Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

This is really a note for me because I keep forgetting things.

1. Unpack latest copy of wordpress in a work directory
2. Rename wordpress directory to blog
3. Rename blog directory to blog.original
4. Move work/blog to main directory
5. Copy blog.original/wp-content/plugins to blog/wp-content/plugins
6. Copy blog.original/wp-content/themes to blog/wp-content/themes
7. Copy blog.original/wp-content/uploads to blog/wp-content/uploads
8. Copy blog.original/wp-config.php to blog/wp-config.php
9. Copy blog.original/.htaccess to blog/.htaccess (this is the step I keep forgetting
10. Go to blog admin page and check for database upgrade
11. Check site for working theme and internal links

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Dear Reader,

Ok, I took the plunge and moved “Postcards From My Life” to WordPress 2.5. I was hesitant because over the years I’ve hacked plug ins and themes so I was worried that something would break along the way. This has really grown to a pretty complex WordPress install; but then again, I like pushing the envelop.

I know I’ve said it before but huge props to the WordPress development team. Upgrading the core went exactly as they said it would.

Most of the plug ins I use worked fine because I usually keep them up to date anyhow.

Here are the exceptions:

• aLinks 1.0rc1
  Throws a fatal error on activation. No automatic upgrade. Have not checked the site for a manual upgrade.
• Extended Comment Options 2.0
  Throws a fatal error on activation. No automatic upgrade. Have not checked the site for a manual upgrade.
• Popularity Contest 1.3b3
  Throws a fatal error on activation. No automatic upgrade. Have not checked the site for a manual upgrade.
• NAVT 1.0.16
  I have a love/hate relationship with this plug in. On the one hand, it gives me control over the order of my menu items and some other cool features. The downside is the admin is so ajax heavy that it’s almost impossible to work with. It has gotten better, the previous version used to throw a dialog box in FF telling me the script was taking to long to load. The new version is nicer but there is no “Save”, “Publish” or “Commit”. I guess changes are immediate which I don’t really like but I’ll put up with. Oh and when I upgraded to the current version, it forgot all my menus I had built. Lucky for me, I only had 1 but that could be a pain if you have a lot.

That’s all I have to report. Everything went smoothly, which is why I’m constantly recommending WordPress to anyone who needs a quick but powerful Website. If you are waiting to see if there are problems, I’d say the water is fine, come on in.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Dear Reader,

Well, it’s the weekend so I naturally decided to check what software needed upgrading. Two packages quickly showed up on my “things I use and keep current” list.

Spaz
Ed Finkler wrote this cool little twitter client and compiled it using AIR. Despite the fact that AIR has some kind of seriously dmanaged garbage collection requiring me to restart Spaz every hour or so, I love this little app. Ed has done some cool thing with it and I enjoy watching it’s progress. The only think I don’t like is when there is a new version (say…24 hrs has passed) when I fire it up, I get an in-your-face notification requiring me to decide at that moment, “Upgrade or No?” It’s not that I have anything against upgrading and certinly not against Ed or Spaz. but an icon on the toolbar when there is an upgrade available would be much nicer. Besides, I fired the client up to use it…not decide whether I wanted to upgrade. And yes, I know it’s Open Source software so I’m not griping about it or demanding a refund, I’m just using it as an example because the Windows Upgrade example has been beat to death.(BTW: Yes Ed, I’m jealous. I wish I had a cool open source app that everybody could point out the flaws of but never give me props for.)

Wordpress
I like Wordpress. Despite it’s flaws and the fact that I think Matt is a bit unstable because he won’t upgrade it to work exclusively on PHP 5, I really like it. However, for the uninitiated, installing or upgrading it manually can be difficult. I have a good friend who shoots up “The Bat Signal” whenever he runs into a programming problem and I got one this morning. He tried to move from 2.3 to 2.3.1 and it was (shall we say) less than graceful. On the other hand, I upgraded both of my blogs in about 2 minutes. It actually too me longer to upgrade one of my plugins than it did my two blogs. This is, of course, thanks to the fact that I use Installatron on my server. Installatron makes keeping these types of applications up to date, extremely easy.

A side note on Wordpress, while it has an annoying “you need to upgrade” link on every admin page when there’s a new version, it does not force me to decide whether to upgrade before I can do anything else.

Anyhow, both this blog and PHP Podcasts have been upgraded and I even had time to add a shinny new skin here. (Didn’t really like the last one) So life is good…mostly.

Until next time
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=