Archive for July 15th, 2008

Housekeeping

Grandad July 15th, 2008

Nobody is reading this at this time of night, so I can write any old stuff I like.

I have finally started on some housekeeping.

I upgraded Wordpress when I thought no one was looking, but some poor sap came in  in the middle.  It was a bit of a bloody mess when he hit the scaffolding but he is reportedly recovering nicely in hospital.  These accidents will happen.

If anyone notices anything strange about the site, then it is your computer that’s at fault.  Don’t blame me.

I have also cleaned a fair bit of crap off the site in the vain hope that it will load a bit quicker.  Who cares what directories I belong to anyway?

I have also dumped my A-List Blogs.  That was an elitist bit of bullshit anyway, so I am adopting the Animal Farm approach.  We are all equal, but I’m a little bit more equal than the rest of you.

The Awards banners have been moved up, not because I am bragging, but because I was told to.  I have also shifted the Monthly Award badge onto each post, just as an experiment.

I have removed a few dead links, but if I have accidentally removed one or two non-dead ones, then let me know.  For a small fee [€50 notes only.  Non refundable.  Brown envelope], I will reinstate them.

Now I have to decide which links to add.  Oh my God, the power of it!

If anyone wants a link, just let me know.  I will give it careful consideration, before rejecting it out of hand.

You have been warned.

Wordpress 2.6

Grandad July 15th, 2008

wp26

Bugger!

There is yet another update floating around today.

Why the hell can’t these people get their act together and produce something that works first time?

Can you imagine a world where every now and again you have to return all your books to the publishers, so that they can be updated?  Or you have to return all your underwear to the shop every month because the stitching isn’t safe?

Anyway…..

The new version of Wordpress is out.

If any of you run your own sites, then upgrading is very easy.  I suppose that’s something to be grateful for?

I just did a trial run on Herself’s site.  She doesn’t use it any more so it’s a great place to see if it goes down in flames.

The first thing I did was to download the new version 2.6 from Wordpress.org.  It’s amazing how many people overlook that step when upgrading.

Next, I connected to her site, and backed up everything.  They say you are supposed to do that in case anything goes wrong.  Who are these wimps?  Don’t they like living dangerously?

Then I deleted most of the files on her server.  This is the tricky bit, because if you delete the wrong ones, you are fucked royally.

The rule I use is to delete everything beginning with ‘wp-’ EXCEPT ‘wp-config.php’ and the folder ‘wp-content‘.  If you delete the former, you are really up shit creek without a paddle, because you will have lost the way into your database, and unless you are very clever, you will have to reinstall the whole damned thing.  Than means you will have lost all your posts and everything else too.  If you delete ‘wp-content’ it isn’t quite so disastrous, but you will have lost your theme, your images and all your plug-ins.

Anyway, having deleted the files, I then uploaded the new version.  All of it.  It asked me if I wanted to overwrite ‘wp-config’ and I let it’.  It only overwrite files that are already there, and that means that themes and plug-ins are untouched.

The last thing I did was to run ‘/wp-admin/upgrade.php’ by typing into the address after grannylosttheplot.com.  It muttered a couple of warnings but I just told it to upgrade, and it did.

I then checked the site.

The fucking thing looked exactly the same.  I hoped there would be some improvements, like better content, or that it would appear in three dimensions, but I saw no difference.  They say that all the improvements are visible in the Admin area, but I haven’t got time to play with her Admin.  There is a page that explains it all, and I’m not going to repeat it.  If you want to see the new features, just head over to here.

I may update this site later, so if you visit and find a pile of scorched rubble, you’ll know I didn’t follow my own instructions.

But I like living dangerously.