (from about 1.5 to 2.1), you had to install a plugin to enable widget functionality, and that only worked on themes that were widget-ready. As of 2.2, the widget plugin is essentially built right in, which is nice for most people, since most themes use widgets. Since my theme used modules, the widget functionality broke the theme. As far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to disable widgets.

Due to this, I’ve switched to another theme, Redoable. This theme is also based off of K2 and uses modules, but I’ve found that it’s a lot nicer-looking than Unsleepable when I can’t change the modules. The base sidebar stuff is just what I need, and it’s a little newer than the other theme. Hopefully as time goes on, something will be done about the widgets. I’d mess with it myself, but I’ve no clue where to start. As knowledgeable as I am about WordPress, I’m no good at editing PHP to the extent that it would be needed. I’d probably end up screwing up my whole installation, and I personally think a half-working blog is better than a non-working blog.

EDIT: I spoke too soon. Not five minutes after I posted this did I come across a handy little plugin which disables widgets in 2.2. I need to learn to look before I speak. Anyways, with all things put back as they were, I’m back with the Unsleepable theme. I’m tempted to permanently switch to Redoable, but the sidebar modules still aren’t working on that (I’m not sure if they ever were), so it’s the tried and true for now. The pink is starting to get to me, though.

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The deed is done

Published
by
Cody
on February 26, 2007
in Blog
. 1 Comment

Well, I’ve finally gotten my blog situation all ironed out. I don’t know what kept going wrong with my old host, but things over here at BlueHost are working much, much better. Anyways, I apologize for any growing pains any of you may be experiencing, after coming across some other site where this blog used to be. I assure you, I’m here to stay for the long run (provided I keep a steady source of income to pay for the hosting).

What’s in store for the future? Same old, same old, really. I’ll keep ranting about silly people and posting (semi) useful information for those who care to read it. However, there is one addition I hope to make, and that is WordPress themes. I’ve been honing my PHP skills by converting old HTML templates into WordPress themes. Those, and hopefully others, will be forthcoming soon.

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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States