WordPress has had this most useful feature of upgrading plugins automatically, from within WordPress, for a while. Just one click and you are done.

However there are times you might run into an error and get this error instead:

Could not create directory. /public_html

This can have you banging your head against cyber walls for a long time. The solution, however, is very simple.

Here is what you need to do: continue reading…

This is a direct quote from Matt Mullenweg:

we’ve fixed a pretty critical vulnerability in WordPress’ core HTML sanitation library, and because this library is used lots of places it’s important that everyone update as soon as possible.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have ever had them send me an email asking to upgrade asap so this is very important.

If you are using one of the later versions of WP, then the upgrade process is very simple. Just go to Dashboard: Updates and update automatically.

If this does not work for some reason, download WordPress. Upload all files other than the wp-content folder and the wp-config file in the root folder. I had to go via this route and ended up overwriting the wp-config file. Not a big deal but still a minor inconvenience.

In one sentence – Upgrade to WordPress 2.8.4 right now!!

That is unless you want to leave your blog open to being hacked. If you are using an older version of WordPress, your blog has security vulnerabilities. Thankfully, these security loopholes have been fixed in WordPress.

If you don’t think this can happen to you, think again!

One of my websites which is based on a WordPress blog and was running on version 2.0.9 got hacked a while back. I would never have found out if not for Google Webmaster Tools.

So if you have not signed up for that yet, better do so asap as they have some very good tools which will help with optimizing your website/blog.
continue reading…

I started out with this blog being a do-follow blog because I believe in giving back to those who contribute useful comments. I can live with the fact that they might be adding the comment only for a link back as long as they also add something solid.

However, sadly most of the comments turn up being the ‘Thank you for this post’ type comments, while others don’t even bother with that and just copy an old comment that made it through moderation. Even worse are those that are not even relevant to the post.

No Follow to Do Follow to No Follow

Due to these tactics, a lot of do-follow blogs have decided to go back to being no-follow blogs. Although, this blog is still do-follow, I am seriously considering that option if the quality of comments keeps deteriorating. It can be very time consuming to wade through the spam to get to the real comments and sometimes they get missed out on or get delayed in posting.
continue reading…

As most of you may have realized by now, it is always a good idea to wait a while before upgrading to the latest version of WordPress.

One reason is you have to give the plugin authors time to update, if any are needed on their plugins. The second advantage to waiting is that all the security bugs get ironed out. In case you noticed, WP 2.8 was followed by 2.8.1 up to 2.8.4 pretty quickly.

I finally upgraded at 2.8.4 and all the plugins seem to be working flawlessly and I haven’t even updated all of them as yet so that is step number two.

Now for the new features:
continue reading…

Did you recently upgrade to WP 2.7 and noticed that your comment author link is a bit messed up?

If you are also using the Semiologic do-follow plugin, you might also have noticed that it is no longer working.

SOLUTION
Look in your plugins to see if you have a Google Analyticator plugin. Just deactivate it and everything will be back to normal.

It seems like there is a new WordPress version every few months. This is great from one perspective i.e. we get great new features and it just keeps getting better. However, seeing from the other end of the spectrum it also means that we have to upgrade and make changes to our theme and make sure there are no broken plugins.

My last version was WP 2.5.1 and I finally upgraded to 2.7 last night. It was more or less a painless task since all of my plugins still work with 2.7. At most I had to update them via the one-click plugin update (it is more like 2 clicks but who’s counting ).

However, it did require some changes in my theme. I could have lived without these changes as my theme did not break … I just wanted some of the new features to work.

So here’s the low down on some of the main changes in WordPress 2.7 and how to deal with them:

continue reading…

I’ve had that annoying yellow bar telling me to upgrade to WP 2.6.1 for a while. Today I finally decided to give it a go and just in time, too. Now the bar reads download WordPress 2.6.2. Wow! These guys are fast.

Saved from two upgrades. Phew!

Here’s the lowdown on why you should upgrade to 2.6.2

It is most important for those of you who allow open registrations on your blogs. Of course there are some bug fixes, too. So best to upgrade.

If you have just upgraded to WordPress 2.6 you might notice one slight problem. You are no longer able to upload your images. They show up as broken images. It doesn’t matter whether you use the AJAX option or not, the result is the same.

Surprisingly not everyone is facing this problem.

A client of mine has the exact same configuration on his blog (give or take a couple of plugins) as mine. However, he faced the broken image problem while I did not. Of course we have blogs on different servers so that might have something to do with it.

continue reading…

You have to motivate your visitors to leave comments.

How do you do that?
By giving them a good enuff reason to do so.

Like they say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

We have already discussed one approach and that is by making your blog do-follow.

Another option is the CommentLuv Plugin.

This plugin searches the commentator’s RSS feed and adds the title of their last blog post to their comment.

continue reading…