Month: September 2007

Upgrading WordPress to Version 2.3

Yesterday I started updating some of my WordPress sites to WordPress 2.3. I used the WPAU plugin to update two sites and it worked fine. The bad news is that I found several problems. One theme and one plugin were not compatible with the latest WordPress version. I was a little surprised since these were plain vanilla sites with little customization.

The first problem I found was that I got an “array_key_exists” error message on the blog’s main page. After a little research I found that the problem was related to the Misty Look theme and that Sadish had updated the theme to version 3.5 to fix the problem.

The second problem I found was a bit more subtle. When I made a post or updated a page I got a “‘wp_post2cat’ doesn’t exist”. There were a variety of recommendations on how to fix this problem but I finally figured out that I needed to upgrade the google-xml-sitemap-generator plugin to the latest version.

Considering the problems I have found with the easy sites, I will proceed very carefully when I update this site. This site may have too many bells and whistles for my own good.

wehuberconsultingllc.com » Blog Archive » jQuery 1.1.4 works but JQuery 1.2 breaks tablesorter for me

In a previous post I said that jQuery 1.2 did not work with tablesorter. Well, Christian and the folks at jQuery have made some updates and they work together now. You need both the 2.01 version of tablesorter and the 1.2.1 version of jQuery.

Variations on Updating WordPress

The folks have updated WordPress again and I have been evaluating different methods of upgrading. The standard method works but I have been wanting to streamline the process for remote hosts.

For my locally hosted blog I used the Updating WordPress with Subversion method. This is pretty slick! I had previously checked out a copy of WordPress using Subversion and integrated the wp-content and a couple other files into the working copy. All I had to do this morning was to crank up TortoiseSVN on the checked out directory, change its tag to 2.3, and let Subversion do the rest. When I logged in as Admin, it updated the database. I did get some database errors about duplicate entries into wp_terms and wp_term_taxonomy but I do not think these errors are critical since this is the blog I use to test changes with. Its pretty funky!

Yesterday I got carried away again and did a little research on using Subversion on remote hosts. I found that some host providers provide it but most do not it. My host provider, bluehost.com, does not provide Subversion support directly but I found a post on a forum that described a method I could use to install it.  I kind of followed their instructions. It is working as a client and here are my instructions.

  1. Log in using SSH. I used PuTTy.
  2. Create a bin directory.
  3. Edit the .bashrc file to add the path statement to the bin directory.
  4. Create a source directory and then change to this directory.
  5. Use wget to download the tar version of both the Subversion package and the dependencies package.
  6. Untar both packages.
  7. Run configure, make, and then make install. You should have several executables in the bin directory. 
  8. Make sure that subversion works by typing in “svn –version”.

Here is the command line version: 

mkdir ~/bin
# Use your favorite editor to edit the .bashrc file and add the path statement to the bin directory
mkdir ~/src
# get the subversion and dependencies tarballs
cd ~/src
wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.5.tar.gz
wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.gz
tar -xzf subversion-1.4.5.tar.gz 
tar -xzf subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.gz 

# Build it
cd subversion-1.4.3
./configure --prefix=$HOME --without-berkeley-db --with-zlib --with-ssl
make
make install

# check it works!  
svn --version

I am now able to check out a copy of WordPress and update it on my bluehost.com website. I am not sure this is much better than the WPAU plugin I used recently. I will probably continue to play with both methods. I am still working at setting up a repository on bluehost. I do not mind using the Subversion client to update the WordPress files but I would like my bluehost account to be a server for the wp-content files since I would like version control on my theme files. It would be nice if the folks at bluehost decided to directly support Subversion, too.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin update « Techie Buzz

WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WPAU) is a plugin that automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org

WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin update « Techie Buzz

Okay, I was short on time and was willing to take a chance on a minor WordPress upgrade. I had several sites I wanted to upgrade and this looked like it would make the process quick and painless if it worked. For me, the plugin worked and the upgrade was complete in a few minutes. Yea!

jQuery 1.1.4 works but JQuery 1.2 breaks tablesorter for me

I tried jQuery 1.2 this week on my phpWebsite demo site but the zebra tables in tablesorter did not work for me. I got a dark gray table rather than a striped table. The folks know about the problem and it looks like someone has offered a fix. I will wait for those folks to work things out. Version 1.1.4 seems to work just fine!

What is good for Ubuntu Feisty is also good for Centos 5!

The Joe writes:

The install goes great, but when I run the server I get the following error:
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

As far as I can tell, the libpng12.so.0 that gets installed to the /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0 directory is the wrong version, your system should have a current version installed. To fix this just delete or rename libpng12.so.0 from /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0

www.TheJoe.com » Ubuntu Feisty Vmware Server and libpng12.so.0

I was getting the same error message under Centos 5. Thinking that a solution for Ubuntu Feisty might work for Centos 5, I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised. I renamed the file and restarted the Vmware server. The error message no longer appears and the server appears to be working fine. It also fixed the bigger problem I was having with accessing the virtual machine from PCs on the same sub-network other than the host.

jQuery 1.2: jQuery.extend(”Awesome”)

This is a massive new release of jQuery that’s been a long time in the making – and it’s ready for your consumption!

We’ve put the full jQuery 1.2 release notes on a page of it’s own, since there’s so much to dig through. REMEMBER, features were removed in 1.2, so please be sure to read the notes on how to upgrade before doing so.

Recently I have become a fan of jQuery. It allows me to add some  neat functionality into web sites. A week ago I downloaded the 1.1.4 version which promised some pretty impressive performance improvements over 1.1.3 but I had not gotten around to testing it out. Now I see that the 1.2 version has been released! I am real confused about their version numbering scheme. The 1.1.4 version looked like a small change based on its version number but a pretty big change code wise. Version 1.2 is a big code change since it deprecates a variety of functions. I guess I will try the 1.1.4 version first. That is what the release notes recommends. Whew!

Rebuilding my PC again

My WinXP desktop was having serious problems. I tried to debug it for two days but finally decided to rebuild it. I was getting 100% CPU utilization with winlogon.exe. So I went to http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/ and built a new CD with most of the WinXP patches integrated. While I was at it I updated the client applications available via the SBS installation procedure. This helped the rebuild process go much faster. A new feature to my restore process was Fab’s Autobackup, http://fabs.dyndns.org/autobackup. It did a nice job of restoring my Firefox settings. I was hopeful that it might restore my Outlook categories and signatures but no luck!

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS

I finally got around to looking at OpenDNS. I have seen its name mentioned before but its name does not do justice to what it can do for you. Just looking at its name you have to wonder what can an open DNS do for me. One of the mailing lists I read recommended it as a way to block adult sites. It can block Malware sites, too. Hmm….

Last week I was talking to some folks about network monitoring and the problems I find with using pings to determine network status. Users consider a site or application is down if they cannot use it. They do not care if you can ping the site. In the case of my most obnoxious user, my son, the network problem was typically related to the server he was trying to get to, World of Warcraft. He had an important date at 700 PM and “my” Internet was the problem! Typically the problem looked like a server load issue. Sometimes his problems were related to the route being to the server being congested and occasionally it was directly related to the DNS being out to lunch. So I am going to give OpenDNS a whirl. It probably will not solve any problems for me but it may reduce the number of problems being shot in my direction.

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS