Welcome to Smuggle Me

One of the nice things about Wordpress is that they are always coming out with updates and changes that enhance the blogging platform. One of the bad things about Wordpress is that they are always coming out with updates. That means you have to go and update all of your blogs. Which in my case is far too many. Take a look at the list of blogs that I maintain:

Blogs
Smuggle Me
EMR and HIPAA
Lynn Family Blog
Something for Nothing
Fundraising
BYU Sports
Spoil On

Pure TV Network Blogs
TV Freaks
Dancing with the Stars
So You Think You Can Dance
Fringe
Amazing Race
AGT
TV Sports

Other People’s Blogs
Crowdsource This
True Life Relationships
Take Flight Blog

Blogs I Don’t Write To Anymore, But Don’t Want to Take Down Yet
Cambrian House
miaMessage Blog

Ok, so I’m too lazy to link all of them. A bunch of them are new blogs since I’m splitting Something for Nothing into a TV Blog network. So far it’s doing pretty good, but it’s a good thing that I’m not blogging all of them myself. I have 4 other people helping me to update them with content.

Now if I can just automate the Wordpress update we’ll be all good. At least I’ve standardized the plugins I used so I don’t have to test nearly as much.

I don’t know why Wordpress doesn’t just link to this OPML link file from the link manager, but since they don’t it’s sometimes a pain in the butt to find. So, just go to http://www.example-domain.com/wp-links-opml.php to export the list of links from Wordpress

There you go. Now you can export the links from wordpress just as easy as you can import them.

I’ve searched high and low for a way to move just one blog category from an existing blog into a new blog. I found tons of ways and great documentation on how to move an entire blog to a new domain, but I couldn’t find anything that showed how to take one Wordpress blog category and create a new blog using that category.

I found an old plugin/import that should have done the job, but hadn’t been kept updated with the latest version of Wordpress and so it didn’t work for me. I also found a ton of people on the Wordpress forums interested in doing the same thing, but no one offering an answer. The best they could offer was importing just the RSS feed for that category. Problem there is that then you lose all the comments, categories and tags for those posts. Comments being the real kicker for me.

Therefore, I decided to go it alone and figure out a way to do it using the only option given in the Wordpress Export which was the user that created the post. My goal was:
-Export All the posts, categories, comments, tags for just one category of my blog
-Create a list of those posts that I could use to redirect traffic/google to the new location

There might be easier ways (and hopefully they’ll make this an option in the Import), but this worked for me. Also, I wouldn’t try this method unless you’re pretty good at find and replace, executing SQL queries and editing themes.

Overview of Process:
*Export Blog to Test Server
*Change Theme to Get list of Blog Post IDs/Posts for Category
*Change Author of Each Post ID to a new author
*Export posts for new author
*Import into new blog
*Create list of 301 Redirects on old blog
*Clean Up new blog DB

Read more…

It looks like Wordpress 2.5 is going to arrive possibly next week. Either way it will be coming really soon. Is your blog ready for it? I found a pretty extensive check list of things you can do to prepare for the upgrade. I think that it is a little over the top myself, but I guess you kind of have to be to avoid that person that gets mad at you for saying that the upgrade should be very easy. That’s why I’ve basically limited myself to the plugins that are so mainstream someone is going to update them or the ones offered by Wordpress themselves (ie. Akismet and Wordpress Stats). It’s always interesting to see what features they come out with next.

I’ve been working the past couple evenings to get a Wordpress blog to integrate with a bbPress forum. They’re both from Automattic so I thought that it would be a no brainer. Turns out it should have been, but I just missed one link. I’m putting them here for those looking for a reference on integrating Wordpress with bbPress.

Here’s the Wordpress plugin that you need to integrate it. I didn’t activate it until after I had created both the Wordpress install and the bbPress install. This plugin also requires you to set the prefix for your bbPress database name. Simple enough to do on the tab that’s created for bbPress once the plugin’s activated.

This is the bbPress Wordpress Integration plugin that is used in bbPress to do the integration. Of course this is activated after installing bbPress. Just make sure when you install bbPress that you set all the right information in config.php I won’t detail that out since the documentation is good for that and is really very straightforward.

