Tag: wordpress

WordPress Backup

Like most folk I back up my PC data pretty regularly. Cue usual joke of ‘you do back up, don’t you?’. One thing I hadn’t been doing is backing up this site. Using a couple of plugins this is easily addressed.

Download WP-DB Backup and WP-Cron and install as per instructions included with the files. The backup plugin allows you to backup the wordpress mysql tables (and any others of your choosing) to local or remote file or to an e-mail address. The cron plugin (cron is a Unix command for scheduling jobs) allows you to schedule your backups.

So I’ve made good use of my Google Mail account and now a backup of my wordpress database tables are sent to my account daily at midnight. Arguably overkill but better safe than sorry.

I’ve tried the backup files and they work a treat – this tutorial is an excellent guide for non sql folks. It amazes me how many people take backups but never actually test whether their backup solution works until they actually need it. Risky.

As for the files on the domain I have them sitting locally and do not remote edit them so they should be covered by my local backups. I can sleep safe at night knowing that:

a) This drivel can be recovered again
b) At some point this posting will come back to haunt me

Site Tweaks

Finally got round to doing some small tweaks to tidy the site up. Sidebar is a lot less cluttered with links now moved to a page all of their own. Speaking of pages I’ve finally got an About page sorted that holds info about me (doh) and also last tracks heard, a currently list, gamercard and some site stats.

Flickr gallery can also be accessed through Gallery page which gives me a couple of options when wanting to view photo’s. Much tidier. Now back to real life tidying – this room’s a mess.

K2

Upgraded the site to a new theme – K2 from Michael Heilemann is a turbo charged theme for WordPress which is more than a theme – it’s a mod. Supports numerous plugins and comes with it’s own option panels. Currently still in beta and a little rough round the edge’s but like this theme I do. I’ll be updating more through the week with some new plugins and pages. For the moment there’s a few links that may be broke – they’ll be fixed soon enough.

Also moved all images from my host to Flickr. Makes cleaning up my web space a bit easier and hopefully future upgrades will be a lot tidier. It took a while but what else was there to do on a wet and windy day, apart from watching the cricket – I’ve become a closet test match watcher!

WordPress Upgrade

WordPress released version 1.5.1 which I have just applied to the site. Hopefully everything works including that 1 pixel problem in IE just for Ricky. There seems to be more info and also increased effort to guide those upgrading and letting them know what to expect. Upgrade thread is worth following for instructions and also feedback on anything that breaks.

Just need to figure out why the Super Archives plug-in works in IE, doesn’t apply the style in Firefox and also generates javscripts errors. Joy. Although the archives in IE do look spiffy.

Tweaking

Added a fair bit of ‘stuff’ to the website this weekend but all behind the scenes. The Archives are now a bit more funky and you should now see some Gravatar links if you post a comment. I’ve also been tweaking quite a bit of the php that drives the site – there should be context sensitive sidebars and also the times are a bit more friendly although I keep on missing dates as they are peppered throughout the code. I’ve also added in a Plugins page so you can see what’s been added to the default WordPress engine. Most importantly I’ve added in lots of interesting content. Ok – I’ve added a couple of drab posts but what do you expect?

Joking aside – I tidied up some old posts with images that weren’t displaying properly. I also removed some work posts that while I thought they were innocent enough with hindsight they were better off deleted – you never know who might read it.

So that’s it – I’m ready to add more dreary posts about the films I’ve been to see and games that I’ve played. Which makes you wonder why I and others blog…this quote summed it up for me.

“Blogging in itself is stupid, really, and self indulgent (or perhaps that’s just my approach to it). But it’s a hobby, and we are a nation who love our pointless little hobbies. It’s no more corrosive than other hobbies. Or rather, it shouldn’t be.�

Thanks for the quote Gordon – shame about the snide piece in The Sunday Times.

Upgrades

Finally got WordPress 1.5 installed. Nice. Freshened up the template as well which is the default with a different logo but it keeps things simple. Now got to go through the plug-ins I had installed to see what does and more importantly doesn’t work with 1.5 – the joys of early adopters! Did manage to hack through some Mysql to get the activity plug-in working – joy.

Spam Karma

Installed a new spam plug-in – Spam Karma. Since Friday night it has blocked 270 spam comments from being entered. 270 in just over 36 hours. It has many more options than the previous plug-in I was using and it seems to be doing a good job of picking up any new comments that shouldn’t be displayed. Like spam mail and spyware, spam commenting (and soon to be spam trackbacks) are ruining the net for the average user.

Blog Updates

Just a quick post to say that I installed Gallery a couple of weekends ago and it looks like it may have screwed up a bit of the site (dodgy htaccess rules) so apologies for any hassle cause and thanks to Graham for the heads up. My Gallery installation can be found here – it will be updated soon with some photo’s from yesteryear, including university days which are a very long 10 years ago. Gallery has been moved to Flickr which is far better than hosting locally, stores all image sizes possible and allows you to tag, comment and organise your photo’s. Should have moved ages ago..

I also seem to be suffering from some comment issues. Lewis had mentioned this ages ago which was fixed by refreshing my comment blacklist but Gordon was having issues earlier today (again thanks for the heads up). I’ll look into a different comment spam solution later in the week – I’m hoping the above issue may have caused comment issues as well.

Finally – some small updates on the right hand side including a sideblog powered by del.icio.us all in preparation for a WordPress 1.5 upgrade in the not too distant future. The links are pretty predictable but the Gran Turismo kid is my favourite so far.