I often go on the Wordpress.org forum and try to answer help questions from users who are having problems with their install. In many cases the problem is easily solved by knowing a small amount of information–but it’s usually true that most users do not know the most basic information about their setups. In general, anyone who is setting up a Wordpress website should know the following information:

• The Version of Wordpress they have installed
• They Type of Server they are using (Linux, Windows, Solaris, etc.)
• The Version number of PHP (the programming language Wordpress is written in) that is running on their server
• The Version number of MySQL (the database system typically used by Wordpress) that is running on their server

It’s also good to know generally what version number your theme is and all of the plugins you have active in your install. This very basic information can usually diagnose many of the most common problems with Wordpress. The most common issues of aberrant behavior stem from out of date versions of the above items.

In my experience it is best to have at least PHP 4.2.2, MySQL 4.1.x, and Wordpress 2.0.11 running. Using a Linux server also seems to cut down on the possible problems that can exist, since Wordpress was specifically developed with that type of server.

If you are having a problem it’s best to post your install information immediately so others can work with all of the facts, in many cases your problem can be resolved within hours. (Oh, and always remember to post a link to the page/site that is not working, it’s always best if we can see what the problem looks like directly.)

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One of the better things to pay attention to other than visitor traffic is who is linking to your site. If you are getting a large amount of linkage odds are you’re doing a good job on developing your site (unless of course every site that links you has “sucks” at the end of it’s URL name). The easiest way to check who’s linking to you (besides looking at your pingbacks and trackbacks) is to google yourself. The more specific version to look at though is Google Blog Search. While regular links on websites are good to know about, it’s what people are saying in their personal blogs and forums that gets you the real meaty information about how you’re doing. I definitely recommend doing this at least once a month to see how far out your site has reached into the Internet.
There’s also the possibility that you might find someone using your content illegally, so that’s good to know also.

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As I expected, the Wordpress forums are clogged up with issues related to the upgrade to version 2.3. Many of you were either caught unaware (though I did predict it and posted about it here), or you were blindsided by the fact that parts of your theme or plugins you thought were safe were using the older now unsupported database calls. If you have been affected by the upgrade effect–either you get a totally whitescreen with nothing showing, or parts of your site don’t appear–DON’T PANIC! There are some things you can do to at least get your site running until you can fix everything back to how you want it.

1) First thing, if possible go to your Admin Plugins interface and deactivate all of your plugins. If you can’t log in to your site, the last resort way of deactivating your plugins is to go to your servers file system (either FTP or through a web admin interface) and delete all of the plugins from the plugins folder in the wp-content folder. Of course make copies of them to your local system first.

2) Second thing, if your site still looks crazy or won’t load, go to the Admin interface Themes area and select either the “Classic” or “Default” theme that comes with Wordpress. Unless your database is totally hosed this will at least allow your site to load. It probably won’t look like how you had it before, but at least you won’t be down. In an extreme case where you can’t load your admin area go to the wp-content folder and delete your theme folder (of course, like above, make a copy first to your local system if you don’t already have a copy). Then rename either the “Default” or “Classic” theme to have the same folder name as your non-operating theme. This should get you back to being able to log in and see your site.

3) If it appears your database is hosed and deactivating all of your plugins and using either the classic or default themes still won’t allow your site to load….well, you DID create a backup database didn’t you? It’s not a fun process but you will need to reload your old database. I can’t give you a quick rundown on that, but there are plenty of Google findable sites that have PhpMyAdmin tutorials or Cpanel or whatever you use for setting up databases on your server. Once you have that in place you can copy your older Wordpress files (you DID back up your original files didn’t you?) back to the server and do research on how to upgrade in a way that will work for how your Wordpress is set up.

4) Go to the Wordpress.org website and post on their forum for help. There are many people there already, maybe they have already posted about your issue and received a response that might help you.

5) Go to the developers sites for your theme and plugins and see if there are updates available. If the software is still being maintained it will hopefully have an update soon, if it’s older and no longer maintained….you’ll have to find a replacement that fulfills it’s function. The good thing is anything that is normally a good idea for a plugin or theme will have someone making it or redoing it for compatibility with the newest versions of Wordpress.

6) In worst case scenarios you can hire someone like me to fix things for you. If you have some cash there are plenty of people that are willing to work for you to fix things up. Wordpress.org forums always have people posting to have someone help them for a fee, plus I’m available too :)

In general it really shouldn’t be hard to get a working site back up in an hour or so. Then the long process is figuring out how to upgrade without getting the same issues again. In some cases you may have to go find a new theme file and redo how you had your old one set up. It’s a bummer, but that’s how this stuff happens sometimes.

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I have discovered a powerful new way to set up a test server on a Windows PC. The best part of this new technique is it’s portable and should work on any PC you want. The new technique utilizes a thumbdrive and the software from a company called CH Software. They have developed a very awesome application called WOS Portable II which allows you to create a custom apache webserver configuration and install this to any thumbdrive. Once on the thumbdrive you simply plug it into any PC, start an application on the thumbdrive, and suddenly you have access to a MySQL database and full web server on any PC. The best part is the basic version is free and works great to do testing and development.

To get your own copy go to their download page, select new Download, and select the options you want on your install. I’d suggest php 5 (Not SE), mysql 5 (Not SE), Apache 2 (Not SE), and ImageMagick (this is an image manipulation package), and from the bottom list PhpMyAdmin (helps you add databases to MySQL). You can add some other open source Content Management programs also, but it’s best to try to install things yourself. Once you download the zip file you move the files to your thumbdrive and run the installer–that’s it!

The program creates a wosportable folder on the thumbdrive, and in there is the wos.exe file that you need to run to start the server. Also, place you website files in the folder www within the wosportable folder–then on your pc type “localhost/yoursitefolder” with the name of the folder in www you put your site files in and it will appear in your web browser. If you place the files in the root of the www folder then just type “localhost” to get there.

Now you can play around with anything you want without blowing something up live.

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In the rush to add fun effects to our sites through javascript and other programming tricks, it’s important to know just how this affects the overall security of your site and server. Most people don’t realize that while javascript allows fun stuff like Windows style effects (lightbox on images, drag and drop stuff, areas opening and closing on your site without page reload, etc.)–that this same functionality also gives the user more power and ability to alter how your site works. Allowing the web browser to do programming level actions means that the end user, i.e. Hacker, now has more information about how your site works since variables and other programming information has to be exchanged between the web browser and the web server. In general javascript opens the most holes in security for any website, and the over reliance on it makes it almost impossible to be totally secure. Nasty things like Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks, and other methods to grab cookie or session authentication data all occur due to the loose way that javascript was designed.(this is usually how Hackers get your admin login or are able to log into your admin area)

So remember next time that you really want some flashy effects for you site–ask yourself, is this functional or just an effect? Remember, in 1997 flashing text was considered really cool, as was scrolling text….do they seem so cool now? The content is really what has value–flashy stuff may seem crappy later and only made it more likely that you see “I Haxored J00″ at the top of your website.

For some more reading on this subject check out Arstechnica.

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