I got an email the other day saying my site was automatically updated to WordPress 4.3.2. How did that happen? I’m self-hosting this website, and I’d not logged in for a couple of months.
It turns out whenever your site requests a page, that is, someone visits your website, this page load will trigger a check for updates.
The update runs in the background via wp-cron. wpL_cron checks whether there are any scheduled events in the database. If yes it calls spawn_cron(), which starts another PHP process to do all the actual work.
Lots of processes in WordPress are handled by the cron system: scheduled post publishing, processing pings, update checks, etc.
The automatic update only happens when wordpress.org releases a new minor or security update. Otherwise (for a “major” release like WP 4.3 to 4.4) you must do the update manually by logging in to the back end.
WordPress – The Missing Manual, by Matthew MacDonald
A good post title clearly announces what you are going to discuss (p. 95)
Make sure your content is worth reading (p. 105) e.g. interesting or useful
Add new content regularly –“avoid stale content.” But an observation, what’s wrong with that? — posts are dated. Maybe it depends on the topic.
Keep your content organized. “A good blog is ruthlessly arranged using categories and tags,” since browsing through monthly archives or searching for keywords in a post are not that convenient.
And I appreciate how post and page’s “featured image” feature makes it really easy to provide an image for each page or post, but can I make the “featured image” float right near the top of the post text, rather than sitting above the post or page title?
I am far enough along in my WordPress training that I decided it was time to come up with SOME backup solution. Reading through the section of my WordPress book, Backing Up a WordPress Site, I found that, as with Joomla, backup isn’t built in. Instead your main choices are:
choosing an automated backup service such as VaultPress or BackupBuddy for a monthly fee;
backing up with a free plug-in such as Online Backup for WordPress;
or manually: backing up your files over FTP and backing up your database via an SQL dump from PhpMyAdmin.
Note, I see I’m taking a long time in getting around to why I chose Akeeba Backup for WordPress, but from reading so far you have gotten an idea of how I have been researching extensions for Joomla and now, WordPress.
Anyway, I settled on BackUpWordPress as being very popular and free, installed it, looked it over, and found that you RESTORE your website from backup via FTP and PhpMyAdmin. It seems the only benefit to this tool is it facilitates MAKING the backup. Restoration requires about the same steps as restoring a manually made backup, as described above. Are you kidding me?
I went over to the Akeeba Backup for WordPress website and downloaded and installed the plugin. It looks like as with Akeeba for Joomla, there’s a Pro paid and Core free version. I got the free version for now, installed it and was happy to see its familiar user interface at my WordPress dashboard (see this post’s featured image above, and the “manage backups” image below).
Akeeba Backup for WordPress – Manage Backups
The video tutorial showed me that websites are restored or moved using the familiar (to Joomla users) kickstart.php process:
Make a new database if necessary
Upload kickstart.php and the Akeeba archive file to the website’s home directory
Run myWebSite.com/kickstart.php and follow the instructions to restore the website.
I don’t know why Akeeba Backup for Joomla is not listed in the WordPress plugins website, but once it’s there I predict it will become one of WordPress’ most popular plugins.
What’s your favorite backup solution for WordPress?
“###” that is. The formatting shortcuts are a new feature of WordPress 4.3.
Starting a bullet list with “*”
Asterisk that is, followed by space then a character
To get out of the list, hit two newlines
Here comes a numbered list:
Item one
Start it with digit followed by )
“1)” that is
End of my list.
Note, to get the link to open in a new window, I don’t see the option in the add link menu. I added “target=’_blank'” in “text” mode.
Dino the bike horn dinosaur
Since every post should have an image, I’ll provide a copy of my “sites icon” here. Sites icon is a feature that came along in WP 4.3.
By the way, how to center the caption? It looks like I’ll have to modify the theme’s CSS, to style figcaption or class=”wp-caption-text” to have style text-align: center. Maybe when we get to child themes? I’ve tagged this post with “learn” to indicate something TO learn. Maybe I can have an additional tag “learned” to indicate posts demonstrating things I’ve learned.
Paragraph Breaks vs. Newlines
Enter/newline starts a new paragraph
Shift-Enter gives you line breaks
Pendergast Ave.
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 255-3767
Yup, one less reason to go to HTML view. Does shift-enter work in JCE as well?
