Why do you scare me WordPress?

I am being a  little bit over dramatic, here, but last night I really shit my pants over a WordPress installation that had been upgraded to version 3.1 and I thought I should share.

Apart from here and Emerald City, I also write about comics at Comicdom (sorry, Greek only). One of our sites, was upgraded to WordPress version 3.1 recently and as it usually happens I wasn’t paying attention to the emails our administrator sent me. So, it was late last night when I decided to post something. I logged in, clicked on the “New Post” button and dropped my jaw on the floor. This is what I saw:

In case you don’t see anything weird, there were supposed to be a lot of boxes  under the visual editor. I shit my pants. Really. It was late, our admin was probably asleep and I had no idea what to do. I read around the internets for a bit and there were people talking about plug ins that conflict with the new version (as with every new version) and that I should try to deactivate them t0 see if the problem was fixed. Then of course I do not have administrative rights over there, so there was nothing I could do, except clear my cache (as someone suggested) and try with different browsers.

This morning, I was talking with the administrator on the phone and he swore everything was working fine on his end. He tried logging in from two different machines, used both FireFox and Internet Explorer and could see nothing wrong with anything. I still faced the same problem although I was at work, which meant different PC, so I was at total loss as to what could cause the problem. Until I read Otto’s post. I felt so stupid…

Just press the button called “Screen Options” on the top right corner and voila. Check the boxes you want to appear on your screen. The reason behind this, is that with the update, WordPress switched to the default values of every user that had not previously saved their preferences. Mind you, that this goes for every screen that has options, not just the visual editor.

So should you find all your metaboxes missing (this is what they’re called…) just check your screen options before you start tearing plug ins apart.

I still feel so stupid…

 

A lot of projects, A little time…

Lately, all over WordPress, there are these nice identical summaries of the most successful posts for 2010, which the helper monkeys were kind enough to send each blog owner. Don’t get me wrong, I like this idea and I implemented it on this blog too. It is a good chance to browse through your old posts, check the statistics and get a general idea about where you’re heading.

What I came to realize, is that I do not post often. Not as often as I would consider ideal at least. According to every pro writing tip out there, keeping a steady flow of new material, is one of the key points that will determine the success of your blog. Not the only one, not even the most important one, but a key point none the less. As you probably noticed, I don’t do that. Before you classify this as another “I wish I wrote more often whining“, let me say that the one and only reason I am not a more frequent writer, is because I am.

See, for the past few years, I’ve been a regular author at a Greek comic site, Comicdom, where (you guessed it) I write posts about comics. This blog on the other side, has seen a couple of reboots and the last time this happened, I decided I wanted to keep it a bit more “technical” and talk about my various encounters with technology and those weird machines called “computers”. I sometimes do write about other things, sure, but I would like to stay on the “information highway” for the most part.

Last time I saw WordPress’ editor, I was writing about a VIA Epia and my plans for it. I said, I wanted to set it up as a torrent client and an FTP server and I would post more on the subject. Well, I did set up an FTP Server and I did document the procedure, but I chose to do it on Instructables instead of here. I apologize for referring you to another site, but I have my reasons. You see I’ve been a member on Instructables, which I think is a wonderful site, all this time, I have borrowed ideas and techniques from other members and have not contributed even the slightest to the community. At least, I am proud for dealing with a subject not already covered, and for writing a detailed How-To and it has a good 400 views so far, so I guess I was a bit helpful to someone.

I wanted to post this here too, so there would be a conclusion to the previous post and keep things tidy in my head. I even got to setting up rtottent (a command line torrent client), but I really don’t think that this is something post-worthy.

Right now, there are a number of things waiting to happen, I don’t know how many (or if any) will be realized, therefore I will not make any announcements what so ever. Just like the title says: Little time..

Automatic archives on WordPress

Remember when you wanted to make an archives page for your blog, but you always put it off for another time because adding 600 or so entries – with their links – is more than hard boring work? You don’t have to postpone it anymore! WordPress added a very nice little feature:

Make a new page and in the page body write {archives} (replace {} with [])

It will look something like this and it will save you a lot of trouble!