A lot of the documentation points to a Display Name plugin to show the Wordpress display name in bbPress rather than the login. It’s a great idea and would be great if it worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work, but the comments made on the plugin have a better workable method to make this happen in the bbPress template which in reality is probably where it should be anyway. Although I would shy away from loading all of Wordpress on the bbPress pages if possible. I can imagine that it will slow things down.

The Spaces and special character in login name Plugin isn’t even an official plugin and I haven’t tested it myself, but it loads well and seems like a simple enough plugin that I added it in to prevent errors in the future. Let’s hope now that they’re putting some resources towards bbPress we’ll get some things like this in the core.

I haven’t added the Human Test Plugin yet, but I expect that I’ll probably need to do that sooner or later or we’ll be swimming in fake accounts before we know it.

There are a bunch of other plugins that would be cool, but we’ll see what the manager of Crowdsource This wants to do. A signature plugin might be cool. The Private Message plugin might be useful. Probably a few more I haven’t looked at yet.

Well, hopefully this helps some people trying to integrate Wordpress with bbPress. Next up is to find a good theme. Possibly a look and feel designed for Wordpress and bbPress would be best. I’ve read that there are a few out there. If someone knows where they are, please let me know.

Today I decided to do my first official install of bbPress. I’ve worked with it on Greedy or Needy and a few other places, but the is the first install that I’ll be using in production. I’m planning to use it to support my first attempt at a simplified version of my marketing mob idea. Should be interesting to see how it works out. I debated whether to use a forum like bbPress or a wiki and I decided to try the forum first.

I also have an ulterior motive in that I’ll use this experience setting up bbPress to make sure that I’m well versed in it before installing it for the website Crowdsource This. Should be a pretty cool site that you should all check out once it’s up and running.

Now that I have the base bbPress forum installed, I’m going to have to start looking through all the various themes and plugins and see if any of them are must have items. I don’t really want to develop my own theme and so I’m pretty sure I’ll just use one of the ones listed on bbPress Themes or bbPress Showcase. In the end, I don’t care as much about look for this one as I do function. So, the theme might actually be easier to decide than the list of bbPress plugins.

Either way, I find this pretty exciting and interesting stuff. bbPress has been almost exactly the same install as Wordpress and so it’s been a walk in the park so far. I’ll have to see how the integration with Wordpress works. It looks like there’s a few options. I’ll have to decide which one is best.

Also, if anyone reading this is interested in participating in this round of the marketing mob, let me know and I’ll fill you in on how it’s going to work.

UPDATE: This post was completely tongue and cheek about someone who is non-technical and shouldn’t know how to do these technical things. See my comments below for further explanation on my intentions with the post.

My friend from Cambrian House decided to step into the blogging world with his blog Web Fugitive. I think he’ll actually be a really good blogger with his knowledge and writing skill. I guess time will tell.

However, his tech skills and implementation of Wordpress sucks. Sorry Web Fugitive, but there’s a reason you shouldn’t expose yourself. I’d be embarrassed to admit who I was if I’d committed so many mistakes. Here’s a few helpful hints to get you started.

1. Turn on permalinks. If you don’t know what that is, then find out. It’s easy and Google likes permalinks. Don’t be lame and link to a page with ?p=12
2. Turn comments on on all of your posts. I was about to comment on a post and comments was turned off. How lame is that. Well, I guess maybe it was a good strategy, because it motivated me to blog about you. Otherwise, I think it sucks. I bet it was just an accident, but fix it already. Comments are what makes blogs interesting.
3. Get rid of the “Uncategorized” category. Choose a topic like Web 2.0 which will encompass all your posts and then make it the default. Uncategorized just makes you look lazy and uneducated in the art of blogging. Not to mention good categorizing is liked by Google bots too.
4. I already told you this so do it already. That lame hostmonster favicon not only makes you look lame for using hostmonster, but it shows you don’t care about your website.
5. I can’t tell this for sure, but I bet you don’t even have the Wordpress stats plugin turned on and maybe not even akismet. I’d even settle for Google Analytics, but I’m confident you don’t have that. Get some stats already.

