Glenn Burks

W3 Total Cache Self-induced Error

Glenn Burks — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:48:46 +0000

W3 Total Cache is one of the best plugins I’ve found for wordpress. Yet, at first glance it can seem overwhelming to setup. But, it’s not really all that hard.

Recently I’d moved this site from Drupal to WordPress which went pretty smooth except for a few small issues with the comments which I wrote about in a previous post.

During the process of fixing the out of order wordpress comments I introduced another problem.

While fixing the comments I had disabled W3 Total Cache. The problem cropped up when I went to access the comments after W3 was running once again.

While not paying attention while fixing the comments (nested comments set to 5) I had one comment that would have been nested at #6. Since WordPress was setup to only nest to 5 it simply did not place it where it should have been.

It just placed the post beneath the others and in order, no problem right? Well as I said it turned up only after W3 Total cache was running and you tried to manage the comments.

Most of the time you would just get a blank page and at other times you would get all the way to the edit comments page but there where no comments displayed. Yet, it would show that there where comments and pages.

What ended up happening was that the comment that could not be nested at position #6 ended up having the comment_parent set to the comment_id.

Why it created an issue with W3 Total cache I have no idea maybe someone will stop by and enlighten us. But, by changing the comment_parent back to 0 fixed the issue.

WordPress Comments Out Of Order After

Glenn Burks — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:46:51 +0000

…Moving this site from Drupal back to WordPress which I had alluded to in a previous post. Thankfully there is alot already written about this on the internet.

For some odd reason during the move the threaded comments ended up out of order. Coupled with some but not all of my replies where not attached to me.

After searching through quite a few posts (most just stating the problem, without a solution) I found a few that addressed what I needed to do.

The scary part is that, it does require you to go into the database and correct the issue. This is where you need to have a backup of the database and preferably do this in MAMP or XAMPP.

The first issue that needed to be addressed and was one of the more difficult ones to find was the issue of “Changing the user_id of wordpress comments” back to me.

This was fairly easy to do from phpmyadmin and then it was on to the next issue getting the comments back in order. At first it may seem like a daunting task but as you read all the comments you should see how they fit together.

The issue for the out-of-order wordpress comments was the…

… comment_parent field. The thread comments that where out of order had the comment_parent set to 0 or some other odd number. These could have been change via phpmyadmin but talk about confusing.

With thousands of plugin’s for WordPress a little searching turned up this plugin Edit Parent Comment ID the sad part is that it hasn’t been updated in awhile and compatibility was only up to 2.9.2.

And, I was running WordPress 3.01. Since I was using MAMP and had a complete duplicate of the site it was no problem. I installed the plugin it worked as advertised.

From there it was just a simple matter of figuring out which comment went where. While this would work for a smaller site I know it would not be easy on a much larger site where you may have thousands of comments.

The interesting part is by going through this process I introduced another problem with W3 Total Cache and Comments which I’ll have to write about later.

But, for now if you need to fix you’re out of order wordpress comments this will get you started.

Moving From Drupal 6.x To WordPress 3

Glenn Burks — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 03:41:03 +0000

After almost two years of running this site on Drupal 6, I finally came to the realization in late may it was time to move it back to WordPress and Thesis.

What brought me to this decision was more than just the upkeep associated with running a simple blog on Drupal…

It also had to do with the complexity of module interdependence with drupal, which on more than one occasion caused numerous problems.

One of the biggest reasons this site used Drupal in the beginning was the power you had over your content. But, now I feel wordpress has more than caught up.

While I had moved quite a few sites from wordpress to drupal … there’s a module for that. Moving in the other direction seemed like more of a challenge.

Yet, a quick search on the internet turned up this excellent post Convert – Import A Drupal 6 Based Website To WordPress v2.7

Setting up a temporary site via MAMP was the first step, followed by downloading the 2.7 version of WordPress from the release archive.

Following the instructions the data was converted in no time at all. Everything appeared to be there and still intact. The next step was to download and update to the latest version of WordPress 3.01.

