Wordpress

A Server Crash and Lessons Learned

Filed Under: Reflections, Wordpress · February 9, 2012 · Leave a Comment ·

computer_firstaid — Photo: ranjith krishnan

Surfacing from the catastrophe of last weekend (you can read about it in my previous post Computer Blues) when our web host’s server crashed beyond repair, I’ve had a chance to reflect on some of the lessons I learned from the experience.

They may hold a few gems you’ll find superbly useful. Perhaps you’ll simply laugh at my naivété and muddled approach. Or you may even be horrified, to think anybody managing websites could be so unprepared for a crash of such major proportions.

But whether they make you goggle, giggle or groan, I hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

Oh … and if I’d learned the first lesson properly before this, I probably wouldn’t have learned most (though not all) of the others. I wouldn’t have needed to! ;)

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Computer Blues

Filed Under: Reflections, Wordpress · February 8, 2012 · 2 Comments ·

Technology is a wonderful thing. A boon to us all, a time-saver and a wondrous miracle of information, communication and connection…

… when it works! :)

And when it doesn’t? It’s a pain in the proverbial, a huge time-eater and a frustrating, bang-your-head-against-the-wall monster of immense proportions!

That’s exactly what it’s been for me for the last three days.

I’d just completed a gazillion (well it felt like that, at the time) improvements and tweaks to all our sites. And our main BJ Seminars International site had gone through a major overhaul – new focus, new design, new content. The work on all the sites had been done mainly in an hour or few here and there – but the whole process had taken a couple of weeks.

I’d finally finished it all off, working late on Saturday night. I knew that, now it was done, a full backup of all sites was needed. But I was tired. And of course those backups could wait until the morning, couldn’t they?

Boy, was I wrong!

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The Wonders of WordPress & Thesis

Filed Under: Journeys, Wordpress · September 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment ·

There’s been a big gap since my last blog post – I’ve been very busy with the workhorse aspects of WordPress, improving the operation of the platform for no fewer than 6 websites!

And no, I’m not in the process of changing careers… :)

But my webmaster role has definitely increased, and WordPress is the platform for all six sites.

My first two WordPress installations earlier this year were for this blog and my partner Chris’s blog, Chris Chats. More recently we added our third blog, BJ Biz Buzz, offering resources and tips for business.

Then Chris decided he’d like to separate his blogging activity into two – with a second blog focusing on his interest in Tai Chi. This is still a work in progress, as he transfers the relevant content across from Chris Chats. But I’ve done the WordPress installation and initial configuration and it’s ready to go.

As if that wasn’t enough, we decided that our static website (which I’d been managing too) should be brought more in line with our blogs in terms of style. So BJ Seminars International is now also running on WordPress. And if you happen to drop in to that site, you’l understand that transferring it into WordPress was no small task! :)

The sixth site I’m managing, in partnership with another webmaster, is the Positive Change Core (PCC) website. That was already running on WordPress, but has undergone a major overhaul too in the last couple of weeks – a new theme, new plugins and some major reorganisation of the previous content.

So for the last two weeks I’ve been a bit preoccupied to say the least … immersed in the wonders of WordPress, php, plugins, widgets and other gadgets.

I say ‘wonders’ of WordPress deliberately because, although it’s involved some major learning curves and taken considerable time in the short term, I can see how using WordPress will ultimately save me time in the long run.

And since we installed the Thesis theme about three weeks ago, I’ve very much appreciated how WordPress and Thesis together will make my webmastering experience so much easier!

I’ve not yet taken advantage of the SEO enhancing capabilities of both – that’s still on my ‘to do’ list. And there are many more bells, whistles, tweaks and other improvements I’m sure I’ll be making to all the sites. But so far? Well, my wee office has echoed several times with exclamations of ‘Wow’.. “Amazing” .. “Oh, that’s great!” .. “How EASY!”

NOT that everything has been easy of course – well, not until I’ve finally worked out how to do it anyway! :)

But I’m very impressed with the capacity of WordPress and Thesis together (along with various handy plugins) to configure layout, design, content and all the ‘stuff’ that’s required for maintaining a website.

So, although this blog has predominantly been about other topics altogether, I’ve decided to add a WordPress category.

I’ll add posts from time to time about my experience with or impression of different aspects of WordPress or its associated plugins in the hope that my journey into this particular territory might be of some use to others as well. Particularly for other non-expert ‘newbies’ such as myself.

The journey hasn’t been all smooth sailing – a few squally winds, a couple of major storms and several potentially hazardous rocks to avoid.

But so far so good!

Stay tuned for more practical posts in which I’ll share some of the boat-building and navigational tips or tricks I’ve picked up along the way.