Hey everyone, I’ve recently moved most of my development systems over to OS X (since I have a brand new Macbook that my company gave me), so I’ve been looking into the options that are available for website development when using OS X. OS X comes by default with a great deal of things built in, one of which is the ability to run a local version of a LAMP webserver (LAMP stands for Linux Apache MySQL PHP and is a description of the most common webserver setup to run sites like Wordpress). Well, you actually need to install MySQL yourself, but it’s pretty easy. The problem is that this built in server actually does take some configuration to get working, and it’s different depending on if you have Panther (10.3), Tiger (10.4), or Leopard (10.5) installed. For someone who is new to the whole webserver/website dev thing, it can be a bit too much to do right off to get this all working.

That’s why MAMP is such an great thing. Mamp is an all in one package that will install the entire webserver set up for you using a standard OS X installer. Oncde installed it basically just requires you to start it up just like any other program. The basic free version gives you very few options to change from the GUI, so it’s probably the best choice for new people. The only change you will probably want to immediately make is to go to the preferences–>Ports settings page and click the option to “set to default Apache and MySQL ports” button. The rest is pretty straight forward and explained on the “start page” that you can open MAMP. Just note that to get to your site you need to place “localhost” in your web browser as the url.

So now both Windows and OS X have really easy ways of setting up a basic local test server for Wordpress–so there’s no reason for you not to test new plugins or theme changes there first so as to not blow up your live site, right?

ShareThis

Wordpress 2.5 should be released soon (it was actually scheduled to be out already, but has been slightly delayed), so it’s time to get ready for upgrading. One major change to expect is the admin menu system in Wordpress is getting a major overhaul. The direct result may be issues with how some plugins display their admin area pages. I believe that my plugins should be most unaffected, but since they are still making changes to the final look and feel, I won’t know until the release if I have to make any updates to the AWSOM series. If so I will try to get the corrected versions out as soon as possible after the release of 2.5.

As is typical with most Wordpress upgrades, disable all of your plugins and switch to the default theme before doing the upgrade. Then turn on your plugins and theme one at a time and confirm they still work properly. With a major release there is a greater than average chance that older plugins will break–so I suggest doing this process slowly and really checking around your site after turning on each plugin and theme.

If you notice any issues with my plugins PLEASE send me an email or use my contact form as soon as possible so I can get things working again. Thanks.

ShareThis

Hi everyone, I just released a quick update to the AWSOM Uninstaller to cover the new release of the AWSOM Archive 1.4.0 plugin. One other benefit is the Uninstaller specifically states the version numbers of plugins that it supports. The plugin is now available for immediate download from the AWSOM.org website.

ShareThis

The new version of the AWSOM Archive plugin for Wordpress, version 1.4.0, has been released and is now available for download from the AWSOM.org website.

The new version of the Archive plugin adds in a much requested category limiting feature that works in conjunction with the “Archives for a Category” plugin to allow your archive to show only entries from specific categories. (Note, you MUST have the Archives for a Category plugin version 1.3 or above installed for the custom category limiting feature to work). So now all ComicPress users can set the archive to only display posts from their comic category if they want.

ShareThis

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of posts this week. My regular job had an exhausting week of work that basically saw me get up, work, come home, and crash for the entire week. So nothing of note development wise happened this week. I will be working on some suggested updates to all of the AWSOM plugins and will have something out next week.

ShareThis