WordPress Automatic Background Updates

WordPress updates can be very important, both from a security and performance perspective. Although doing these WordPress, or any, updates can be done manually at any time, why not set them to automatically install? To my knowledge, there is no check box anywhere in the dashboard to achieve this. There are plug ins that can be used, but I believe ‘less is more’ when it comes to plug ins – they can fill up the plug ins directory and even increase the odds of a security breach. So, the best method is to directly edit the wp-config.php file. Minor updates are enabled by default, but there are a couple of other higher level updates needing to be enabled.

The PHP file sits at your hosting WordPress folder location.

Full instructions are contained in this WordPress article.

Theme directory “twentyfifteen” does not exist

WOW, that was scary! I just went into my WP-ADMIN to update some Plugins and the theme [I heard there was an update @ 4.2.2], and I ended up losing my site: we are talking full on, white page, so a screen shot would not really do justice to how scary that is. There was no error code or message in site. Is this a “White Screen of Death”? I had the 2014 WordPress theme installed, nothing more except a few plugins. I did notice before trying to update WP 2014 that 2015 was sitting there unused, and I checked the box. Big mistake [?]. I guess I really should have simply removed 2015 altogether until I was ready to move to it or not checked the box. But shouldn’t we be able to update both the 2014 AND 2015 theme, without taking the site down? Lesson learned!

I also ended up with this rather ugly message in the Themes WP-Admin area upon finishing the themes updates:

“theme directory “twentyfifteen” does not exist”

Yikes! Site down, and limited options! Did I mention I am NOT USING 2015. I guess by checking both boxes, the assumption by the application is I wanted to upgrade to 2015.

I panicked and started searching frantically over at my friend, the Google search engine. Unfortunately, none of the fixes applied to my situation and some did not work for me. The fix was surprisingly easy, but I admit I ‘rolled the dice’ on it, as I was not sure if I would lose my site for good, or at least until a full reinstall. [I DID have some backups of the content].

I was still able to get into my http:// sitename/wp-admin so at least I had that going for me. Gratitude! I went into the Appearance and themes area, which is where the ugly message was showing and I added the 2014 theme back. I reinstalled it. This all happened so fast, I had to do it twice – sorry but I am not sure why this was necessary, but the WP 2014 site indeed came back!

 





 

Google Blog being Moved

Woah, I just moved dozens and dozens and dozens of BlogSpot posts over to my new Riguy WordPress site.  I moved these from my soon-to-retired Blogspot blog, which is/was called exploringwindowsos.blogspot.com. I will soon set up a redirect from there to here.

I used the Import tool [obviously need to be logged in as the WP Admin]. Once the Google credentials are provided, I admit it was much easier than I expected. It did take a little time, however. But it worked so I am absolutely not complaining!

Free Azure Web Hosting

This is a Windows Azure hosted site. I am mainly exploring this free hosting service from Microsoft to verify the efficacy of its business use. Azure is one of the largest Cloud providers in the world. They have datacenters world-wide with massive DNS caching and data redundancy. I use and support it at work for virtualization and web site hosting.

It can be found at:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/

 

 

 

WordPress 4.0 is Out!

In another world [Windows Azure], I am using WordPress. I really love WP – it is not only the top blog site software these days, it is the top CMS as well. Put the acronyms aside – WP powers millions of sites worldwide and is basically at the tops of all the charts.

The new + always improved WordPress (4.0) is out!
I always like the ‘under the hood stuff’, as opposed to ‘bells and whistles’ stuff ;>

Straight from WP:

Under The Hood

General

  • Performance and effectiveness improvements to wptexturize()
  • Ensure custom post types nested under top-level menu items get the proper classes
  • Added a src parameter to the embed shortcode
  • Fixes for handling nested shortcodes
  • Make default ‘template’ argument of the_taxonomies() and get_the_taxonomies() translatable
  • Remove a redundant condition for comment feeds from WP_Query::get_posts()
  • The Customizer now properly honors theme support defaults for background images
  • Installed Themes search now shows a proper “no results” message
  • Improved, more consistent styling for HTML5 input elements
  • Post previews now redirect to the permalink if the post has been published
  • Email and URL input types have been implemented where appropriate in the admin
  • Most uses of extract() have been removed from the core code
  • 3gp mime type support was added
  • wp_handle_upload|sideload() logic was consolidated
  • Remove dead and unused code from dashboard.php following changes in 3.8
  • The operator argument now case-insensitive in tax queries
  • Now possible to disable drag and drop functionality in wp_editor() instances
  • Trigger _doing_it_wrong() when a registered post type or taxonomy slug is too long (20 characters max)
  • Widgets management in the Customizer to leverage the new Panels API.

JavaScript

  • Heartbeat API “experimental” labels have now been removed
  • Improved inline documentation for Media Views
  • Forces an autosave on switch from Visual to Text editor

Bug Fixes

  • Fix a notice with media attached to non-existent post type
  • Fix expanding and collapsing the admin menu on small screen sizes
  • Fix a bug where multiple Add Media buttons shared an ID attribute
  • Fix get_the_ID() not checking for a proper post object
  • Fix current track highlighting in audio playlists
  • Fixed bug with audio player not properly floating around images in the editor
  • Fix a bug where bulk actions would be performed upon clicking the Filter button in some circumstances
  • Fix remove_all_filters() always returning true via has_filter() in some scenarios
  • Fix a notice in wp_reschedule_event
  • Fix paragraph tags not being converted in PressThis for the Text editor
  • Fix get_the_excerpt() not always checking $post->post_excerpt
  • Introduce caching for oEmbed responses
  • Fix an issue where attachment display settings didn’t work for galleries
  • Leverage iframe sandboxing for audio and video, allowing arbitrary scripts to be loaded
  • Ensure all plugins have an accurate oEmbed provider list by loading them “just in time”
  • Fixed several problems with formatting of curly quotes, square braces, non-breaking spaces, and related performance issues.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.0