July 10th, 2009
This post could also be titled “How to reinstall your WordPress site from scratch including a complete reinstall of the database and recovery of all content” but that’s way too long AND it doesn’t even fully explain the ordeal I just went through after making a GRAVE ERROR in the process of creating a favicon. Let’s start at the beginning…
What Happened?
About 4 hours ago (it means nothing in relative terms but it was around 12pm EST) I set out to create a favicon for my site. It’s been a while since I did this so I google-d “fav icon for my wordpress site” and was led to this article on WordPress Hacker. I followed along and quickly created a 16×16 image which I converted to .iso format using the brilliant favicon.cc and saved to my desktop.
After uploading the file to my wp-content/themes/middlenamejames directory and adding the line into header.php I should have been done. I could see the icon sitting on the left of the URL but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to see the same icon in the address bar of my wp-admin screens. Little did I know that all I had to do was place the icon into the root of my site. Instead what I attempted to do was place it into the wp-admin directory and then proceed to add the same into admin-header.php. Big mistake! Read on…
I hit refresh and waited for the admin page to reload with the new favicon just like the published site had. The page went blank. The page stayed blank. I quickly opened admin-header.php and removed the line of code before promptly uploading it to the server EXACTLY THE SAME as it was before the screen went blank. Waited a little while and then refreshed – nothing happened. Checked the public site and that was fine. Refreshed the admin page again, but still nothing. I was concerned.
Reaching Out and Finding a Solution
The next few hours were spent uploading and downloading files, tweeting friends for help or advice and searching frantically for possible explanations and “quick-fix” solutions for this apparently phantom error which was causing the wp-admin not to function. After going around in circles a hundred times I opted for a complete reinstall of WordPress both locally and remotely. This involved backing up the existing database, deleting the entire installation from the root of the server then reinstalling WordPress and setting it up. That part was easy, as was putting the current theme back. What was more of a challenge was importing the data from the mysql backup. It had something to do with using WordPress 2.8 on MediaTemple grid server as oposed to using WordPress 2.7 using the same database name also on the same MT grid server. It seems at the root of the issue was the fact that this new install of WordPress 2.8 had created database tables which had a slightly different prefix to the ones in the old table and as a result I had to import the old tables (which were named differently that the tables in the new database) and then copy the content from each separately into the corresponding table…
This could undoubtedly go on but there’s too much to try and explain that will be of enough interest to anyone. The immediate message is this though – don’t mess around with WordPress wp-admin files unless you know what you’re doing. Oh, and if you want a cool icon to accompany your URL, check out that WordPress Hacker article on how to create a favicon.
Coming up next…
Backing up your WordPress Site and Database, Recovering content from a previous install of WordPress, and much more!
July 10th, 2009
While learning my way through the experience of building this site I am at times relying not only on my own knowlegde but on tips and advice from others. There’s a wealth of information out there and all you have to do is type a few words into Google and, providing your internet connection is up and running, it’s all at your fingertips in a matter of miliseconds.
While I’m always grateful for knowledge passed on from others, sometimes I become frustrated at the amount of information which is often left out or overlooked. I mostly come across this on forums where the subject is of a technical nature – in this case the WordPress support forum and a number of other sites I visited while trying to find out how to style the parent of a sub-page so that it would remain highlighted (on) in the main menu whenever a child page was being viewed. Simple problem, and ultimately a simple solution – just update the declarations in the style.css page, adding #menu ul li.current_page_ancestor a to the #menu class so that this code…
#menu ul li a:hover, #menu ul li a:active, #menu ul li.current_page_item a
{
background: #515400 ;
border:none;
}
…became this…
#menu ul li a:hover, #menu ul li a:active, #menu ul li.current_page_item a, #menu ul li.current_page_ancestor a
{
background: #515400 ;
border:none;
}
The first Google result I clicked had a long explanation about the wp_list_pages() function and gave a few step by step instructions on how to modify this, but it did not state WHERE I should look for this code. A few back and forth clicks later I was on the wordpress forum where I did find the solution as follows:
Just add a selector for current_page_ancestor in your current_page_item declaration, so that they are styled the same. So, it would be:
.current_page_item,
.current_page_ancestor {
…
}
Good information design involves a balance between User, Content, Context. In this case the content is not entirely in context because it is not explicitly stated where this code can be found – i.e. in which page or file. While it only took moments for me to realize that .current_page_item is a style declaration and the terms declaration and style pointed toward the style.css file, some people might not have understood that – especially given that the thread started out with reference to navigation.php. I suppose there are a few lessons to be learned but two things stand out.
