Released this week WordPress 3.2 is another step forward in usability, functionality and speed for the worlds most popular open source publishing platform

Before upgrading you may want to use the WordPress Requirements Plugin as 3.2 changes the minimum requirements for both PHP and MySQL. WordPress 3.2 will require PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0

It’s also worth noting that support for some older browsers has also been dropped. If using any modern analytics package you should easily be able to see the browser versions you visitors are using to see how much of an effect this may have for your site. In Google Analytics From the Visitors menu select Browsers and then you can click on each browser listed to see the version number visitors are using like this:

Google Analytics Browser Versions Report

In WordPress 3.2 the browser’s no longer supported include Internet Explorer 6 which is still used widely around the world. To encourage people to keep their browser up to date WordPress also have their Browse Happy campaign:

WordPress Browse Happy Campaign

WordPress 3.1 has been released today and this great infographic has been released for free download from wpmu.org:

I was recently asked about my small collection of social badges on the top of my blog in the sidebar. These are created by the excellent WordPress plugin SocialGrid:

The question related to how to get a similar grid for blogs which are hosted on WordPress.com. Although essentially the same software, as I host my own WordPress blog, I can add plugins like SocialGrid but on a WordPress.com hosted blog you can not install plugins. You only have the options of the widgets available. You can add your own code to a widget via the basic but very flexible ‘Text Widget’ although it will not allow javascript which many of the social sites use to create collections of badges. However it does allow you to write your own HTML code (the language of web pages) so I thought I would have a go at recreating my SocialGrid style badges in a HTML table for WordPress.com even using the same great social media icons which are freely available (feel free to leave them a donation).

I have a few WordPress.com sites but used this one I set up for some WordPress.com training courses put on by OutserveWeb the web training company I work for. The end result looked like this and I have put the code below if it helps anyone.

Change the links and the image urls of course and copy the code into the text widget and drag to your sidebar, images can be uploaded directly through the Media options in your WordPress.com blog. It should be relatively easy to change the grid from 2 x 4 or use other or different size icons.

Html code:

<table> 
<tbody> 
<tr> 
<td><a href="http://twitter.com/outserveweb"> 
<img class="aligncenter size-full" title="twitter" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/twitter_32.png" 
alt="twitter" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://facebook.com/outserveweb">
<img class="aligncenter size-full" title="facebook" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/facebook_32.png" 
alt="" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/company/outserve-limited">
<img class="aligncenter size-full" title="linkedin" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/linkedin_32.png" 
alt="linkedin icon" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/outserveweb">
<img class="aligncenter size-full" title="Youtube icon" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/youtube_32.png" 
alt="Youtube" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
</tr> 
<tr> 
<td><a href="http://www.delicious.com/philoakley">
<img class="alignnone size-full" title="delicious" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/delicious_32.png"
 alt="delicious" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oakleyfamily">
<img class="alignnone size-full" title="flickr" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/flickr_32.png" 
alt="flickr" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/philip.oakley">
<img src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/google_32.png" 
alt="google icon" title="google icon" width="32" height="32" 
class="size-full" /></a></td> 
<td><a href="http://outtraining.wordpress.com">
<img class="alignnone size-full" title="friend" 
src="http://outtraining.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/rss_32.png" 
alt="rss icon" width="32" height="32" /></a></td> 
</tr> 
</tbody> 
</table>

I have had a many WordPress blogs over the years installed on shared hosting and have had little problem installing and managing them. I used a great auto upgrade plugin before automatic upgrades came to WordPress in version 2.7 (I think). But even with automatic upgrading of versions and plugins, having many blogs, it still took some manageing to make sure all my blogs were up-to-date and secure. So I planned for the what I saw as the Holy Grail of a WordPressMU (now Multisite option) install on a virtual server to combine all (or at least most) of the blogs I manage onto one server therefore one time upgrade of versions and plugins.

For reasons better none to me at the time and partially explained on this post I started from LAMP configured Ubuntu 10.04 server install (my server of choice). After some initial issues problems were solved the WordPress 3.0 with Multi Site install, with the domain mapping plugin appeared to be all configured correctly. Not till slightly later did I find that I could not upgrade the plugins automatically (one of the prime reason for having the WordPressMU configuration). The error message I got was as below but basically it appeared that there was an access/permission issue.

Enabling Maintenance mode…
Updating Plugin Akismet (1/1)

Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/akismet.2.4.0.zip…
Unpacking the update…
Installing the latest version…
Removing the old version of the plugin…
Plugin upgrade failed.

An error occured while updating Akismet: Could not remove the old plugin..

