I was running fine previously. I know the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But that never stopped me in the past, and I wasn’t going to let it stand in the way this time either.

So I utilized the (actually pretty cool) automatic upgrade feature of WP. That has worked in the past for minor upgrades, so had confidence it would work now. The first step is always, make a back-up. Sure, I’m sure I have a back-up, so I don’t want to waste time on that now. I probably didn’t skim the instructions since it is all “automatic”, why bother. I can always read them later if I have trouble.

Trouble I did have, too… The upgrade sputtered and stalled. I kept forging ahead, and trying a few times. Finally it seemed to work. Then there was the matter of plugins. There was some overlooked instruction (probably right after the ‘back-up first’ statement) that I failed to notice. Mind you, I don’t know if that was the culprit, but I think caching and other nuances may have been involved.

I struggled to upgrade the plugins, with the same spit and sputter as the core modules. Finally I gave in and closed the admin window, and attempted to start the blog. It was then I realized that I messed up, big time!

The blog was just a white screen when opened. There were no errors, but there was not a speck of content either. I pondered what could have gone wrong and struggled to back out. Finally I gave up in defeat and headed for bed.

This morning, I decided to try again. There was no way to login, no way to access administration or configuration pages. No errors, but nothing was displayed. I logged on remotely to the server. The files “looked” fine, but looks can be deceiving. I finally stopped wasting time, and decided to restore from my backup that I was sure would make everything whole.

I restored from a point, yesterday at 18:00. That was before I started monkeying around. Still no blog. I continued back in time to noon. Still nothing. I went back to midnight of the day before; absolutely nothing. Sure the files were there, but there was some deep underlying issue. I then attempted to use my SQL database backup that gets mailed to me every 12 hours. I went back to the morning before my upgrade (since nothing would have changed) and it still wouldn’t work after importing the DB.

After reading and looking for others who may have suffered the same as me (I found none, of course) I read detailed instructions for the installation / upgrade. I decided to take some drastic measures and deleted all WP files on the server, short of my content, files, photos, etc. I then SFTP’d the new software to the server. After playing with and adjusting permissions, it “seems” to work now. The version has been upgraded, and all the plugins as well.

I’m going to run a backup now. At least I have a site that appears to be functioning at the moment. I might run into an issue here and there, but for the most part, it seems to be running fine.

Leave a comment and let me know if you stumble on any broken parts or pieces.

The other item of note is that this post is from my new iPad.

I’ve had the device since Monday, and really haven’t played with it that much. I did try to get it setup, added or upgraded a few apps, watched a movie via Netflix, and looked around for tips and tricks as well as productivity apps.

Still have a ways to go, but I will admit now that this on-screen keyboard (in portrait mode here) really works quite well.

Lots more to explore, but two thumbs up (and maybe a high-five if this posts!). I’m sure I’ll post more thoughts as time goes on.

– Posted from my iPad…

Really stumped, I looked at the files in the WP directory.  Thought the site may have been hacked, but all looked fine (as far as I could tell.)  Thought about a PHP problem, and potential PHP or other cache issues.

I was exploring my options, and thinking through a restore from backup.  I hadn’t restarted in a long while, so decided to give that a try.  This isn’t a Windows box, and so it really pained me to admit the restart of the server brought the blog back to life.

Oh well, sometimes you do what you have to do.  What I have to do now, is keep watch to make sure there really isn’t a true underlying problem.

As mentioned, it certainly wasn’t without pain, and took a couple of days.  Going live, to flush out the bugs, so not sure if everything works.  It seems mail is back on track (and was corrupt on the old server) and *finally* got the web side of the house up.  It took a lot of frustration, research, and good ol’ luck (IMHO) to get back online.

But the upside…  WordPress pages (which rely on PHP and MySQL) load, literally, 10 times faster!  It’s amazing!  I was hoping, and expecting significant improvements, but the additional horsepower and RAM certainly do make a difference.

Still not sure if all is well, but using this as a test post.  With fingers crossed, and a few prayers…  Here we go!  

Somewhere along the line I noticed one of the previous posts was “corrupted.”  The photos were full size and there was no way to reduce the size.  The photo properties showed “Full Size” with O x O sizes!  You could not reduce the size, so don’t know what happened.  I simply edited that post, by deleting and replacing the photos.

However, I also noticed larger issues (no pun intended) with the Gallery pages.  The photos there were displayed full size, and only portions were visible.  They also spilled over the columns of the theme.  Again, there was no way to repair or resize.  For now I’ve taken those pages off-line.

