Housekeeping

Upgrading WordPress

Having come to WordPress via MovableType I had no problem manually setting up the WordPress database and files. The famous 5 minute install really does take only 5 minutes. When it comes to upgrading however, there was the tedious process of downloading tarballs, extracting them and re-applying modifications to WordPress every time a new version was released to perform an upgrade. A process which gets complicated when the internet connection drops or there is a power outage or some connectivity issue that stops the FTP process in its tracks.

Luckily there are couple of solutions to this problem which work by automating the process of upgrading WordPress. One was upgrading WP using SVN. This was going to be my preferred option until I saw the very real potential of getting tangled up in command line interfaces and blowing up the whole server. Then I considered doing a backup of my blog database, deleting my blog, reinstalling it via Fantastico, and then reloading the backup. That way whenever I wanted to upgrade I would just wait for Fantastico to upgrade its version of WP and then use the simple upgrade option to upgrade.

But this morning I found a much easier solution that did not required me to delete everything and start from scratch. Ladies and Gentlemen the WordPress InstantUpgrade plugin. Download it, put in your WordPress plugins directory, chmod a few files, press upgrade and 2 seconds later, heck 1 second later, everything is upgraded and working like a charm. I am shocked at how simple and quick that was. My WordPress upgrade problems are solved. Be sure to read the instructions and this post first though.

Sidebar clean up

Previously I had a link to every single KBW member on my sidebar. Now that KBW has 400+ members this is no longer practical. In anticipation of a site redesign coming soon (Mentalacrobatics 5.0) I have removed all the blog links from my sidebar. Don’t worry I still love you all. (Well apart from the ones running around bullying other KBW members in a misguided attempt to deflect blame on their own bad blog administration practices. Don’t you get it? Your blog, your responsibility. No point running around blaming everyone apart from yourself.) There are two places where you can get the complete KBW members list; on the sidebar of the KenyaUnlimited Voices blog and on the RingSurf KBW members page.

RSS Feed
For a few posts my RSS feed was like nyama choma that had been roasted on an electric fire = flavourless. Something was stripping all formatting from my RSS feed leaving the post displayed as one big lump of text with no formatting or pictures in your RSS readers and aggregators.

To cut a long story short if you are using WordPress version 2.x with PodPress versions 7.5, 7.6 or 7.7, PodPress will strip all non formatting from your feed. To get around this downgrade your PodPress installation back to 7.4 and you’ll be good to go.