Working at Home on the Internet

When a Backup is Not Enough

 This past week, I decided to try upgrading a couple of my WordPress Blogs from version 2.3.3 to WP  2.5.1. Sounds easy enough, huh?

I upgraded two of the least visited and updated  (dare I say less important?) Blogs that I have, one to 2.5 and the other to 2.5.1 which should be a gimmie. Just do the upgrade and done. Right?

Wrong!

It’s not that the updates themselves were a bad thing or too difficult to do. It’s not even about the poll in the Sidebar about the Love/Hate for the newer versions of WordPress. It is more about the Incompatability of some of the Scripts to Do the Update.

I use BlueHost as my Hosting Service and am quite happy with them. They are always there if I have a situation, the Techs know their stuff, and everyone is easy to work with. They even wrote their own Script for installing and/or upgrading WordPress. It seems they thought the Fantistico Script was slow in presenting the newest WP upgrades and wanted to improve their own service to their customers. Enter SimpleScript.

SimpleScript is actually quite easy to use if you want to do a New Installation of WordPress, I even used it to set up my personal Family Blog. Everything went perfectly on the New Installation. So, I decide to do a test changeover from Fantistico to SimpleScripts on the Joe’s Freeware Finds Blog. I figured, if anything went wrong, that would be a better place for it to happen rather than here or MCBS (the business blog).

Good Thing…

The changeover Did Not go smoothly. Far from it! I Lost EVERYTHING! Posts, Themes, Plugins, Comments… The only thing I had was the “Welcome to WordPress” thingys. Square One!

So, I decided to try the most recent Backup that I had. It wasn’t new, I hadn’t updated for a month, but it had everything since the last post I had written, all the plugins etcetera. Things should just fall into place and work, or so I thought…

NOT…

It seems that Fastico and SimpleScript hate each other almost as much as PC and MAC. They just can’t work together no matter how hard we try.

Uninstalling SimpleScript and reinstalling using Fantistico… NO GO

Reinstalling Fantistico and using the original Backup From Their Script… NO GO

Uninstalling BOTH and starting fresh with WP 2.5.1 using the Backup… NO GO

Using any combination of Scripts with the Backup… NO GO

Fresh installation of WordPress Not Using Any Scripts and then using the B/U… You guesses it…  NO GO

Finally, Brice, the Tech from Bluehost, suggested deleting everything WordPress, Fantitico, SimpleScripts from that particular sub-domain and just copy everything from the Backup to the sub-domain. And guess what?

It Worked!

Reason being, there were two completley different Scripts trying to compete against the other. They ended up cancelling each other out, so Nothing Worked.

Moral of the Story

Even though you take precautions and do your Backups faithfully, you may still run into problems with compatibility if you decide to change from one type of system, program or software provider.

Just Be Aware and make sure the Backup you have will work with the New Setup you are installing.

Have you ever run into a similar situation? Please share your experience with us.

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June 2nd, 2008 at 04:52pm | Posted by Joe | Basics, Tips | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

Five More Work at Home Tips

 Ok, Change-up

I had started the Work at Home Tips Series about a month ago and had posted 5 separate articles that basically rehashed some old ideas. Some posts were entirely new, but the ideas were old. Others were old, rewritten and presented in a newer light, but still old.

So what I decided to do is just link to old ideas in old posts (they all are around a year old). For those of you who have been around that long, they are still valid ideas and worth looking at again. For newer readers, visitors and hopefully new friends, I didn’t want to waste any time in sharing these old, but timeless posts with you.

So, here are #’s 6 through 10 of the Work at Home Tips Series

6. The Balancing Act… Work and Home… One of the most difficult parts of Working at Home can be where to draw the line between Work and Home. I share some ideas on how this may be accomplished.

7. Procrastination Dosen’t Work at Home… When you are faced with something you may not feel like doing, it is easy to put it by the wayside. Maybe this will help when that happens.

8. Put the Customer First… I learned how some pretty big names think of and make sure the Customer is #1 in a presentation on the History Channel and wanted to share it with you.

9. Reliability in Business… In this one, I relate a little story on how I learned that Reliability in Business is of paramount importance to the customer (through personal experience).

10. Work at Home Pitfalls… Not everyone is cut out to be self-employed. This may just give you an idea of what to look out for before jumping into your own business with both feet.

Besides, if I’m going to do a link post, I might as well intra-link and provide some insight and helpful Work at Home Tips that are semi-hidden in the Archives here, instead of looking elswhere. Huh?

I hope you enjoy them.

August 22nd, 2007 at 06:08am | Posted by Joe | Basics, Tips, Work at Home | 1 reader remark | Print This Post

Too Many Categories, Too Little Room? Here’s the Fix

I started running out of space in the sidebar. There were almost 50 different Categories which ran well past the first fold.

What to do? What to do? I decided I needed to shorten the list, but then things would be mixed together and lose the effect of having categories in the first place.

 So, I did the next best thing. I added some code to the sidebar which would give me a Drop Down Menu. This way, I would still have all the posts in the proper categories and gain much needed space in the sidebar.

If you would like to set up your Category list with a Drop Down menu (it replaces your get_categories php) like the one in my sidebar…

Here is the code: 

<h2>Categories</h2> 

<ul class=”sellLi”>

<form action=”<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>” method=”get”>
   <?php wp_dropdown_categories(’show_count=1&hierarchical=1&orderby=name’); ?><br />
   <input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”View” />
   </form>

</ul>

You, of course, can use the <li> (list) function instead of the <ul class…> function if you prefer, depending on the look you want.

I think it works pretty well, what do you think?

Important Update:

If you followed the comments below at all Des Walsh mentioned that he had problems trying to use the code in his Sidebar. I mentioned that he seemed to be using Widgets as opposed to his normal sidebar php.

Php code doesn’t work using Widgets. I did try, but nothing I tried worked… UNTIL I found a Plugin written by Otto that allows the use of php code within a Widget! Go to his post Fun with Widgets and look for the execphp.zip file.

Download it, unzip it, upload it to your server wp-plugins file and you will be able to use the above php code in the Widgets and you will have the same DropDown Menu you see in my Sidebar.

August 15th, 2007 at 12:35pm | Posted by Joe | Blogging, Tips | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post