August 28, 2009
This post is about moving a self-hosted WordPress blog from one web host to another. If you're wanting to move from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress, that's a very much easier process, which will be covered in the next post. Image by Nion My worst every serve move was for a friend who phoned me at 3.30pm to say that her hosting company were being shut down at 5pm: "can you help?!" As... Read more
August 4, 2009
A couple of people recently have asked for "WordPress without a theme". Let's sort the jargon out first: a theme is a set of files that WordPress uses to know how to display the words you've given it. Without a theme, your blog posts, comments, links and images won't show up at all: you can't *have* WordPress without a theme. That said, just because it's a "theme" doesn't mean it has to be... Read more
July 20, 2009
photo credit: 416styleThis is basic, but more than one person has had a little panic at me this week. Symptoms include: No categories show up. Where the posts should be is blank, or It says "Not Found Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here." or similiar where my blog should be. Other things like recent posts and comments are blank. The newness of the blog is the... Read more
June 28, 2009
photo credit: steepwaysWhile we're on the topic of WP authors, while I was making my author profile yesterday, I wanted to change the "slug" - the bit in the URL that labels the particular author. By default, the URL of author pages ishttp://domain.com/author/slug For most users, this "slug" is set to the user name: while you can't change a user name, you might very well want to change the... Read more
June 22, 2009
photo credit: Hamed SaberIn the last few days, I've heard from a few people who've upgraded to WordPress 2.8 that they're missing some or all of the visual editor from the Add New Post page: even if the "Visual" tab is selected (not the "HTML" one), buttons are missing. People have also reported the dashboard page not loading properly. The issues seem to be reported more widely in Firefox... Read more
June 10, 2009
The lovely Jane, aka eAuctionAnorak, aka my first blog sprog, aka Demon Bead Lady pointed out to me that TwitterButtons' images seem to have vanished. Shame, because they had some good ones, and auto-generating the "follow-me" code was useful. If you're now looking for a new way to link your Twitter account from your blog or website, here are some sources of lovely icons we've noticed:... Read more
June 9, 2009
photo credit: Quinn DombrowskiHaving written yesterday about backing up WordPress before an upgrade, I thought today we'd have a look at what backing up WordPress actually means. It's not necessary to back up every single file of your entire install: you need to preserve the files that are unique to you. If (dog forbid) your server fell over and died, or your hosting company ceased business, or... Read more
June 8, 2009
The release of WordPress 2.8 is "tentatively" scheduled for 10th June. It looks like the release may even happen on time, so make sure you're ready to upgrade. How to upgrade if you're running WP 2.7 or 2.7.1 If you are a good person 
running the latest version of WordPress, then upgrading will be easy for you. A button will appear on your desktop asking if you wish to upgrade: click... Read more
June 8, 2009
photo credit: gilleskleinWriting Taexalia's new theme this week, I needed a way to exclude posts from her home page based on tags. We didn't want Twitter archive posts to show up in the "featured" postition. Often in this kind of situation, the posts you want to exclude will be from a specific category, but this time, they weren't: they were in a category with other posts that she *would* want... Read more
May 18, 2009
I think more blog inches have been expended discussing commenting than any other aspect of blogging - and perhaps rightly so. Commenting was, when it first started, revolutionary: it turned the internet from a broadcast medium into something so much richer. I don't think it's overstating the case to say that existence of the Web 2.0, post-Cluetrain internet-as-conversation many of us take for... Read more