Spell Checking
Use Firefox: turn it on here: options > advanced > general > check my spelling as I tyyyype. (It took looking in options again to start checking.)
In his 2011 book, Joomla! 1.6: A User’s Guide – Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website, Barrie North describes “what is a blog?” Here is my summary of his topic:
What IS a blog?
* communication medium: typically frequent brief posts about a particular subject
* unique communication style: honest first-person voice
frequent posting: daily? weekly?
* usually posts are brief, only introductory text is shown on the main page, along with a “read more link
* make regular posts to build a loyal readership that will have consistent expectations about your blog content
Carol’s comment: who has time to regularly read anyone’s blog? Even as much as I value Jacob Nielsen’s “Alert Box,” I only visit when I have time to read, and first I search through his recent topic lists to choose what to read. Or I read someone’s blog post when it turns up in Google search results.
Which platform? Barrie says pick one that’s extensible to other types of web pages. In 2011, when Barrie North published his book, WordPress was (probably?) not so extensible. Hence Joomla was the choice. Now (in 2015) WordPress has evolved into a more general website platform.
In his 2011 book, Joomla! 1.6: A User’s Guide – Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website, Barrie North describes the features needed on a blog site. I looked at each feature to see how it was implemented on THIS site, my 2015 WordPress practice website.
Flexible layout: defined by your WordPress Theme – make yours stand out a little
— Theme Twenty Fifteen is active, I chose the customize tab to set colors, header image, and choose latest posts for my front page.
Browser-based editing:
— From dashboard -> Posts
Automated publishing: instead of FTP, click a button
— yes, click the Update or Publish button to update or publish my post
Categories: split your post into categories that will make them easier to find
— From the right-hand side of editing a post, add a category for your blog post and assign your post to this category. I created a category “Blogging” and assigned my post to it.
— where do “Tags” fit in? I created a tag “Blogging” and assigned it to my post.
Search Engine Optimized URL’s: have a URL that includes keywords about your post
— I see that my post’s URL automatically ends with my post’s title words dash-separated
Comment systems: the number one way your site becomes “sticky”
— “Leave a Reply” is turned on by default
— why do I care about the commentor’s website?
— How to moderate comments? It looks like comments await moderation by default.
My WP practice site’s home page. I right-aligned this automatically captioned image by changing “align” from “alignnone” to “alignright”
Syndication Feeds: Push your post onto other RSS readers, have your posts appear automatically on someone else’s website
— by default there’a an “Entries RSS” in my blog’s “META” menu. Clicking on it leads to a page “Subscribe to this feed using ‘Live Bookmarks.’ ” It created a link within my browser bookmarks. Looks nice: gives website title, subtitle, linked titles to each blog post, date of post and the post itself.
— actually, the bookmark turns into a folder of links to posts. I’d rather use the feed URL, which is http://wp.elizapro.com/feed/
Email notification: Notify a mailing list when you’ve added a post, for marketing purposes
— How?
Search: your blog archive will soon be bursting. Provide a search capability to help site visitors find your blog posts; note some people prefer to browse
— I see the search box is built in
TrackBack:
TrackBacks are complex, but the bottom line is that you read a post, and you comment about it on your blog. You place the URL to the post in yours, and the blog picks up your post and leaves it as a comment in the other’s post.
Learning about TrackBacks: Barrie North writes: TrackBacks are complex, but the bottom line is that you read a post, and you comment about it on your blog. You place the URL to the post in yours, and the blog picks up your post and leaves it as a comment in the other’s post.
Let’s practice. I believe this blog post constitutes a comment about another’s blog post.
As written by Chris Daft at http://riversonicsolutions.com/blog.html:
Adam B. Levine points out that Uber is an analog of Napster. Centralized services become targets for legal challenges. Decentralized services “test a higher level of regulatory resistance.”
The specific blog post is here: http://riversonicsolutions.tumblr.com/post/123471804693/decentralizing-applications
I’d agree with this automatic commenting in another’s post, if the “other” could moderate such comments before they appeared.
Uneventful flight. Beautiful weather: high’s low 70’s, partly cloudy skies. Pontoon boat ride and lunch with Berni and Michael yesterday. Got photos on iPhone but laptop gets stuck uploading them. Learned some common plants in bloom now by visiting UW Arboretum briefly with June on bike ride and meeting a volunteer collecting seeds.
