Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7.1 Pains

I used to use a great Wordpress plugin called Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, or WPAU to its, many, fans. A plugin whiich used to be recommened by the Wordpress site itself becuase it did what it did so well.

It really was a great plugin and meant you could upgrade your Wordpress blogging platform in about 10 minutes flat, with minimal site downtime. This plugin also backed up your database and all WP installation files and encoouraged you to download them, just in case something went wrong.

I upgraded to WP 2.7 in a flash via WPAU, and with no hiccups. Great.

Enter little message on the WP dashboard telling me to upgrade to 2.7.1. OK I thought, let's see if WPAU can do it. Alas no. Aah.

What followed was a mornings downloading of all my site files for backup purposes. That done, and remember all if this used to take 10 minutes, I tried the new built in upgrade feature. No dice. Apparently I needed to 'chown' some folders via a quaint little command line program called 'putty'. I'm good at chmod, but no chown.

So I did not bother with the chown thing and decided to do it the old way via an FTP system, deleting and upgrading everything after having to manually disable all the plugins individually because the mass deactivation didn't want to play ball, and the caching system did not really want to be deactivated, so I downloaded it to my hard drive and deleted it from my server. It worked fine after I re-uploaded the plugin to my newly upgraded WP installation, thankfully.

After around a morning's work, my updated Wordpress installation was running. But what a fuss, from ten minutes to around 3 to 4 hours. I've only got two more sites to do luckily, but I feel sorry for those who have 10+ sites to deal with.

Still, some people should be OK with the built in upgrade, although others have been having problems.

So, Matt Mullenweg and all the WP development team - please provide built in upgrading functionality to Wordpress, including the possibility to back up all files and the database from within Wordpress. After all, if WPAU could do it, I'm sure you can find a way to do it too!

By the way: Wordpress rocks awesomely! I love it. Shame the shiny new WP 2.7 is, in some respects, a step back into the past.

New Theme

Well, it will be once I get all the images to play ball! Tinkering in progress.

Should look like the backend of Wordpress, albeit not the lastest and greatest version.

This is just as well - otherwise I end up confusing myself.

This will look prettier, eventually!

It's a long time since I tinkered with Blogger, and I'm a little rusty.

Still, for free, Blogger is a great platform for those wishing to dip their feet in the blog world. Or even create a little website for their company, school, etc.

I think you can even use your own domain name on Blogger too. Must check on that.

Styling RSS Feeds

Until I saw my main Blog from Italy site being featured, via an RSS feed, on the GlobalPost site, I did not really know that it was possible to style feeds.

Now I know that it can be done - as long as you know css and, use a plugin for Wordpress which can help you add the style information - just Google 'Feedstyler'.

Now my feed looks better, but not perfect. Need to develop my css skills!

Actually, looking at many of the sites I've subscribed to via Google Reader, it's surprising just how few bother to supply styled feeds - even some quite big names.

If you see all images pushed hard over to the left in your feed reader, then this means the feed is not being styled.

On the other hand, those using the Blogger platform who pop images in the centre of the page seem to get their images positioned in the same way in their feeds.

Wordpress developers take note: Please supply a 'feed.css' style sheet!

Google Chrome plus Wordpress Blog - no go

Don't know why, but I cannot access the admin area of my Wordpress powered site when using the Chrome browser.

Very strange. In Firefox, I can do what I want to do.

I've tweaked Chrome's settings, but to no avail. Strange.

No Slow Queries

Yep, that's right, no slow queries on the MySql database sitting behind Blog from Italy!

I'm a happy bunny! Installing another related posts plugin and losing Simple Tags has spiced up my database.

Must get my plugin fever under control.

Chopping out some gadgets and widgets has worked wonders too. Now the pages load a wee bit faster.

Blog from Italy's readers are happier too. More seem to be visiting.

Wordpress and Blogger Thoughts

Wordpress is great. Blogger is good too. However there is a world of difference between using Blogger and Wordpress.com.

Running a database driven site takes time and effort. With a stand alone Wordpress site, aside from producing content you need to keep an eye on the database, make sure pages load quickly, try not to get carried away with too many plugins, like me.

Then there is security. The www is full of types who would like nothing better than to ruin all your hard work. People have given up running blogs because of security and hacking related problems. You need to keep on top of things, or else you will be faced with the prospect of untangling a mass incomprehensible data. Most will give up, some may be able to afford go techs to help, others will have backups.

If you run a database driven site, backups are imperative. Ignore this at your peril.

Luckily Blogger takes care of everything for you. OK so you do not have a flash domain, but then it is all free.

Think carefully before setting up your own site. It can be a full time job, with zero pay.