Category Archives: wordpress

wordpress

Contents
Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP
WordPress London #7
Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone – V2.0
Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP
WordPress Fullscreen Writing Mode
WordPress 3.1 Category Bug
WordPress Developer Required for Small Coding Job

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP

Posted on 20/11 by Andy Roberts

I’ve just been using ManageWP beta – the web utility for managing multiple WordPress installations – to delete an obsolete plugin from several of my older blogs.

The functionality to delete or deactivate plugins was a much requested feature that was added to the many useful operations that ManageWP can perform for you just a couple of weeks ago, and it really does make this web service indispensable for anybody with more than just a couple of WordPress installations. I was recommending before, but even more so now.

The plugin I wanted to deprecate in my installations was called Viper’s Video QuickTags, very handy in it’s day for embedding youtube videos withing blog posts, but that functionality was added into the core WordPress code several versions ago, which renders the plugin redundant for me.

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP Dashboard ‹ ManageWP — WordPress

Plugins and Themes

With ManageWP I could select “plugins and themes” from the sidebar, then chose All Websites, tick plugins, active, and search by keyword: “viper”. That gave me a list of five blogs that still had the old plugin active. I could have deactivated the lot in one fell swoop just like that, but I wanted to make sure all my old posts with videos embedded would still work so, without even leaving the ManageWP dashboard, I went to each affected individual WordPress dashboard in turn, and searched through the posts for the string “[youtube”, that being the way the old plugin recognised source posts needing to have the embed code added. I then removed the shortcodes from each end of the video identifier leaving just the youtube url on one line by itself, which WordPress now interprets as a request to embed video inline. Once the legacy code was removed, I could then deactivate and delete the plugin, leaving me with a nice feeling of having tidied up a longstanding loose end.

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP Dashboard ‹ ManageWP — WordPress 1

 

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP Dashboard ‹ ManageWP — WordPress 2

Posted in Blogs and community, Tools, video, wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

WordPress London #7

Posted on 18/11 by Andy Roberts

I went to WordPress London meetup number #7 last night, hosted by Headshift at their office near Shad Thames, along the south bank of the Thames, east of Tower Bridge. Nice to have something on the East side for once, although south of the river, I wouldn’t normally mention the general location but for Londoners, having different travel options is essential and I was pleased to be able to exit the Transport For London  system at a zone 2 tube station, Bermondsey.

WordPress London is not really a mainly social gathering like some of the bloggers meetups, it’s a business learning event and last night there were three sections, each packed with fast moving presentations full of detail, actionable insights and deeply understood data.

First up, a round up of news from the world of WordPress from Chris Adams  of Headshift with a peek at the new drag and drop file upload interface for WordPress 3.3, out very soon. There was also a heads up for the ManageWP service launched this month, a service which I use myself and would also heartily recommend for anybody who maintains more than one self-hosted WordPress installation, in fact it’s brilliant if you have dozens or more.

WordPress London #7 WordPress London Meetup

WordPress London Meetup

Then David Bain delivered a comprehensive briefing about SEO for WordPress, including an outline of a hub and spoke structure for content based on using pages for the main parts of a site, supported by posts  All based around keyword targeting, which, while possibly on it’s way to becoming somewhat old-school,  is after all what search engine optimisation is all about. One or two plugin tips to be followed up there.

Finally, Keith Devon a WordPress developer explained how and why to use WordPress Custom Post Types. Custom post types are not types of posts at all, but other types of content alongside of posts or pages. The example given was that of a real estate property rental site, for which the element “Property” needed to be a thing of itself, with it’s own display template in the theme, neither a post nor a page but with it’s own “add Property” section within the dashboard. This gave me some great ideas for how I might have designed one or two of my existing sites much better had the concept been around a few years ago. Keith showed us how to implement custom post types by dropping in chunks of code into functions.php “because it’s easier” but discussion from the audience suggests that using specialised plugins for the purpose may be the way to go if you want to be able to keep your site up to date with new software releases.

Time for some brief discussions and an optional visit to a Samuel Smiths pub afterwards, so I walked back along the south bank and over London Bridge back to dry land.