After much googling I was still left scratching my head, although there were many forum posts on a similar subject they, for the most part, would go the same way:

1. WP user complains of not being able to upgrade plugins
2. Many other WP users chime in with similar issues
3. A helpful soul says its not a problem just set every file and folder (and the kitchen sink) to have permissions of 777 (read, write and execute access for everybody and his passing dog)
4. Then a very sensible WP user advises this is incredibly fool-hardy and insecure and you should never do this
5. Finally the forum posts end without any real answer

I did temporarily set all folders to 777 to see if this would solve the problem and it had no effect for me what so ever. What did initially appear to be the issue was that my virtual server did not have FTP access as nearly all shared hosting has. But by following this very useful blog post from LornaJane I knew this was not the issue and completely agreed that I did not want to have an FTP server (another vulnerability) if I did not need to.

I was getting closer to my answer in the post and comments from LornaJane with the command to make the apache user be able write to the WordPress directory as follows:

chown -R apache:apache

But wait, as the my default Ubuntu server does not use the user/group apache but instead uses www-data the command I finally used via ssh on my remote server was:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

And as if by magic my auto upgrades worked. Hopefully this may help someone else as well.

I recently installed WordPressMU on a virtual server and had problem with the permalinks. Much Google searching followed with little success at first but after some persistence I found the answers I needed.

I will try and write this up for three reasons:

1. So hopefully it could benefit someone else with the same problem
2. To try and better understand it myself
3. I will no doubt forget for next time and need to refer back.

The bulk of this post is taken from a fantastic post on the Drupal site (http://drupal.org/node/332318). Although I had done lots of Google searches I struggled to find the answer for quite some time until I hit the post above. I think this is because the key to finding the right answer for a problem is finding someone with the same set-up. Saying this I found the solution to my WordPress problem on Drupal site although the issue was with a common problem area of ‘mod_rewrite’ on the Apache web server and in particular the Apache server running on Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a different way of storing apache settings (e.g it has a blank htppd.conf and uses apache2.conf) and holds modules in an ‘enabled’ folder not in the main settings file. This may well be better way than the ‘other’ ways but it can mean that a lot of the mod_rewrite ‘solutions’ on Google are not relevant if they are not specifically for Ubuntu.

Just quickly for this project my setup was:

Virtual Server Provider: VPS.net

Base install: Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) x64 LAMP*

WordPress 3.0 (with Multisite enabled)

* This was a preconfigured Ubuntu server with LAMP already instated and my experience may have been different if I had taken a clean Ubuntu install and installed LAMP myself. VPS.net do a offer a fully preconfigured WordPress server in Ubuntu which I am sure would have not had these issues but I wanted to install WordPressMU and this requires the install to be on the www root (VPS.net install it on a folder called WordPress) and the latest version. In my way of thinking I would prefer to install from scratch on a clean webserver than upgrading/moving an existing install – OK I like to learn the hardway.

Anyway the solution to my problem:

1. First we need to check if the rewrite module is installed. I was connected to my VPS server via SSH but either in a Terminal or via SSH type (or copy from below):

[[code]]czoxNzpcIg0KYXBhY2hlMmN0bCAtTQ0KXCI7e1smKiZdfQ==[[/code]]

This should show a list of Apache modules. Rewrite_Module should be there (as it is a default in Ubuntu 10.04) but if not check with your FTP client or in your file browser that /etc/apache2/mods-available contains a file called rewrite.load. If it does not then you need to fix this before you can carry on.

Presuming it does exist then we need to create a symlink (Symbloic Link on Wikipedia) between mods-enabled to mods-available. Again in the Terminal/SSH type or copy:

[[code]]czo3NTpcIg0KY2QgL2V0Yy9hcGFjaGUyL21vZHMtZW5hYmxlZA0Kc3VkbyBsbiAtcyAuLi9tb2RzLWF2YWlsYWJsZS9yZXdyaXRlLmx7WyYqJl19b2FkDQpcIjt7WyYqJl19[[/code]]

2. Now we need to check that rewrite module rewrite.load is in the mods enabled folder (/etc/apache2/mods-enabled). The easiest way is to have a look at that folder with your FTP client or file browser.

3. Presuming you are still OK then then the final and very important stage is to ‘Enable AllowOverride All’

In the folder /etc/apache2/sites-enabled you should find a file called 000-default and you need to check that all permissions are set to read & write not just read only, easily done with an FTP client (right click file>File Permissions in Filezilla)

In 000-default it will probably say AllowOverride None in several places. Find the one for where you’ve installed WordPress , and change it to AllowOverride All. e.g if WordPress is installed at var/www/????? then it may be under the Directory “/var/www” grouping.

Finally, dont forget to restart Apache from the terminal:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

(now corrected see Keith’s comment)

if you don’t restart none of the changes will take affect

That worked for me and hopefully will work for somebody else. A big thanks to the Drupal site for the post but I thought it was worth regurgitating for WordPress users as I am sure it could affect a few.

I have read quite a few books from PacktPub as they have range of books on Open Source Content Management Systems a subject I am very passionate about. The also have many books on other technologies including many on open source software. I use WordPress at work for clients and for my own personal blogs so was very interested when asked to review a new WordPress book from PacktPub ‘WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook‘.

I will be reading the book over the next couple of weeks and trying some of the advise in the book on my own blogs. I will post the full review on my blog once completed