Upgrading to Wordpress 2.5
The other day I tried to upgrade from Wordpress 2.1.1, I know…the platform was quite old, to version 2.5. It was all going good until I followed some instruction on a forum which I did not completely understand. After going through the steps, which called for deleting some files, I tried the new install and got a nasty error message on the homepage.
Not what I expected and really got my anxiety level up. The thought of loosing a years worth of content almost made me puke. But fortunately luck was on my side once again. I logged into my BlueHost account and went back into the Fantastico auto installer and low and be hold there was an upgrade to 2.3.3. Crossing fingers I clicked the upgrade link and viola! It all worked, whew…much better. Everything seemed to be in perfect working order so onto try the 2.5 upgrade again but this time using a much different approach, a plugin.
Download: http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html
This plugin automatically backup and upgrades Wordpress with flawless ease. So if you are like me and are not the most experienced on server side upgrades then this plugin is for you. Upgrades are sometimes painful and lesson learning experiences and thanlfully there are solutions to get us through them.
Do not let updates hold you back from improving your blog
Through a website’s lifecycle there will be many updates, changes, themes and links that may change or affect the way the website ultimately functions. These probably seem more common now-a-days since the majority of people using blog platforms increases. From experience themes are the easiest item to install. Just download a theme and install it using a ftp site and then select it from the Presentation tab at the top of the Dashboard.
But unfortunately not all up dates are that easy. For instance, when we customized the urls on this site it affected how the navigation worked as well as links to internal blog postings. Those affects are actually still being felt around here as it takes time to locate and correct all the links.
A blogsite needs to function and be optimized from the very beginning and not be delayed by problems like: blogs on the homepage, dysfunctional contact form, no customized title tags and/or sub par navigation. Here is a quote from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines regarding the use of text versus images.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
Many updates are unavoidable and are necessary for the long-term success of a website. Browsing the blogosphere for a few minutes will produce a lot of website that are in desperate need of updates.
What a great lead into our next round of blog postings: how to customize a Wordpress blog.
Our blog turns 1 years old
Without even noticing, TW Resource Group’s blog turns 1 year old! “Happy birthday to us”….”Happy birthday to us”…okay I will not subject anyone to my singing.
Hooray…we have managed to survive, grow and continue to keep on keeping on. I would like to thank everyone who has made this a special experience, contributed time and effort, provided us with all the blog postings to read.
The 1 Year Recap
– PR2 on Blog page & PR1 on Home page
– 7 Different Wordpress Themes
– Fixed Many Broken Pages & Links
– Adding & Deleting Widgets
– Writing Blog Posts
– 1 New Client
– 2 Projects Completed
Not to bad for a two man team that do this work in their spare time. TWResourceGroup.com has become a place where Chris and I can share our experiences as well as knowledge to help small companies improve their bottom lines. Chris and I look forward to another successful year and publishing more juicy content.