Hashtag: #WPLDN

WordPress London – #7 Links and Slideshare

WordPress News

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/chris.d.adams/wpldn-monthly-new…WordPress London #7 clearWordPress London #7 clear

Video: http://youtu.be/gdGOvoDmRScWordPress London #7 clear

WordPress Site Structure and SEO

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/13pillars/the-3-ps-of-wordpress…WordPress London #7 clearWordPress London #7 clear

Video: http://youtu.be/rAeqcP0CHLkWordPress London #7 clear

Custom Post Types

Slides, video and write-up: http://keithdevon.com/2011/tuts/custom-post-types/WordPress London #7 clearWordPress London #7 clear

Download the podcast

 

 

Posted in London, London bloggers, wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone – V2.0

Posted on 26/10 by Andy Roberts

After I posted my step by step guide to moving a complete WordPress blog installation from one host to another yesterday and tweeted the ManageWP founder Vladimir Prelovac , he sent me an improved, simpler method.

Here is what Vladimir came up with, it should be quicker and slightly more straightforward now, I hope it works!

  1. Select the site and click “Backup Now” option from the popup menu. Create a backup.
  2. Go to “View backups” and click to Download the backup file
  3. Go to the new host and using CPanel (Fantastico) create a new WordPress blog
  4. Go to your domain registrar, and switch the DNS to point to the new hosting. Wait for it to propagate.
  5. Using FTP program or Cpanel file manager upload the backup file to your new site (for example to wp-content/)
  6. Add the new site to ManageWP
  7. Select clone tool and as source type in the URL of the backup file. (for example http://yoursite.com/wp-content/backup_file_name.zip)
  8. Select to overwrite your new site.

That should be all the steps required, with no need for any individual file substitutions any more. I’m going to try it out as soon as I can, please let us know if it works for you Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone V2.0 icon smile

Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone V2.0 Twitter @aroberts

Posted in wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP

Posted on 25/10 by Andy Roberts

From time to time you may wish to move your entire WordPress blog with all its posts, comments, images,  themes and widgets over from one web hosting service to another.

In this post I’m going to show you step by step how you can move a live WordPress blog and domain from one webhost to another without needing to delve into the mySQL databases or edit any php files.

This could help you move to a more economical hosting deal, find a faster and more reliable hosting company or help you escape from that nightmarish overselling company with the frontline support ticket service from hell, and there are plenty of those around!

Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP WordPress Multiple Blogs Manager – ManageWP.com 300x130

ManageWP.com

As a blogger using WordPress,  messing about with web hosting is something I prefer not to have to do, but unfortunately it frequently becomes a necessity. Good web hosting companies come and go, and last year’s bargain can soon become this year’s nightmare as far as technical support and hidden limitations are concerned. Imagine if we could just copy our blogs from one host to another just like switching phone networks or changing insurance companies? That would turn web hosting into a simple commodity which you could chop and change as often as you like, following the best deals or the best service, checking out new ones on a monthly basis to see how well they perform and switching back whenever you felt like it. Well I think we are almost there now, and this is how I did it most recently using a new web service called ManageWP which is presently in beta and promises to continue providing a free account for up to 3 ( or maybe 5) blogs indefinitely.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

How to Move a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog and domain from one web hosting to another using ManageWP
  1. Select the blog you wish to move from within ManageWP, and click the “Backup Now” button (see1 ).
  2. Go to File Manager or ftp in the old host CPanel and find the backup file just created, in WP-content eg public_html/blogname/wp-content/e51f790672adfc64dd712f17a9ac3/mwp_backups/blogname.com_manual_full_2011-10-17_d12569cceea51195afee02b3db.zip (see2 ).
  3. Download that backup file to your computer.
  4. Go to CPanel at the new host and run Fantastico or Scriptaculous to create a new WordPress blog with the same name at the new host, domain top level
  5. In File Manager or ftp, Save a copy of the new wp-config.php file just created under wp-admin.
  6. Now at your domain registration provider, switch over the dns to point to the new hosting and wait for it to propagate
  7. When the new empty blog is showing in the browser and in ManageWP dashboard, remove blog from ManageWP then re-add – (to add the manage-wp-plugin and reset the IP details etc)
  8. In ManageWP, select the new blog then Options then Backup and run a backup
  9. in File Manager, navigate to the newly created backup file and upload the old one to the same folder
  10. Still in File Manager, rename the uploaded backup file to the name of the new backup just created.
  11. in ManageWP, Restore from backup – ( now you get a Database Error because wp-config.php is looking for the old database names) so….
  12. replace wp-config.php with the one saved from (step 5) the newly created WordPress.

