WordPress
Help: WordPress is stuck in Maintenance Mode and is unavailable
If you see the following:
Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.
and you can’t log get back into your WordPress install to fix anything…
I have a solution!
You just need to rename the “.maintenance” file to something else, I used “old.maintenance”
Once that file is renamed (or deleted, but I recommend renamed), your WordPress installation should work again.
Worked for me
Comment Spammer Blacklist?
Not a big surprise, running a blog I get tons of comment spammers. Lots of “Good info” and “I really like this, can you elaborate more”.
Does anyone know of a comment spammer blacklist? I’ve been thinking of starting one. Manually writing down IPs that are obviously spamming trying to get more inbound links.
I’m happy if people link to their website with a useful link, but don’t waste everyone’s time.
UPDATE
Just saw a great post covering 4 WordPress commenter blacklist plugins — The 4 Best WordPress Commenter Blacklist Plugins.
WordPress plugin HeadSpace2 Problems Fixed – Version 2.6.33 Released
This morning I got an email saying a new version, 2.6.33, was released.
I’ve downloaded and tested the plugin, it fixes all the issues that have been reported.
Thanks to Urban Giraffe for responding quickly with the update.
HeadSpace2 – Problems with WordPress 3 (Post Tags)
I just noticed that “Post Tags” doesn’t work now that I’ve installed WordPress 3. When you type the default text doesn’t go away, and the Add button doesn’t do anything.
The culprit seems to be HeadSpace2. If you disable the plugin, Post Tags work again.
If you want to keep it on, you can always add tags through the post listing page and “Quick Edit”.
I haven’t tested this, but I’d bet if you turned off the Post Tag “Suggest” functionality in HeadSpace2, Post Tags would work again.
UPDATE – 2010/06/27
Just got an email from Urban Giraffe saying that HeadSpace has been updated to version 2.6.33. I’ve tested, and it fixes the problem — thanks guys!
How to speed up your WordPress Blog
I finally got around to speeding up my WordPress blog and wanted to share with everyone the various things I did. I reduced my average page load time on certain pages from 15 seconds to about 1.5 seconds. That’s a big change.
My favorite test was a quick click through. On my new host I timed 6 page loads down to about 5 seconds. When I did the same test on my old setup, it took about 20 seconds (I know, below the 15 seconds average, that was really only for 1 page, but one of my most trafficked pages).
WordPress 3 Released!
WordPress 3.0 is released, download it now!
Some of the cool features of WordPress 3.0, taken from WordPress.org:
- WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
- New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
- New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
- Custom header and background APIs.
- Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
- Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
- Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
- Support for shortlinks.
- Improved Custom post types and custom taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities.)
- A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.
You can read more about features on their site.
Do-Follow Experiment: Comment URLs are Do-Follow!
Most blogs out there have been advised (or forced) to have all comment URLs as nofollow because you don’t want to pollute the worth of your blog. As of today, this blog will have all comment URLs listed regularly, without a nofollow “rel” tag.
Top WordPress Plugins: Headspace2 replaces All in One SEO
I have been using and recommending the WordPress plugin, All in One SEO, for years now. It is solid, provides the ability to manage terms that were more difficult before.
Enter Headspace2.
Headspace2, by Urban Giraff, is another SEO meta data manager. That means it helps you organize everything your website uses or organize itself.
Is it worth Switching?
So you have put all your efforts into typing specific keywords, overriding titles, and are finally happy with the results of your SEO work. That normally provides a huge barrier to switching tools, not with Headspace 2. Headspace 2 makes migration easy, and instantly gives you more control than you had before.
WordPress: How to get the Slug of the page
When working with WordPress templates, we frequently find ourselves trying to get certain information about a page. It bothers me how “non” object orientated page information is in WordPress, but those are the hurdles you need to get over as a web developer.
Today I wanted to get the “Slug” (or the last part of a Permalink for a page). › Continue reading
Windows 7 – First Impressions
It’s been a while — life has been quite busy. Drupal, WordPress, Blender, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Illustrator, Flex, Flash, Actionscript, Papervision. Even got some bicycling and racquetball in there on the weekends.
In the past, wow, month. I’ve been up to quite a bit, and will be posting things on here about them all. Right now my main focus is on my new install of Microsoft Windows 7 (the Release Candidate) while it is still fresh in my mind.
Background, Vista Recovery
A little bit of background, last week on Thursday I woke up to my Vista (32-bit) workstation completely hosed. After a lengthy chat session with a Dell support rep (I can’t say how happy I was with the Dell support guy, he was friendly, smart, and patient through an almost 6 hour long chat session), I managed to get access to the files on my disk to back them up. Happily, I reformatted. I really needed it.
The most amazing thing was when I put the Microsoft Vista DVD in, and it actually got my system to boot into “windows’. Of course I had no icons or anything, the system was actually fixed by the Vista repair actions (a first for me, usually the only use I have for those is to get a command prompt to see the extent of the damage).
While the machine was on, but with no desktop — I was able to map to the drives through another computer and backup information (\\{Computer IP}\C$, D$, E$ until I found drives K, L and M). That took forever, but it was successful.
Windows Vista 32-bit Install
It took FOREVER to get all the updates installed. I know updates just accumulate while software is out. I don’t remember it taking this long to update my XP machine which I had to reinstall 3 or 4 years into the lifecycle. Maybe Vista just has more updates, but it took forever to get my machine back in working order.
Once I was up again, things were much faster (as they always are after a fresh format).
I want to note, I’ve never had many Vista 32-bit driver issues, or any performance issues. The few issues I had revolved around a few pieces of software that didn’t have drivers or fully compatible version for a few months after the Vista launch.
Welcome to Windows 7, how Vista should have been – the first 24 hours
Wow. I downloaded the 64-bit Release Candidate from the official Windows 7 page yesterday. I want to take advantage of the 16 slots my machine has for RAM. Who wouldn’t?
I have a lot of good, and some bad, things to say about Windows 7 so far.
I’ll start with the positive:
- The install process was a piece of cake, I’m running a raid controller for my OS drive (raid 0, living on the edge) — and didn’t have to do anything special
- Updates to the OS through windows update were painless. I want to say it was less than 10% of the downloads required by my Vista install a few days earlier, though the software isn’t even released yet.
- Hardware wise, I have had ZERO, 0, problems with Windows Live 7. not like the handful of hardware issues Vista32-bit had at launch
- Google Chrome is giving me some issues. I can get it to work occassionally but it always ends up “crashing” somehow.
- I actually am not minding IE8, but I miss Chrome
- Faster. It’s true, this runs faster out of the box than my tweaked Vista install
- Clean and easy interface.
- Lots of room for running applications
- Most of my old installers worked, a few of the installers had 64-bit versions I had to download
- Everything with regards to the network seems to respond faster
- It’s free! (for now)
- Cleaner Start Menu
- Higher Windows Experience Ratings
The Bad:
- IE8 (yes, I don’t mind it, but I dislike having to use it instead of my Chrome)
- Google Chrome won’t work well
- Things have obviously moved, and I”m not comfortable with the locations yet. This is really just me being stubborn
- It will expire in 2010, and require a purchase
Conclusion
I’m happy with the install and highly recommend it. I have not lost any productivity. I’m not sure I’ve gained any though.
I will continue to report on my experiences.
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