- Make sure your information is within context
- Don’t assume your users know what you know!
July 10th, 2009
Been working on the site for a few days now and have arrived at this.
I learned a few things about WordPress, CSS and PHP along the way. Once again, I’m loving this platform/framework for developing sites in future. Thank you to tall the WordPress developers as well as those folks out there putting together awesome templates.
Now, let’s get some content in the portfolio section.
July 6th, 2009
It seems that the WordPress Fall Season Theme by Sadish is based on an Open Source design called Zenlike by NodeThirtyThree. Just giving credit where it’s due.
Thanks Sadish! Thanks NodeThirtyThree!
July 6th, 2009
After 8 months on a pretty sweet contract with a pretty neat agency in Toronto, I’m back on the freelance wagon, updating my own site and portfolio and about to hit the street looking for work. So, after not posting for a while (time flies – scary!) here’s the “new” site. There you go. Bet you never even saw the “old” one. Actually it was just the default wordpress install for some time and then it became a slightly modified version of the WordPress Fall Season theme by Sadish. Now it’s, well, it’s a slightly more modified version of the WordPress Fall Season theme by Sadish.
March 12th, 2009
catching up on what other people are up to. tweeting and facebooking is all the rage. idle gossip? waste of time? sometimes. it can also be inspiring. other people, regardless of what they are doing, are always an inspiration. life at it’s most mundane can even be inspiring, even if it just irritates you so much you HAVE TO do something.
now ask yourself…
do you really give a facebook?
February 7th, 2009
When I tell people this is what I do for a living, the first question is usually “What’s that then?”
“Information Architecture and User Experience Design” I tell them.
“What’s that then?” they ask.
Information Architecture is the practice of, well, architecting information. Is architecting even a word? I’m not sure it is. OK so it’s the process of ORGANIZING information – specifically organizing information contained within a website. As an Information Architect it’s my job to collect and organize the information/content that exists across the numerous pages and files of a site and basically design the structure and hierarcy of that information into a site map and user-flow diagram. From there I create a detailed breakdown of each page in the form of a wireframe, which shows the various elements that appear on each page. Put simply I help design and build websites by preparing a “paper-version” of the website which is used as a reference and tool for the entire team – most specifically the graphic designers and programmers who will create the finished site. This documentation is invaluable as a resource not only for designers and developers but also to clients and anyone else involved in the design and build of the site because it provides a top-level view of the site and enables anyone to better understand how the site is/will be organized as well as what kind of functionality and user experience should be expected. There is a great deal more to Information Architecture and User Experience Design. Perhaps I will write more about it, or perhaps I will just refer anyone who is interested to check out Boxes and Arrows.
“What is it you do again?”
February 2nd, 2009
At this point ideas and ambitions outweigh the capacity to get to that place envisioned as “after” and so we’ll refer to the next step as something of an in-between. I suppose compared to any kind of “final” destination, anyplace is in-between. With regards to this page, the “in-between” I’m referring to is a temporary face-lift to this otherwise default-looking design.
Here’s how it looks right now:
As an initial improvement I think this might look quite nice:
Or maybe this:
February 2nd, 2009
Here comes a new version of middlenamejames.com. Watch out!
I’m building it on WordPress. The new webhost is Media Temple. It all sounds good. Let’s see what happens this time. The timing is good. It’s my one and only daughter’s birthday. This time 9 years ago she’d be about 37 minutes old.