That’s it, it worked! You may need to deactivate and reactivate the manageWP plugin to get ManageWP to recognise the newly restored blog again.

To summarise, Backup the blog from the old host, create a new blog on the new host, then switch the dns over. When the new blog is live, re-add it to manage WP and do a backup. Then replace the backup just created with the one from the old blog and restore, but put back the wp-config from the new blog. Deactivate the ManageWP plugin and re-add the moved blog to ManageWP dashboard again.

This has been the first in a series of posts about using ManageWP to help organise and maintain multiple WordPress blog by Andy Roberts at DARnet

  1. Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP Dashboard ‹ ManageWP — WordPress 300x192

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  2. Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP cPanel File Manager v3 300x250

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Posted in Tools, wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

WordPress Fullscreen Writing Mode

Posted on 28/07 by Andy Roberts

Did you know that you can write in a kind of full screen mode from right within the WordPress dashboard now? This seems to be a feature that has arrived with WordPress version 3.2 and gone largely untrumpeted. Of course you are still working within a browser, so if you want to go really undistracated you might need to enter your browser fullscreen mode as well, which is easy enough in Chrome.  I love the way the WordPress toolbar at the top fades away to leave nothing but the text you are writing, but comes back again when needed, clearly showing the link to exit fullscreen mode again. So there’s no panicking and punching the escape button repeatedly until something gives way!

This could be a good alternative to  composing offline in applications such as “Write or Die” or WriteRoom, (my favourite anti-distraction writing app at present) and then pasting into WordPress.

To entre WordPress fullscreen mode from the compose dashboard, in HTML mode press “fullscreen” or in Visual mode press this little button:

WordPress Fullscreen Writing Mode fullscreenmode

Writing in fullscreen mode is a good way of embedding the practice of writing first, and editing later, which is widely considered to be a more productive use of time than editing as you go along, adding links as you write, and even worse doing the research and writing simultaneously.

Posted in Action Log, productivity, wordpress |

WordPress 3.1 Category Bug

Posted on 25/02 by Andy Roberts


I found a bug after upgrading WordPress to version 3.1  , a bug concerning the display of  category content which can go unnoticed for a while. The category pages were redirecting to the blogs home page. The category RSS feeds were affected as well.

The culprit seems to be a combination of WordPress 3.1 and the plug in  “Simple Tags”

The solution is either to disable the plugin, or else to go into the setting for Simple tags and uncheck “Active tags for page:”. Then wait for an update to the Simple Tags  plugin, which is quite a useful one, I’d rather not have to do without.

There may well be some other problems with WordPress 3.1 and some themes compatibility as well, so I’d be wary of automatic upgrading.

Posted in Tools, wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , |

WordPress Developer Required for Small Coding Job

Posted on 03/11 by Andy Roberts

Are there any good coders out there with an hour or two spare?

I think I’m going to need a WordPress developer of some sort to help me try out an idea I’ve had for better navigation within some of my blogs. To begin with it’s probably just a chunk of code to create a single loop inside a template file, but if it works well there’s a good possibility to turn it into a handy plugin that would be helpful only to certain types of blogs.

Wordpress Developer Required for Small Coding Job wordpress developer required

WordPress developer required

So where do I go from here? I could go onto one of the rent a coder type sites and ask for a quote I suppose but I thought I’d start by putting this down on my blog so I can refer to it within my networks.

If you think you might be interested in discussing my requirements and starting very soon then do please get in touch.

Posted in London bloggers, wordpress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , |

Thanks for reading Andy Roberts articles about wordpress on the DARnet Blog