Web Development Insight

This blog was updated automatically using the automatic WordPress upgrade to version 2.5 from version 2.3.3. I have read others have had varied success with the process. I will not go over the details of installation because it is readily available on the website.

One of the plug-ins I use did not get restarted which was easily done manually. Note the wp-content directory is not upgraded so any themes or plug-ins are not damaged.

One thing AWU does not do is update your local copy. Only the server copy is upgraded. Your local copy can be easily updated by copying the updated files from the server to the local drive.

Having success with 3 upgraded blogs, I will use this plug-in in the future.

I am all for saving time. In the old days backing up a WordPress blog meant either using phpAdmin to back up the database or manually logging into each blog and using a backup plug-in.

No more.

Starting with WordPress 2.0 the bundled backup program was taken out and made a separate plug-in. Version 2.0 of the WordPress database backup plug-in takes advantage of WordPress cron program and will email a backup on a regular basis. I use once a week, though the granularity can be once an hour.

Once installed, go into Manage then Backup. On the bottom of the page the time frequency of the backup and the email address is set. Note if you choose once a week, the weekly backups are on the day you hit submit. Since I like getting backups on Saturday I started all my backups on a Saturday.

Note this only backs up the WordPress database; not the WordPress source code.

admin Doug

WordPress released a new version 2.1.1 which is mostly bugfixes and security fixes. Version 2.1.1 includes about 30 bug fixes, mostly minor things around encoding, XML-RPC, the object cache, and HTML code. Here is the file diffs between v2.1 and v2.1.1. (No guarantee comes with this). Download WordPress 2.1.1 upgrade diff. Just overwrite the existing files, upload them, then run the upgrade program.

Read about the upgrade in depth on the WordPress blog.

Doug

One of the banes of blogging is spam comments. Nearly every blogger gets them. One way to reduce comment spam is to turn off accepting comments on older posts. Each blog host will have a different way to do this…if it is possible. Check with your host to see how.

Generally trackbacks are a nuisance since they do not require a login to implement. The poor moderator or comment filter must decide whether these are legitimate or not.

Since shutting off accepting comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks before a specific date is not built-in, WordPress has a comment timeout plug-in that does the job.

Doug

Like most people, I have experienced a very frustrating waiting period after I hit Publish in WordPress. It takes forever sometimes. Or the white screen of death: MySQL database access has timed out (or a similar message). Why is this happening?

The default for WordPress is to ping the pingomatic website after a post is published. Look under Options > Write and look under Update Services. There is a reference to pingomatic which pings many, many servers. When all the pinging is done then control is returned…if ever. The default timeout is 15 seconds.

There are several ways around this.

1. Have a service, such as FeedBurner, do your bidding. Delete the entries in the Update Service area and have the service (FeedBurner e.g.) handle your feed. FeedBurner has an option called PingShot which, when activated, will ping pingomatic and other servers. I use a plugin called subscribe me which routes your blog’s feed requests to FeedBurner.

2. A plugin called wp-no-ping-wait will ping the list in Update Service *after* control is returned to WordPress. Thus after Publish button is pressed control is returned almost immediately. The website that handles the plugin has been down for a while so go to this link to get it (the wayback machine). Look for nopingwait2.php. Upload it to your plugin directory and activate it.
3. Delete all entries under Update Service and manually ping the servers yourself using pingoat or pingomatic.

Doug

I updated to WordPress 2.0.5 the day it came out. It has several security fixes and some bug fixes. I updated by getting the files that were different and applying them. So far no upgrade problems have occurred. The mySQL database did not need updating, either. Nice.

Doug