Critical Exponent » WordPress technicalities

WordPress 3.0

Victor Chudnovsky — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:15:54 +0000

The new version of WordPress is actually pretty neat. It has new features like navigation menus and custom post types. The new default theme (“Twenty Ten”) showcases some of these features. Changing the look of my blog (at least to that well-prepared theme) was extremely easy.

Here’s an overview of the new WordPress:

Add? Share?

Victor Chudnovsky — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:51:38 +0000

After reading some tips on how to make my blog more social, I did a quick comparison of ShareThis vs AddThis and decided to try my luck with the former.

Now I just need better, more consistent content….

Blog, re-themed

Victor Chudnovsky — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:13:31 +0000

What better way to channel my geeky impulses during vacation than to give my blog a facelift? After much virtual shopping, I settled (for now) on WP-Premium, with some .php modifications of my own. Let me know what you think!

Mobile blog

Victor Chudnovsky — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 03:27:11 +0000

If you want to read my blog from your mobile device, just bookmark this link: Critical Exponent(mobile). It is an automatically generated mobile version of the site, thanks to the folks at MoFuse.

There is also a MoFuse plugin for WordPress that is supposed to redirect users automatically if they come from a mobile device, but so far I haven’t gotten it to work: the URL never redirects, and when I disable some of my other plugins, MoFuse-WP generates an error on the page. Cool idea once I/they get it working, though!

I learned about this from AmericaBlog.

Blog upgrade

Victor Chudnovsky — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:08:10 +0000

From the moment I signed up with my previous web-hosting provider, I was disappointed with their speed, their clunky user interface (no SSH access? come on!), and their unresponsive customer support. The last straw was a my blog suddenly not working when I had not made any configuration changes. They were unhelpful and proceeded to touch my files without permission or good cause.

I spent all of New Year’s Day backing up my blog content and transferring it to my new hosting service, HostMonster, which was recommended by a friend. To do the transfer, I followed the directions here. I tested the transferred content by modifying my /etc/hosts file to point my machine to my website’s new IP when fetching the old name. The plan was to initiate the DNS transfer once that was all working.

While transferring the database was simple, making the copied WordPress .php files talk to the database did not work immediately. I suspect it’s a mixture of a complex directory structure, DNS name changes, and server-side redirection going on simulatenously. Or not. I just wound up creating a new WP blog on the site, pointing it at my transferred database, and voilà! I’m good to go.

(Fore future reference, if I had been interested in moving the blog to a new domain name entirely, I would also have followed the steps here or here).

A bonus benefit of having a fresh install is that now I can start my customizations (which weren’t that many) afresh, using the newer widgets and such that were implemented since my blog first went online. Look back to this space as I make my blog visually more interesting! My inspiration comes in large part from what Knox was able to accomplish in a short time as a WordPress newbie, albeit one with a good eye for layout and design.

WordPress upgrade

Victor Chudnovsky — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:16:36 +0000

A week or two ago, I finally upgraded WordPress from 1.5.x to 2.6.2. After the upgrade, I had problems with the layout of the initial page, and problems logging in. Removing the inScript plugin directory and disabling wpPaginate (and updating the Giraffe theme) seemed to fix things. In the meantime, I got many spam comments.

The spam should have been cleared now, and the blog working as normal. Let me know if you encounter any problems….

BTW, I recommend the WordPress Automatic Update plugin. It does make life simpler.

WordPress 2.0.2

Administrator — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:31:12 +0000

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2 and reactivated the plugins. It went without a hitch. I hope to explore the new features and spend some time on the website this weekend.

Blogging, improved!

Administrator — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:39:24 +0000

Critical Exponent is my new presence on the web. Powered by WordPress, it will allow me to consolidate my previous blogs while giving me more control over content and appearance.

My old Blogger entries and comments have all been migrated to this new site; the old blogs will remain static from now on. To read old entries, simply look through the Old Blogs category.

This is still a work in progress. There are planned feature and appearance changes that will find their way to the site over the next several weeks. If you’re interested in how I have customized WordPress, look at the Colophon page and the WordPress technicalities category.

I look forward to interesting discussions and comments. Enjoy!

Backing up the WordPress database

Administrator — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:11:57 +0000

Here are easy directions for backing up your database. The blog infrastructure can easily be backed up using your system’s standard file commands.

Turn off plugins when moving blog directory

Administrator — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 04:52:54 +0000

I was following the codex directions to move WordPress, but I could not get it to work: I could see the blog in its new location but I could not log into it. I had to go into the wp_options database and manually change the Blog URI back to its old location.

I finally managed to get the move to succeed by deactivating all the plugins before switching the URI in the Options/General tab and moving all the files.