Maintaining Your Installation | WebsByAmy.com

Archive for Maintaining Your Installation

Upgrading and Redirection Plugin

Many of you by now have upgraded to 3.0. I have not entirely moved all my sites over to 3.0 due to certain plugins that are not fully compatible yet or that I must upgrade the plugin in order for 3.0 to work properly with it (I lack the time to want to troubleshoot potential problems).

If I have set up your site for you, you'll want to read this. Two plugins that I use very often (90% of my set ups) that may affect you are the Redirection plugin and Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form (for which there is no fix yet, you have to use another contact form).

REDIRECTION - Since the 3.0 upgrade, several of my installations reported that their latest 'published' page became their 'home' page incorrectly redirecting the home page to the newly published page. This can be avoided by immediately after upgrading to 3.0, you go into your Dashboard and fixing the settings on the Redirection plugin menu. To do this, click on:

>Tools
>Redirection
>Options
> Scroll down to 'URL Monitoring' and turn it off via dropdown menu and save

If you site is already affected, do the steps above and then the following steps below to turn off the offending redirect:

>Tools
>Redirection
>Groups (you will see at least two groups)

>Modified posts – even though it is likely a page that caused it, you are looking for a ' / ' (slash) and when you view it, it is the redirect of your main domain (/) to the new page. Delete that redirect.

I have had one occasion where it happened again and I had to repeat this. It is annoying, however it is the price you pay for free plugins (get it? free?). I do send $$$ in donations to plugin authors whose plugins I use extensively, pay them and they will live to write another day of code for us. You should consider it too.

SECURE & ACCESSIBLE CONTACT FORM: After 3.0 upgrade, the anti-spam question disappears so you can't see it at all and therefore no one will answer it properly. There is no fix for that as of this writing, but they are aware of it. In the meantime, I have installed Contact Form (free plugin) and am waiting for the Secure & Accessible writers to update their form plugin. Go to >Plugins >Add plugin and search for Contact Form 7. Install it and then configure it (and add the code required) via the 'Settings' menu that goes with the installation.

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WordPress 3.0 is coming!

On May 1st, WordPress 3.0 will be unveiled. Click here to read an article regarding the new features.

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WordPress Glitches with 2.9 — upgrade now

I have heard from many of you that your automatic postings aren't working with 2.9 and have come to understand the this was a known problem with WordPress 2.9. As of today, you can automatically upgrade to 2.9.1 that addresses this and a few other issues.

I have personally had that problem with prior versions and haven't used the 'future post' option in a long time. If you upgrade and still experience this problem, it is most likely a plugin conflict or a conflict with your theme and without an 'error' message would not be able to troubleshoot. A good way to start, is to disable all plugins (except for Akismet) and try again. A great resource for questions about WordPress is www.Wordpress.org which also has a support forum.

You can read the full article on the complete update HERE.

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Using the Automated Update 2.7+

One of my favorite things about the new WordPress 2.7 (now 2.8) is the automatic upgrade option from the dashboard. As of this post, 2.8.1 has just been rolled out, so most of you will be using the ‘automated upgrade’ for the second time. Those of you slacking and haven’t done it yet… what are you waiting for?

So far the only failures with the automated upgrade have ended up being because the person was up at their server space capacity (easily fixed… my customers… call me). My new video on upgrading and backing up covers how to check before you start.

So, this tutorial covers a few scenarios, most noteably if you are still prior to 2.7 because you haven’t been upgrading like you should be… but I go over backing up your installation before you start and checking how much space you have as well as using Fantastico for the last time to upgrade you to 2.8 for you to then go forward and upgrade regularly.

So why am I telling you to backup your site when my servers create a back up of every site, every 24 hours (usually between 1am-5am EST)? Well there are times that you have done a lot of work since the morning and *then* you upgrade and if a site restore is needed, you lose everything you’ve done since last update.

Also, on occasion the ‘automated backup’ turns out to be corrupt (does not happen often) and you need to restore from the weekly backup. So, be safe and you probably won’t need it.

That being said if you are at 2.3 and are upgrading to 2.8 via Fantastico, definately make a backup because the further you go between backups the better the chance something will go wrong.

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