wordpress

After reading this article, I started thinking more about my WordPress deployment process. Like everyone, I started out with FTP. I got the job done without a whole lot of fuss. When I finished developing a site, I simply uploaded the entire folder and I was done. When my development process matured a bit more, I needed to maintain sites and make more frequent changes. This is where I got started with Git.

In The Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 So, when we left off in part two, I was leaning towards WordPress as a candidate for a CMS. It’s popular, has tons of themes, plugins, etc. It’s almost perfect, but for only certain situations. Enter Drupal Now, I’ve been hearing a lot about Drupal. For years now. I tried it once and I didn’t like it. However, since then, I’ve revisited it.

In The Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 On the quest for the perfect CMS (Picking a CMS Part 1), I’ve decided to switch focus a little bit. New Standards As you guys can see, I’ve had way too much on my hands to do a thorough job on the quest for the perfect Content Management System. But then something came to mind. Aren’t we all busy?

How The Problem Started Christmas Eve have just started at about 12:03 AM, when I logged on and saw that dreaded message: Your Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota So I did what all normal people do at first: I ignored it. Actually, I had a very good reason to at the time. Since it was 12:03 AM, I assumed that my nightly backup job (backup and compress files and databases) was causing the issue.

Now, it’s no secret that I can be a moron sometimes, but I’d like to put it on record that it was all me and not WordPress 2.7 that had the issue. So I’m sitting here last night minding my own business and Chris Coyier sends out a tweet talking about how it took him 10 minutes to upgrade. So I figure, why not? I already had the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin ready to go, so I figured it would be a breeze.

Welcome to the November 21, 2008 edition of Web Development 2. Dereck presents My Google Penalty and My Response posted at I Will Not Die. Sly presents 5 Search Engine Optimization Tips for WordPress Blogs posted at Slyvisions dot Com. Although I’m more or less devoted to CakePHP as my PHP Frameowrk, it’s also good to diversify sometimes. Greg Allard presents Quick Thumbnails in Django posted at Code Spatter. Margaret Garcia presents Top 20 iPhone Apps for Entrepreneurs posted at Web Design Schools Guide.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve had some problems with WordPress 2.5 and their new image upload. Now I know there have been many, many, many, (well let’s just say a lot) of posts and articles about how to fix this problem. But, none of them seemed to work for me. Most of them just go into the basics: setting folders with the right permissions, etc. My Set Up I won’t go into detail, but I think being on Dreamhost has something to do with it, because trying all this on my local PC with XAMPP Lite on Windows XP.

So it’s been about a weeks since it was out, so I figure, why not? After all I have the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, so this should be a breeze. Now this plugin makes upgrading WordPress ridiculously simple. It handles file backups, database backups, deactivating and reactivating all plugins, etc. So I go through the process and I’m not totally disappointed. There were the normal problems we have with all upgrades and some new ones:

Now I don’t have to tell you guys about all the goodies that WordPress 2.5 brings, but I’ll name a few anyways: New fresh Admin theme Nice Dashboard You can modify the link for “Incoming Links”. Technorati anyone? Finally included Tag Management Concurrent Post Editing Protection One Click Plugin upgrades. Oh yes. It’s about time. Built in Gallery Nice Flash Media Uploader There’s just ONE thing that rubs me the wrong way.

No, I’m not moving, not yet anyway. But Lava is. She scored a domain name which describes her blog so perfectly, that she couldn’t help but nab it up: HowISaveMoney.net. Now what are the odds that this domain would still be lying around?

Lava finally made the big step and “moved into her own place”. Moving domains is always such a hassle, but there are a few things that make the process a little bit easier. I was the Administrator during this move and I must say it was a little bit involved, but I think I got it done.

The Domain

The domain was purchase at 1and1.com. Why not NetSolutions, Yahoo, GoDaddy? Because they all have great promotional deals but then it’s upward of $8 to renew every year. 1and1 has a nice flat rate of $5.99 every year.

The host remained the same, since this particular hosts allows up to 10 domains pointing to it. All the files are simply dumped in a different sub folder. I both love and hate the idea of one consolidated host. It’s easier to manage: one login one set of administration and maintenance, cheaper than several different hosts. But if one sight goes down, they all go down. If a hacker gets into one, he damn well gets into all of them. The load on all of the sites is still very small and way under the allotted bandwidth limit. Most of them are blogs using WordPress and we all know what a small physical footprint WordPress leaves behind. If any one site seems to out grow things little family what it turns 18 or something, it will definitely be kicked out of the nest onto it’s on hosting package.

Copy Files

Now this should be the simple part. You copy everything into the folder that is going to house your new blog. There are a few minor changes that you might need to make. Depending on your previous setup you may need to edit the .htaccess file and change the RewriteBase option. But I do think that WordPress will configure it for you when you set up your permalink stuff.

One change that is necessary is editing your wp_config.php file. If you’re changing databases, you need to make the changes here. If you’re not changing databases you still need to make the changes to the table prefix. I forgot to mention that we still need to keep the old database active (details to come later).