Followed by installing the Thesis for WordPress theme, a little fine tuning in under MAMP and then it was time to move it over to the live server.

Creating a new database on the server with phpmyadmin seemed like the easier thing to do. Then using phpmyadmin to backup and download the data from MAMP followed by importing it into the newly created database.

There is one gotcha when moving the database from MAMP to your live server and that is the website url. Fixing this is fairly easy, on the live server enter your database via phpmyadmin and click on your wp_options in the first row of data you’ll see.

Change localhost to your website url.

There is still one other area that has to be changed as well on the second page of the wp_options.

Change it to your website url.

Now that the data was on the server it was fairly easy to move all the files over to the server after deleting the drupal files.

Once you’ve moved all the WordPress files and folders – set the permissions edit your wordpress wp-config.php to point to your new database.

You’ll also need to copy the hidden file .httaccess to your wordpress folder.

Of course you could simply install WordPress…

And then import the database from MAMP.

I did find one odd thing in the move and that was with the comments not being in the correct order. Mainly it seemed tied to replys to comments.

Other than that, the move from Drupal 6 to WordPress was just as smooth as moving from WordPress to Drupal.

Database Driven Websites

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:03:48 +0000

PHP and MySql websites comprise most of what we’ve talked about when it comes to blogs and cms systems. With both of these systems the overhead on the web server becomes and issue.

If the site should become very large and have lots of visitors simultaneously making request it will slow down the entire system.

This is where budget hosting can get you into trouble, but then on the other hand unless your out to produce the next great social site your probably not going to run into any of these problems.

One of the major benefits of a database driven website is the ability to pull information from the database and display it on static html pages.

Another major benefit is the ability to quickly customize a site, sharing data on the pages it is needed and excluding it from other areas of the site.

Drupal which this site is built upon utilizes blocks throughout the site to display various pieces of information such as:

Recent Blog Posts
Todays Popular Content.
Various Advertising etc…

InsiteCreation is another database driven system designed for Windows ASP.net I use this on my site at Perfect-Business-CD.com it is a much easier to use software.

Combination Static – Blog

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:01:57 +0000

What do I mean when I say, static – blog? Since you can install blog software like wordpress into a subdirectory or into a folder making it part of your original website. This allows you to use one domain name which you may already have good ranking with.

Your can see examples of this at my sites network marketing works and nav60. When we look at CMS systems like drupal they also combine some what static pages with a blog.

Why is a CMS system semi static? Well for starters blogs and CMS systems are driven by a database making the setup just a little more difficult then a true static website.

Content Management Systems

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:58:55 +0000

CMS or Content Management Systems are something that is kind of new but really it’s not new.

Generally before you would pay an exorbitant price for a CMS system as they truly are scalable from a simple one person website to large enough for a corporate or news website.

Generally when it comes to CMS systems they have a large learning curve when compared to a static website or a blog website.

This is why you really do not see as many of them being used in a home business type environment.

Yet if you truly want to build a community driven website that can scale to needs you may have in the future then a good CMS system maybe right for you.

When you start looking for Content Management Systems, you’ll find that there are literally hundreds of them.

Finding one that fits your needs can be challenging. When I looked for a cms program I looked for an open source version with a large following and many contributors to both the code and to plugin modules.

For this website I chose the open source software called Drupal. While I cannot say making the transition from static – blog software to drupal was easy, it is a very powerful piece of software that so far has run reliably.

Blogs And Software

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:54:33 +0000

Can A Blog Be Your Primary WebSite?

This is an emphatic yes it can. Todays blog software has really progressed in a rapid fashion as to it’s capabilities.

Setting up a blog website can range from simply easy to well lets say don’t try this at home, yet we should not be afraid of it.

When it comes to blog software we have choices between totally free blog and hosting, free software and our own website hosting, to paid software and hosting. This allows us to build a blog and keep it within our marketing budget.

The first group here offers free blogs and hosting.

Blogger.com
WordPress

This second group is just some of the free open source software which would require your own website hosting account.

