WordPress

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).

Finally Found a New Theme

Browsing a gallery of 700 something themes was not easy or particularly exciting work, but that’s what it took to give my blog a facelift after almost a year with one theme. I spent some time browsing the gallery at Themebot.com, and came across a nice theme. Actually, I didn’t find this one at Themebot, rather I saw it on the author’s site (link at bottom of page). I’m just happy that I’m using something new and beautiful (not saying the Regulus isn’t beautiful – it’s just old).

Enjoy the new look folks.

Need WordPress Themes

I’ve used the trusty Regulus theme for many months, and liked it (still do), but it’s time for a new theme. I peeked around, and found the Anaconda theme (very nice three-column layout, supports widgets and many other plugins right out of the box), but even that doesn’t satisfy my desire for a nice theme. I’m looking for a three column layout with either white text on a black or dark gray background, or black text in a white content area (meaning black on the sides of the content area). Anyone know of anything?

Conquered HTML / CSS Problems

A few minutes before I started writing this post, I found myself pondering at a little display issue over here at Educated (where I use Binary Moon’s Regulus theme). In the sidebar on your left, you should see a section called Links, with a few links to my other sites. Before it used to be displayed as a second column parallel to Categories, widening the sidebar more than I would have liked it to be. So I dug into the theme’s sidebar.php file and started commenting out lots of stuff (mostly <div> tags), saving and consantly refreshing my browser, seeing if it acheived the desired effect. I also spent a few mintes trying to get everything up to valid XHTML, which – I’m telling you now – is not easy work, unless you are an expert or something.

Anyways, I managed to figure out how the formatting in the sidebar works – a whole lot of stuff is contained within a giant <div>, with a specific CSS class, which gives you the proper fonts, font sizes, and positioning of the text in the sidebar. I don’t know whether Ben Gillbanks intended for his template to be overly complicated to work with, but I think I’ve mastered his monstrosity of a creation, from the pages navbar to the sidebar. Next task: figure out how to make my own WordPress theme.

Getting in to the Blogging Craze

I decided I’m going to start writing blog entries regularly now. I think I have lots of computer knowledge that serves little purpose just being stuck in my head. I’ll try to write an entry daily, and share my repository with the world.

Upgrade to WordPress 2.0 Completed

Sure it’s a little late, but I got the upgrade to WordPress 2.0 done without any problems. I just downloaded a complete site backup in cPanel, as well as a database backup just in case a problem wasn’t really bad. I spent about 10 minutes uploading the WP 2.0 files, went to the upgrade.php file, and Bam! I was done. That was really easy, and I enjoy (most of) the new WP 2.0 features (including the Split Post with More tag in the writing page, but not the layered post options on the right of the same area). Overall satisfaction (ease of upgrade, usefulness of new features): 4 of 5 stars.

Upgrade to WordPress

I looked at my WordPress dashboard yesterday, and noticed that there was a feed item mentioning that WordPress 2.0 has been released. Almost immediately I went to the WordPress site, and looked for upgrade instructions. I found four steps that seemed very complicated, but after a few moments it only looked a little difficult. Is it really worth going to the difficulty of downloading a backup (which convieniently can be made with cPanel) and uploading the update and attempting to install it? [Post your opinions in a comment.]