I mentioned a week or so ago that I would be having another article published in the near future. I’m happy to announce that the article is now available. I hope you’ll take a few minutes and head over to have a read. If you have any comments, or suggestions on accuracy or improvements please do let me know and I’ll update where necessary.
I know I haven’t been blogging much lately. I’ve been occupied with other responsibilities. Besides work and school I’ve been dedicating a lot of time volunteering on the GNOME Sysadmin team, trying to make sure that it remains a well-oiled development machine! I had a few minutes this evening however and I thought I would give you a heads up on an article I’m waiting to have published.
As some of you know, I have been writing off and on for Packt Publishing‘s online Article Network. I’ve covered a number of Ubuntu related topics such as: “What’s New in Ubuntu 9.10“, “Network Based Ubuntu Installations“, “Ubuntu 9.10: How to Upgrade“, “Creating Local Ubuntu Repositories“, “Five Years of Ubuntu“, “Ubuntu User Interface Tweaks“, “Install GNOME-Shell on Ubuntu 9.10“, “Securely Encrypting Removable Media“, and “Folding @ Home on Ubuntu“.
My latest article, which should be published this week sometime, is a quick-install guide to Ubuntu Server 10.04 toward the goal of a “LAMP” web-server. The article includes screenshots for installing Ubuntu Server, installing the Apache, MySQL and PHP components, and installing a WordPress installation, managed by subversion. It probably sounds like there is quite a bit to it, doesn’t it?
The best part of the article is that you can go from zero to WordPress in fifteen minutes! I’ve timed it. Twice. I setup a virtual machine and by following these instructions I can go from no operating system to a working WordPress installation in under fifteen minutes. It’s really quite amazing! Ubuntu Server is so user friendly, and they’ve put in enough attention to the little details, that really anyone can set up a web server and start publishing content in no time!
I have a follow-up article in the works (still a few weeks out, at least) which outlines expanding your web server to include SSL, virtual hosts (multiple sites), managing and upgrading your WordPress engine using subversion, and more.
I’ll post links when both of these publish. Until then…
Christer
I posted about a week ago that I’d begun working on a new theme for the site. I felt like it was time for something new–something a little less plain. I tried out a number of WordPress themes and layouts, and finally found one that I like. I feel it better represents where the site (and its author!) are at this point. Can you believe the site has been around for nearly four years! It is amazing–I can’t believe it myself sometimes.
I’d like to invite you to click through and have a look at the new site. Leave a comment. Let me know your thoughts.
Here is to a new year, a new look and new content!
After a bit of testing I just activated a WordPress Plugin called “Intense Debate”, which improves the commenting system quite a bit. You should now notice that the commenting system on this blog is improved, with the following features:
Please let me know if you find any issues with the new system. My hope is that this will allow better communication of user-generated tips and workarounds for many of the tutorials on this site.
Enjoy
I’ve seen a few posts over here regarding problems with an unmaintained WordPress installation. It definitely can be work to manage software that is not covered within the supported repositories (WP is in the repositories, but its not updated as frequently as upstream). I thought I would cover how I maintain my installations and hopefully they can help others simplify their process.
First of all let me outline the setup that I have. I run a number of virtual hosts on my web server. Probably close to a dozen WP installations, plus a few other sites. I’ve simplified the installation and updating process for these by using svn, which has been an option from WP for some time now. Example:
To install a new WordPress blog using svn:
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.1/ .
note: You’ll, of course, want to update the “2.7.1″ tag with the current version at the time of your installation.
note: Make note of the “.” at the end of that command. Yes, it’s required. Yes it’ll install WordPress to the directory you run the command in.