Ok, I will give you one prop. At least you have the latest version of Wordpress installed. Of course, you don’t have to listen to anything I say, but I’m sure you will since you know better than to not listen.

Welcome to blogging. It’s addicting!!

I think that everyone that blogs should know that they need to backup their blog regularly. Unlike a paper journal, blogs can be backed up easily and copied to a zillion different places if you want. However, the key element to a backup is to do it regularly and verify they work. Backups get outdated quickly.

Luckily Wordpress blogs have a variety of simple backup solutions. In fact, they even have a whole section of the Wordpress Codex for backups. Here’s a few simple things you can do to backup your database.

Wordpress Database/Data Backups
MySQL Database Backup - There are at least 2 ways to backup your blog’s MySQL database. One is using the backup utility your host provides. I’ve found this a pretty nice way to backup the entire blog database. I recommend this backup method for most people. Other more advanced users may want to use phpmyadmin to backup just specific portions of your blog. I know I often will backup my blog without all the statistics data. It makes my backup much smaller and easier to restore.

WP-DB-Backup Plugin - As of a few Wordpress releases ago, Wordpress has bundled the WP-DB-Backup plugin with the base Wordpress install (similar to Akismet and Hello Dolly). That means that most of you already have it available as a plugin on your system. Everyone else can easily download the latest version of WP-DB-Backup. Here’s good instructions and FAQ on using it. This backup will save the backup file to your webhost by default and can be configured to regularly email you a backup of your blog. Pretty slick. Just don’t close your browser when doing it.

Export Option - As of a recent Wordpress release (yes, I’m too lazy to check the exact release), Wordpress has provided a very nice Export option. It’s a really simple way to backup the most essential part of your blog: posts, comments, custom fields, and categories. This backup method is so simple. Just go to Manage–>Export and then click the “Download Export File.” This create a really nice XML file that will be really easy to restore. It doesn’t backup your theme, all the options section, plugins, links that you might have setup. However, all of that can be recreated if needed. Your blogs posts and comments would be the hardest to replace.

Wordpress Files Backup
Host Provided Backup - Every hosting service I’ve seen provides some sort of backup utility. Most of them use CPanel which has a pretty robust set of backup options. On CPanel you want to do a home directory backup. This will backup every file and any file you have uploaded or configured on your website. This is my preferred method, because it zips it up and names it nicely when I download it to my hard drive.

FTP Backup - This is a really simple method to backup all the files that Wordpress uses to display your blog. If you are blogging on Wordpress and don’t know how to use an FTP program like FileZilla, then now’s a good time to learn. Basically in this backup you just create a folder on your local computer and copy all of your blog files into that folder. The key challenge here is to make sure that you selected the right files and that your ftp program didn’t error downloading any of the files.

I haven’t tried to make an exhaustive list of ways to backup your Wordpress blog. One time I lost my entire blog (there was no option to backup at the time) and the only way I could recover it was using Google’s cache. Trust me, you don’t want to ever have to do that.

The decision on when to backup your blog is up to each blogger. The question you need to ask yourself is how much data I’m I willing to lose if something happens to my blog. For some people this may be a day and others a week. Once you’ve answered that question, then you’ll know how often you should backup your blog.

If anyone else has suggestions on other Wordpress blog backup methods, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Side Note: This post only applies to personally hosted Wordpress blogs. If you are using a Wordpress.com blog, then you can only use the Export option listed above. Luckily, that export option should be all you need to restore your blog if Wordpress.com decides to take down your blog.

Today I was reading over some information about using Google Apps with your own domain and I just happened to see a post about highlighting authors comments in Wordpress. I’ve seen it all the time in Techcrunch and I really like that they do that. I’ve just always been too lazy to change my template to search for how it was done. Turns out that it’s really easy. In fact, the link I sent above makes it sound harder than it really is.

I basically added an If the comment author email equals the admin’s email account, then list a style. Otherwise, don’t change the style of the comments. How do you like that pseudocode? Anyway, it was really easy to do if you know php and css. As I did it, I realized that my css still needs a lot of work. However, I think it turned out pretty good. I think the comments look much nicer with a little color.