A review of different ways to Use WordPress at BloggingPro.
Tag WordPress
Return To Problogging
After a rather long break from active and regular blogging, I have decided to make a return to pro/network blogging. For Splashpress Media.
In the now almost 2 years that Splashpress Media has been active as a major online publisher in the about blogging area, the network has come a long way. At times the ride has been rather bumpy, but I am sure that Mark Saunders and his team have the potential to continue to grow their brand and portfolio, not to forget their influence in the blogosphere.
And what better can one do than try to help, be part of a potentially great network?
No matter what might have been.
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
Charles R. Swindoll, evangelical christian priest.
To resume: I am joining the team at Bloggingpro and will report on blogging software/platforms, plugins, tweaks and themes.
Reasons to Switch from WordPress to Chyrp
I could list many reasons why I have switched from WordPress to another platform, but the biggest annoyances were following:
Principal reasons.
The mix Automattic/WordPress confuses me. Although the whole wordpress.com platform, as marvelous as it is, totally falls within the GPL principles, I think a huge greyzone has grown around the business side of developing WordPress(.org). It is clear that every code change made to the WordPress(.org) change can directly be used by the Automattic team for their wordpress.com platform. Automattic themselves, maintain a stranglehold on the plugins and themes directory, with Matt Mullenweg actively demanding that everything is released under the GPL License.
WordPress has outgrown me.
WordPress is a solid platform and certainly has become very flexible and rather extensive. With a little of WordPress knowledge, you can build platforms as big and customized as you want. No limits are set, even not the sky. Suffice to visit All Things D to admire how customizable the platform is. All I want here is a blog.
iChyrp
I went ahead and deleted the WordPress installation and installed Chyrp. Note that this was a thing which had to happen, already last year I had a period I played here with MT, not to forget my several rants around the mentality, spirit of the closed garden that Automattic is.
I am looking forward to play around with Chyrp and prepare a new design, with more color than before, I might stick to my Cutline rotating header images tho. For now tho, I am happy that I am not on WordPress anymore.
Now I must play sleep.
Backup Your Database With An Automated Cron Job
With every update for WordPress everyone who actually bothers to read the readme or howto sees the warning/instruction
Step 1: Backup Database Tables and Files including .htaccess
…
Use phpMyAdmin or other appropriate tools provided by your webhost, to backup the database used by WordPress.
Luckily the WordPress codex points at phpMyAdmin for the database backup, because the WordPress export feature is officially useless as a backup tool.
There are several backup plugins for WP, but most don’t serve the optimal purpose.
As blogger you should not only backup your database when you upgrade but you should regularly back your data up. But honestly, who visits regularly the options to backup the database.
I known many website owners, or bloggers, who’d love to know how to regularly backup the database in order to avoid losing all their posts every time they screw up their Cpanel config.
Luckily the mysql backup process can easily be automated with a cron job.Since many bloggers have cPanel, here is a short howto automate your mysql database backup with a cron job in cPanel. Read more
It’s Time for Automattic to Return The WordPress Brand to The Community
In the midst of the whole sponsored theme vendetta, I insignificant blogger demand that Automattic returns the WordPress brand to the community. I might have preferred to think twice about writing that entry because it was a total clusterfrak but for other reasons. Two years later the WordPress Foundation is coming closer every day. Good old times at Wisdump.
About Chyrp, WordPress and Early Adopterism
Some weeks ago I wrote about the reasons behind my switch from WordPress to Chyrp, but I had forgotten one aspect, I had made a huge error. Chyrp nowhere is in a state ready for prime time and that doesn’t concern the platform, the code behind chyrp.
The error I made was to jump on the bandwagon based on the technical aspect of the platform and even a small, but rather active community. Most important factor though, the main developer behind the platform, was an element I didn’t analyze well enough before making my choice and decision for Chyrp.
As beautiful as Chyrp may be, its problem lays in how Alex Suraci rushes, or not, things.
Alex is a talented coder and has built an awesome platform, but sadly his ambitions are too personal and too little focused on Chyrp for the lightweight blogging platform to become really successful. Alex is ambitious and as a young developer, constantly learning and discovering new coding languages. This sadly to the inconvenience of the Chyrp community and adopters. Some details: a PHP5 is coming… and pending. So is a Ruby port.
The community forums have been changed to a new, non Chyrp related, and unmoderated location at toogeneric. All in all Chyrp is a nice platform, one I will continue to watch, but for now the uncertainties made me switch back to good ol’ WordPress.
I should have known better being a regular early adopter.