Failure is the Key to Success

Like a lot of other people, I came across a problem when trying to automatically upgrade my blogs to WordPress 2.9. My web host is 1and1 and the database that I had my blog in was a MySQL 4 database, specifically 4.0.27. The problem is, WordPress 2.9 needs 4.1.2 or 5 (I know its in the requirements, but I didn’t read them I just hit ‘upgrade automatically’). After finding this post by Don Campbell, What I Learned Upgrading to WordPress 2.9, I knew my best option was to change my database to a MySQL 5 one. Unfortunately, although I have two databases available to me on my hosting package, but I was using both and both were MySQL 4.

I checked all the applications I had using the database (PhpGedView, Gallery and phpBB) to confirm they were all able to work with MySQL 5, and found they were. That’s a good start! I already knew WordPress was OK, so I set about exporting the tables for each of my blogs and applications to file ready to import into another database. The tables for Firestats were the largest and a couple of them had to be exported individually, otherwise phpAdmin choked.

Continue reading » Upgrading to WordPress 2.9

Tags:1 and 1,FireStats,MySQL,upgrading Wordpress,Wordpress 2.9

I had to repost all of the links for the Big Bang – World Record posts, as the original posts had over 500 links and it appears WordPress 2.6 cannot support this, so it deleted all the post content.

Continued from Big Bang – World Record pt2

Continue reading » Big Bang – World Record pt3

Tags:big bang - world record

Ooops, I’m not on the ball here.
Yesterday was my blog’s 3rd anniversary. At times it’s seemed hard work and I’ve been uncertain whether to continue, but even after the quiet periods, I’ve still carried on.

Not bad for 3 years, I have made 304 posts and received 549 comments (not including spam – I’ve had 1000′s of them).

Oh well, I’ll keep plodding along.

Tags:3rd anniversary

WordPress 2.6 was released late last week, so I updated my test blog to check that everything worked before updating my live blogs.

The upgrade was straight forward and all my plugins activated without any apparent issue. However, when I checked my stats, the page wouldn’t load any details, just a blank page. I have used FireStats since migrating to WordPress and had got used to the results it gives, so I headed over to the FireStats site to see if there was an upgrade. I found version 1.5.12 and so downloaded and installed it. To be on the safe side, I installed to a new database so that I didn’t have to upgrade my existing stats database. This didn’t resolve my blank stats page issue and gave me some messages about features needing a higher version of MySQL than my host 1and1 provides, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled my previous version 1.4.4.

Continue reading » WordPress 2.6 and Firestats

Tags:FireStats,Wordpress 2.6

Yesterday Jo-N at Shower Your Children with Love awarded me the Wise Owl award. Thank you. The extra effort to add our names is appreciated. I’m a firecracker! This award was created by Heidi Hyde at Hydes Like Us to show gratitude for those who inspire and mentor us in blogging.

This is now the point at which I should list my recipients for the award, but I’m not going to. Not because there aren’t people out there who inspire me, but because there are too many to choose. You inspire for the breadth and quality of what you blog about, the reasons you blog, the effort that you put into providing regular (and irregular) updates to your lives and experiences. So, this award’s for you. If you read my blog and I read yours, consider me inspired by what you write.

Tags:wise owl award

Tim at The Inflatable Soapbox awarded me earlier this week with the E for Excellence award. Thank you. I hadn’t come across this one before and found it was started by Project Mommy about a month ago.

By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people who’s blog’s you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10. Thank you out there for having such great blogs and being such great friends! You deserve this! Feel free to award people who have already been awarded…

So I pass this on to:

jmb at Nobody Important

Vijay at scan man’s notes

Jackal

Carol at My View of “IT”

Jo-N at Shower Your Children with Love

Gary at Azazil.net

David at David Airey

Ilker at The Thinking Blog

Pari

Vikas at Tech Bold

Nen

Tags:blog award