How to upgrade WordPress and plugins without FTP

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I’ve read so many forum threads on this that I think it’s time to share these very simple instructions. Follow them for your website and you’ll finally have the fully automatic updates working as they should.

Automaitic WordPress and plugin updates

First of all, let’s just make sure we’re talking about the same thing.  Since version 2.7, WordPress received one of the most useful features ever: automatic update. What this means is that every time a new version of WordPress is released, you now get a “click here to upgrade” option in your admin dashboard. When you click the link, it should ask for a confirmation and then proceed with automatic downloading and upgrading of your blog. But because of misconfigurations, this feature isn’t always working, and then you end up with a configuration dialog suggesting that you provide FTP credentials for accessing your server.

Possible reasons for automatic WordPress upgrade not working

There’s only a few reasons why WordPress or plugins upgrade feature will not work.

Read more

June 18, 2011 · Filed Under blog, wordpress

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WordPress Admin Bar tricks

If you like the WordPress admin bar introduced recently, you’re going to love the way it can be expanded to do pretty much anything you want.

DigWP.com blog has a great collection of links in a single post with some very good ideas: Admin Bar Tricks.

My personal favorites are: move admin bar to the bottom of screen and disabling admin bar for non-admins.

May 8, 2011 · Filed Under wordpress

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When Updating Forum Theme Templates

Don’t forget that most of the existing forum engines (phpBB and vBulletin are the ones I use) have some form of internal caching for all the templates. This means that you need to refresh the cache after making any changes.

I’ve just spent a good few minutes trying to figure out why most recent changes to one of my forums never applied, and it seems that although I’ve changed the template files, there was a step with cache refreshes which had to be taken before any change is visible to forum users.

This is a really basic piece of advise, but since it’s not the first time I forget to check for internal caching, I thought I’d share it and save you some time in the future.

February 8, 2010 · Filed Under design

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Review Your Blog’s Plugins Regularly

I’ve just resolved an issue with this blog which prevented me from posting for the past week or so. It took me so long because I’ve been trying all sorts of things: JavaScript debugging (thanks, Firebug!), Unix-host permissions, webserver logs analysis… Eventually it all boiled down to disabling a really old plugin which hadn’t been updated for ages.

Lesson learned: review your blog’s plugins regularly, and don’t hesitate to disable or even delete the ones you no longer use! With the recent WordPress versions, maintaining most of the plugins is really easy.

September 9, 2009 · Filed Under blog

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Get A Website with Professional Design for Just $350!

An online friend of mine, Dawud Miracle, is currently running a great promotion on his new Website Habitat website: for just $350 you can get a fully functional and professionally customized website or blog!

Your chance to get a great looking blog

I wish I could post about it earlier, but there’s been something wrong with my blog and there really was no time to fix it. So here it is – I’m sharing great news with you, but time is running out very quickly for this incredible offer.

Dawud had been working with small businesses for the past 10 years or so. This allowed him to perfect the design of a blog up to such a level that he can get you amazing results in just a few days. His services usually cost more than $1000 for a typical website, but since Dawud has got a few reasons for celebration, he’s doing this special until Sunday afternoon.

Please head over to The Website Habitat site to read all the details of the complete website for $350 offer, but here are just a few things which you should definitely know: