Blogging

Plugins and Themes that don’t play nice: Let them out in your “Play Area”!

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Since this is the second time today I had to trouble shoot an plugin/theme issue the only solution to which was simply removing the offending item(s), I’m becoming a little more untrusting towards plugins and themes! And with good reason!

I have spent more than three hours trying to fix problems with plugins and themes today, and they were driving me crazy! At first, I thought it was my own incompetence at using these tools in the first place! Everyone knows the phrase RTFM right! Well, of course I never do! But then when I went to check the documentation for the offending plugins/themes, it was very sketchy, 99% of which I either knew already or didn’t need to know! So, I stopped blaming myself and started removing them! Then the sun came out again! And the land was filled with rejoicing! Things worked again! So, to prevent hours of unnecessary frustration, and the ill effects of poorly written themes and plugins, I’m proposing the “Play Area”.

This, however, is only for blog authors who have their own full hosting/ftp/mysql, etc., it will save you a lot of extra heartache when you discover the theme of your dream or the plugin of your fantasy just don’t work, conflict with the theme, crash your blog, or corrupt your database! It’s only your ‘play area’ that fails, and you can always reinstall there! I call it a kind of insurance policy!

Here’s what you do:

  1. create a special subdomain such as http://playarea.yourdomain.com (or a folder, perhaps?)
  2. make a copy of your database and download it.
  3. get and upload the latest version of Wordpress in your NEW subdomain in #1.
  4. create a new Database in MYSQL, and upload your existing data to your new MYSQL database.
  5. edit the wp-config.php in the NEW area so that the data there matches your new installation OR follow the installation process when setting up Wordpress.
  6. (optional) you can also password the entire subdomain using .htaccess and .htpasswd, so that it is only available to you!

It’s also a good idea if your website makeover is bigtime, and you still need to check the original from time to time.

Please note: it can be tricky to get this to work properly, if you just copy all the files from one area to the new subdomain. That can work well, too. I did it several times, but it took me ages to get the installations working properly, as I had to hack the database on one occasion, and login repeatedly to get to the write place to configure the settings!

However, when you set yourself up with a play area, an identical installation of your blog but in a separate area of your website (perhaps with its own password, so only you get to visit it) and a separate database. You call it whatever you like! Every time you want to install a new theme, add code, add a new plugin, or play with stuff, experiment there, so that your main blog is still available. If it goes down, no big deal, you didn’t lose anything, and your main blog still works fine! It’ll save you a LOT of trouble. Trust me!

Comment Challenge vers. 1.1: Broken again?

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Visitors to my blog!

I’m having to apologize again for the comment challenge plugin being broken again. I had a period where I had no comments at all, and then I figured that the Comment Challenge was interfering with one of the other plugins. I removed the plugin and lo! everything was sunny in InvestorBlogger.land.

But then just recently the flow of comments just stopped! I didn’t think to check that the plugin was wreaking havoc with my visitors until a kindly person dropped me a note!

So, until this plugin plays nicely with my blog, I’m disabling it and removing it. I did check for problems like this on the author’s blog, but couldn’t find anything (but then the author doesn’t use this plugin either!). So, it’s good bye from Comment Challenge, and it’s goodbye to commenter frustration! Apologies!

OLPC vs. iPhone vs. PortableApps: Which will this tech tryout as the most influential technology?

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Well, I recently blogged about two innovations, both of which I thought would be significant in their own way: the iPhone and the OLPC. You can read about the first post here:

iPhone or OLPC? Which will have a greater impact?

This week saw two major technology announcements both of which have potentially large implications for users world wide. The first was the iPhone launched by Apple at MacWorld. The second was the “One Laptop Per Child”, a project that promises to “create(sic) expressly for the world’s poorest children living in its most remote environments.”

You can visit the websites to explore the projects yourself. Both of them are INTERESTING!The iPhone could, in fact, inspire a whole generation of users who would love the convenience and power of the phone in dealing with calls, internet, ipod and pc style functions. There is, however, a serious concern on the kinds of limitations that Steve Jobs is thinking about:

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

As a result, we can consider that this will be a fairly closed system, despite being based on OSX. Now, as a PC user this seems quite a limitation:you won’t be able to run applications that Steve doesn’t want you to. The closed system will, in the long term, limit the expansion of the system.

On the other hand, there is the OLPC. This is potentially a huge development, both for the children in the developing world and, I believe, for the developed world. Its effects will be far reaching for the developing world by empowering a generation of kids who will be able to learn the ins and outs of both computing and the Internet.

However, the OLPC represents a number of positive points for the developed world: it will spur development of a whole new generation of information devices that will bring the Internet world to people and places that have now only been on the fringes. Educationally, the OLPC will allow schools to have units for every child in the school, as well.

In addition, since it’s open architecture, I think that the OLPC will be the device for a generation, if not in its first incarnation, in its second or third. It has very low power consumption, very light and strong construction, open design, USB ports for extensions, and networking facilities, both formal and informal.

posted here.

Naturally, I was beginning to think about a three way battle between these two innovative technologies and PortableApps (which I recently blogged about).

iPhone – Cool new iPhone from Apple: sophisticated mobile phone with technology to play music (like iPod) and media, internet enabled, too. It will run a version of OSX that may not allow external software!

OLPC – A new simple laptop PC intended for children in the developing world. The devices will contain flash memory (goodbye hard disks!), Linux and have ad-hoc networking so that everyone can access Internet from just one connection.

PortableApps – Take your applications with you on a USB stick, you can access almost any PC that has USB capability and run your own applications. There’s quite a selection. So pile in and tell me your opinions about these three technologies: Which will be the category killer or the footnote in computing history? Which will change blogging more than the others?