Drupal
WordPress
b2evolution

The third group, is paid for paid blog software and hosting.

InsiteCreation
TypePad

I am sure there are others out there but these are the most dominant out there, which means you do have support should you run into trouble.

What Is CSS

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:52:35 +0000

The basic purpose of cascading style sheets (CSS) is presentation. In the early days of the internet, with the advent of graphical web browsers designers ran into challenges with the presentation of web pages.

In the early years control was in the hands of the user – visitors to the websites and the different emerging web browsers.

Even today we still run into challenges between Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and the many different versions.

Thanks to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) a body formed to oversea the technical growth of the internet we have standards today.

(CSS) cascading style sheets is one of the best things in my opinion to come out from this group. Using CSS helps us to generate really clean code and allows our sites to be viewed the way we intended them to look.

One of the big benefits was the ability to eliminate a large portion of the the tables used in the design process. We still keep a few tables around since not all tables are bad.

(CSS) Gives us everything from azimuth to zoom, and knowing how to use it all is a big challenge. Yet, there are many books written on the subject.

One of the few books I keep on my desk and reference often as I work on my websites:

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS.

The Ultimate Guide Beginners Guide To CSS.

Learn More Download Free Chapters Now!

What Is Html

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:50:34 +0000

Hyper Text Markup Language is instructions give to your web browser so that instead of seeing ones and zero’s you see this page that your viewing. Learning html can really drive you crazy especially when things go wrong and trust me they will.

Often in the beginning I would spend days trying to figure out why something would not display right in the web pages I created. Often just walking away for a few hours then looking at it fresh would reveal the problem.

Here is the resource I recommend for learning the basics of html:

Build your own web site the right way using HTML & CSS.

This book is the perfect way for the beginner to begin to learn the right way to setup their very first web site using html and CSS the right way.

Click here to download 4 free chapters now!

HTML Editors

I use Dreamweaver CS3 it is pricey though. Retail is $399, but there are many editors out below $50. I would recommend one that has the capablities of uploading your pages to your web hosting company.

SiteSpinner V2.7 – I have not used it, but from what I’ve read, this is a good one at $49

Trellian WebPage Editor – And best of all Trellian WebPAGE is FREE

Coda is one that I personally like for the Mac.

You can do a search through your favorite seach engine and find more html editors.

Graphics Software

Personally I use both Fireworks CS3 and Adobe Photo Shop CS3 both of these are pretty expensive. There are allot of other programs out there, just do a search in google for “graphic programs”

One that is also free is called GIMP

Static Websites

Glenn Burks — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:46:09 +0000

What is it?

A static website is just that, you write your material just as you would in any word processor upload it as a .html or .htm webpage. Creating pages has it’s advantages and disadvantages. The majority of websites found on the internet fall into this class.

Advantages of Static Sites.

Static sites are simple in nature to create, link together. There are many templates available for static sites, so you can probably find one that fits your personal tastes. This is the way to go in the beginning.

Using a template allows you to get your site online very quickly, yet still it has a learning curve. Yes you will have to learn a little about html “hyper text markup language” At first it seems confusing but hey if I can learn it so can you!

Templates will use either tables or css for positioning, with css being the preferred choice. CSS “cascading style sheet” allow for a much cleaner format with less code in the actual page itself.

Disadvantages of Static Sites.

The only major disadvantage I see in a static site is just that it is static. If we look up static in the dictionary this is what we find:

Static: adjective
1.) static prices unchanged, fixed, stable, steady, unchanging, changeless, unvarying, invariable, constant, consistent. antonym variable.
2.) a static display stationary, motionless, immobile, unmoving, still, stock-still, at a standstill, at rest, not moving a muscle, like a statue, rooted to the spot, frozen, inactive, inert, lifeless, inanimate. antonym mobile, active, dynamic.

Anything that is static on the web looses it’s appeal over time not only with your visitors but also the search engines. This is another reason why we never have to get it perfect to begin with.