To update your installation when word gets out that there has been a new release:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.x/ .
note: see notes above 
Now, if you’ve got a number of virtual hosts and multiple wordpress installations installed you could do something like I’ve done and script the process. Here is an example script I use to update all of my wordpress installations with one command:
#!/bin/bash
# wp-update.sh
# update wordpress installation(s) to $1 branch
#
# this script takes the new branch as an argument
DOMAINS="domain1.tld \
domain2.tld \
domain3.tld \
domain4.tld \
domain5.tld \
domain6.tld \
domain7.tld \
domain8.tld \
domain9.tld \
domain10.tld \
domain11.tld \
domain12.tld"
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "EPIC FAIL: Missing new version!"
echo "Try: ./wp-upgrade x.x.x (ie; 2.7.1)
exit 1
fi
for site in ${DOMAINS}; do
echo "upgrading ${site}"
echo
cd /var/www/virtual/${site}/html/
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/$1/ . &>/dev/null
done
The only things you’ll really need to keep in mind to use this script are:
Once you’ve saved and update the script according to your setup you’ll simply want to run the script anytime you get word of a new WordPress release:
./wp-update.sh 2.7.3
Done. Simple. Enjoy.
As some of you have read, I recently switched this production web server over to Lighttpd, and so far I am very much impressed. I have been tinkering with Lighttpd for some time, and I really feel it is a fine replacement for Apache. It supports all the same basic modules that I need (mod_rewrite, mod_alias, mod_auth, etc) and uses far less resources. The only difficulty in switching is migrating the configuration and little “tweaks” to get things setup just right.
One thing, for example, is that WordPress assumes an Apache server, or something that supports .htaccess files. This is not the case with Lighttpd, but is solved very, very simply. Early in my migration I read a number of blog posts suggesting solutions to the WordPress Permalink setup, some more complicated than others. I have to say that I think I found the simplest solution, and it is rarely seen on other blogs. Below is one line that will support any WordPress Permalink setup you want:
## Permalink Support:
server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"
That’s all there is to it. That one line in the lighttpd.conf will handle the permalinks internally and nothing more is required. No dealing with weird regex patterns and trying to exclude this or that. Lighttpd is smart enough to handle it internally with that line.
If you are using a more complex Permalink rewrite configuration in Lighttpd I’d be interested in hearing if this does or does not achieve the same results.
After some testing on some of my less-popular blogs I’ve upgraded this one to WordPress 2.5. The whole ordeal seemed fairly painless (although with the number of blogs I host I really should consider WPMU).
I use svn to manage my installations which makes it really simple. If you’re considering an upgrade, these are the steps I followed:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/I want to congratulate the WordPress team for a great release. Things look really sharp this time around and there look to be a lot of UI improvements. I’m also glad to see I didn’t have any issues upgrading like I did after the early 2.2.x series.
After a few updates on the plugin that I’m using and a bit more testing I have re-activated the OpenID plugin for WordPress. If you’re an OpenID user please let me know if you run into any issues. I have tested with my identity and it seems to be working well enough..
If you haven’t yet started using OpenID you may want to take a look at:
Ok, some of you might notice a small hiccup in the blog-time continuum. This is because I reverted to a backup earlier in the day after rebuilding the database from a fresh installation. What a pain, let me tell you. If you notice anything weird about the blog please let me know. From my testing I wasn’t able to find anything. This *should* be a good, working, fresh copy of the blog now.. I hope.
How Did I Fix It?
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE RECENT BACKUPS IF YOU ARE GOING TO FOLLOW THESE STEPS. STEP 7 WILL WIPE OUT ALL DATA FROM YOUR CURRENT BLOG. PLEASE UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LOST DATA. THIS IS MERELY THE STEPS THAT I TOOK AFTER NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND A SOLUTION ELSEWHERE. ALWAYS KEEP REGULAR BACKUPS OF YOUR BLOG!
For those that have been following the up & down of the blog today I finally was able to get rid of the errors… by basically completely wiping out everything I had and starting over. You’ll notice the theme is default, minimal plugins are installed, etc.
I’m going to have to spend some time this evening updating back piece by piece. Until then, the blog should work it just looks a bit different. Hopefully I haven’t lost anything else critical!