I wasn’t necessarily pleased with the plugin I was using for the gallery.  It was simple, and may have contributed to the problem as well, although I won’t lay blame there.  I did a quick search and found a couple more plugins that look more versatile and offer additional features.  I’ll install and try them out before bring the photo gallery back on line.

In the meantime, apologize for any inconvenience.

I almost had success with the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin (WPAU).  Everything seemed to work, right up to the point of putting the site in maintenance mode.  But try as I might, even with a manual “.maintenance” file it would always fail.  Searched high and low, and came across several folks having similar (and different) upgrade woes.  Some posts indicated the WPAU plugin was ‘outdated’ and no longer necessary since WordPress offers the functionality built-in.  But, previously that hadn’t worked for me.

I tried most of the solutions, which had varying levels of success for the folks posting to forums and blogs.  Finally came across one solution, which looked so simple, I couldn’t hurt by trying.  Check out Fred Palma’s easy solution. It simply entails changing the owner and group to be ‘owned’ by the web server itself.  On my server, I made one small change, that being that the owner and group are “www” instead of Fred’s “www-data” since I was familiar with that owner/group on installation.

Next, I had to figure out the correct settings for the WordPress routine.  There were only a few things to configure, but try as I might, using the server name (or variations) would always fail.  Searching for those failure messages landed me on a support forum post that indicated the individual had entered “localhost” as the server name.  Something obscure indicated the server couldn’t connect to itself and this might be a possible solution.  Sure enough, it worked, with the proper username/password credentials.

The update to 2.8.1 was painless, once everything was configured properly.  Now I have to go back and clean up file permissions and other messes I made. I’ll delete the WPAU plugin and perform a general review to make sure we’re all up and running properly, as well.

But in searching Google (thanks to folks that really know SEO) I was able to figure out a few little snippets that will hopefully help.  The first is an optimization that totally corrects the (what I will call a blatant) deficiency in the default setup of WordPress.  It’s unfortunate they choose the Permalink format they do.  But, I wonder if this is at the request of the search giants?  Huh, could it be…?  To lessen the traffic, or some other nonsense which I certainly don’t understand?

Anyway, I really mucked things up.  Links to every page were broken.  I don’t know if I “fixed” them, but it does appear I have Permalinks working now.  This was totally due to searching (again, SEO ‘wonderful’ links.  I was finally able to figure out why my .htaccess files on my self hosted Mac OS X (Leopard) Server were not working.  Check out this link to properly change your permalinks on OS X Server.

I think with Dean Lee’s highly touted Dean’s Permalinks Migration Plugin Version 1.0 finally working, and a good understanding of how to “manipulate” the Apache config with .htaccess files, I might be a step closer.

Time will tell…

I will admit that while the blog doesn’t look like much (would probably be more interesting if I ever had something to say) but it does allow me to waste time and play. There is something about the challenge of “getting it to work.”

The upgrade didn’t go smoothly (of course, my luck.) So much for their “5 minute install” or even easier “upgrade.” Sure I backed up my files and database. That was the easy part. It was just as easy to get rid of the old version and copy the new version in it’s place. And that, my friends, is where it stopped. As well as did the blog itself.

I tried to open the page and was met with a blank white page, with no errors. Cleared my cache, and all the other standard things, and found it was just plain broken. Thank goodness I had copied the entire “blog” directory, not just the content.

Put it all back the way it was, and version 2.7 worked fine, with no issues. So I decided to try again (after reading lots of helpful suggestions on the many forums and web sites around the ‘net.)

The second time, I took a more methodical approach. Well, it was the same approach, I just paid better attention to what I was doing.

It did work better the second time, I got the prompt to update my database, and all was set. Except… the plugins. I had five that indicated there were updates. The auto update just simply doesn’t work, whether it be the blog (WordPress) software itself, or the plugins. (Did you notice the seemingly manual installation referenced above???)

So I proceeded to update three of the five plugins, manually of course. However, the Cronless Postie still says it needs an update, but I do have the latest installed. The flash clock needs updated, and I hope that will fix the issue where it doesn’t display in FireFox. But I need to make sure I don’t lose my Sub in the process.

However, I am stumped (and the issue that “wasted” all of Saturday) by the fact that I can’t get WP-Cache to function. It was totally hosed during the upgrade. Had all sorts of permission errors, and after hours of searching and gnashing teeth, I found what seems to be an answer that works for me here, on the Omninoggin site. That wasn’t the way it was originally set up, but that’s the way it installs and runs now.

I say “runs” but it doesn’t cache. That’s the whole point, and after more attempts, I’ve finally decided to try and find something else. So, on a sunny Sunday, here I go… (But, I DO have to cut the grass today at some point!)