2007 January

Easy WordPress Updates with cPanel and SmartFTP

WordPress is terrifically easy to use. From simply posting to installing plugins, WordPress makes it easy to make your blog truly yours. Some people shutter at making updates to it though. Here’s the extremely easy way to get the whole thing done in just a few minutes, with two of my favorite tools, cPanel and SmartFTP.

Start by following the four essential steps in the official upgrade guide, which involves backing up everything and deactivating all of your plugins. When you are done with that, continue here.

1. Extract the update archive to your disk.
2. Upload the files in the wordpress folder of the update archive (all of the .php files), but not any folders contained within the root wordpress folder.
3. Delete the wp-admin folder from your site using SmartFTP, the cPanel File Manager, or whatever file management mechanism you use.
4. In Windows Explorer or the SmartFTP file browser (that’s where part of the SmartFTP mention comes in, since it redefines convenience), right click on the wp-admin folder on your disk, select Send To, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder. This will give you a new .zip file containing the contents of the wp-admin folder that you would normally upload yourself.
5. Upload the wp-admin.zip file to your WordPress root directory on your Web server.
6. In the cPanel File Manager, navigate to the wp-admin.zip file, and in the right pane, click Extract File Contents. This should extract the directory, saving you hours of time that you would normally spend uploading the update file-by-file.
7. Close the resulting popup window, and delete the wp-admin.zip file on the Web server.
8. Repeat steps 3 through 7 for the wp-includes directory.
9. Upload the wp-content directory on your disk to the site using SmrtFTP, which will overwrite the older versions of the Askimet, DB Backup, and Hello Dolly plugins. It will also give you the update default Kubrick and Classic themes. You don’t need to zip it up this time because the total size of these files is pretty small.
10. Re-enable your plugins, and test everything. If you see something scrambled up, clear your browser’s cache, and refresh that page.
11. Done!

Now if the rest of life were as simple as that, the world would be much more peaceful. But for now, at least WordPress upgrades won’t give you migraines (in most cases).

Shortness of Sleep

When you wake up in the morning, you feel like you just went to sleep a few minutes ago. “Why so soon?” That’s how I feel at about 7:00 every day. Perhaps the only way we can alleviate that feeling is to go to sleep at eight every night.

Cell Phone Fun

Voicemail is useful for two things: 1) allowing people to contact you even when your phone is off or out of the service area and 2) giving annoying classmates a relatively easy way to annoy you while you are out of the country. The latter of the two is what happened to the classmate who is currently in Israel. During recess, my classmates who are still hanging out in the good ol’ USA dial him up and start talking into his voicemail, saying crazy things ranging from Borat (I need to see that movie) to imitations of one of our teachers. Fortunately for one of us, he and the overseas friend both have Verizon and free mobile-to-mobile, making this one cheap trick. I feel bad for him, having to sort through all of those spam voicemails. Imagine how he would feel if we filled up his voicemail box and didn’t leave any room for real messages to get in!

Redid My (Small) Room Again

Living in a small space isn’t easy. Making it feel bigger is even harder. I keep on coming up with new ways to lay out my room, all in an attempt to give me more usable floor space. This is probably the fifth time I rearranged the furniture in my (tiny) room, and hopefully one of the last times. If you can’t possibly think about how cramped it is in here, the room is about nine feet square (really 8 feet by 9½ feet according to my slightly inaccurate measurements). Then add a bad, dresser, and a desk. Also factor in the layout of the doors and the heater, which all contribute to how I can position the furniture.

New Year’s Vent

Perhaps one of the most boring days of my life was New Year’s Day 2007. The short version of the story is that as a result of skipping school (oh that dreaded place), I was not allowed to use the computer all day. Basically, it was a waste of a day, but the attitude of my dad was, in my opinion, extremely negative.

Things went downhill at about 7:20 in the morning, when my van showed up. Almost everyone in the house was awake at the time, except the old man (not that old, but “middle age” is one of his most hated phrases). I guess the commotion stirred up by my brothers and mother woke him up. Anyways, when he saw me still lying bed like the lazy teenager that I am, he started telling me in a rather harsh voice that there would be no computer for the day, and probably another threat that I don’t remember.

Later in the morning, my principal called to remind us that there was school that day. Nice guy that he is, I think he would realize that if I’m not there, I am sick of school. I would also like to thank my school for all the annoyances that I suffered on Monday, the main reason being that there was an extended day of school (last year we began at 8:00, while this year, we began at 7:40, and believe me, and extra 20 minutes or so of extra sleep makes a difference, especially considering that I stayed up to watch the ball drop).

I ended up watching TV most of the day. I forgot what I watched in the morning, but I remember watching a Biggest Loser marathon on Bravo for most of the afternoon and until about 10:30 at night. More fun at this point! I didn’t want to go to bed at this point, but my dad called me up, and I was very hesitant. I went up to my room, and basically started crying (proves that teenagers have emotions too, unlike some adults). For the rest of the week, I didn’t want to talk to him at all, and on Friday, I expressed that in words, saying it to his face.

Let the family wars begin.

Bee Attack

One of my friends (Ryan to be specific) pointed me to an extremely funny picture story on some forum. The guy who did this whole thing was at his sister’s house, where a giant swarm of bees was ‘taking over’ their swing set. So this guy took multiple attempts to get the bees out, including throwing a trailer hitch at them, and burning them with three different fuels.

Read the story