Robert@PNG

I reckon is a bit like owning a British motorcycle (well, one of the older models anyway)! Going under the hood to tinker is driven firstly by the inherent need for maintenance but also driven by the passion that goes along with “riding” either one of these machines.

The “fiddly” nature of a self hosted Wordpress site is its greatest asset but can also become a ball breaker for the uninitiated. For those that are looking for total flexibility in what they want out of a blog then the self hosted approach is the way to go. Those that just want a blog so that they can get on with the business of writing and not have to ever go under the hood then a hosted blog, whether Wordpress or any of the others available, is probably a better choice.

(After today, I’m going to stop posting about blogging, Wordpress and widgets. And refocus on what this blog is about… Papua New Guinea). Famous last words!

The last 24 hours have been absolutely mad!

These are the sequence of events that have taken place since yesterday after reading the following story my newsreader by Matt from the Wordpress Development Team:

I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.

1. I make an instant decision that I’ve been spending enough time with my blog lately and will hold of upgrading to WP 2.6.
2. But… why not print out the upgrade notes for some “light” reading in the evening! Done.
3. After dinner, read upgrade notes and start going through the upgrade steps in my mind.
4. A little more reading and a plan is born!
5. By 10:00pm - my decision to hold of with the upgrade goes out the window and I sit down at my laptop, make a connection to the net and start getting that tingling feeling inside. One the one hand nervous - as one is befoe any upgrade yet excited at the prospect of being able to use some of the new features of WP 2.6.
6. At 10:01pm - I download the Maintenance Plugin for Wordpress and enabled it - which basically puts the blog site in maintenance mode.
7. Did the mandatory backups of data and other Wordpress files - heaven forbid having to do a restore!
8. Deactivated all plugins! (30 odd).
9. Via Bluehost (Hosting Company) ran the WP 2.6 upgrade using the SimpleScripts add-on service.
10. 10:30pm - upgrade complete!
11. Better check the blog… still there!!
12. Started turning on the plugins one by one - double checking settings and functionality. All seems to be progressing well!!
13. The Admin Bar plugin seemed to cause some issues and I have since turned it of.
14. I took advantage of the down time and re-installed Wordpress.com Stats after turning it off a week or so ago. All my stats are now being collected via Wordpress.com Stats and also Google Analytics. I played around with Statpress and a plugin from Tantan but have since ditched these due to reliability issues.
15. And finally by 11:15pm - I turned Maintenance mode of and blog was back on the air!!

In addition, since yesterday I have resolved the following issues:

• The TinyMCE Advanced plugin is now working “hunky dory” under WP 2.6 after WP resolved quite a few bugs in the underlying code for their TinyMCE editor.
• Occasionally I use ScribeFire (a Firefox extension) for offline blogging. On initial testing it failed to connect to my site and after a little fiddling under the hood I found some .htaccess directives causing this issue. Fixed!
• Enabled the new WP 2.6 bookmarking feature.
• And to top it all of… I have configured and turned on Google Gears which is now supported under the latest version of WP!! The turning of Gears has essentially doubled the performance when using the WP Administration facilities due to its caching features.
• A few plugin developers must have found some bugs with their code and released upgrades to their plugins within a day of the release of WP 2.6. These I have also been installed.

That’s about it - but before I go I just want to share with other WP bloggers - pondering whether to upgrade or not - my “under the hood” setup:

1. Laptop running Ubuntu 7.04 with Firefox (latest V2) over a piddly dialup.
2. My hosting company is Bluehost.
3. Used the SimpleScripts service provided by Bluehost to do the upgrade (Is that cheating?)
4. WP Theme: 3 column K2 RC6 (latest build) with my own style but no mods to K2 templates.
5. A grand total of 31 widgets.
6. Plugins? Thought you’d never ask! See below….

Plugin Stats…
There are 83 plugins used: 67 active plugins and 16 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins…

  AddQuicktag
» Roel Meurders and Frank Bueltge (url)
Allows you to easily add custom Quicktags to the editor. You can also export and import your Quicktags.

  Admin Management Xtended
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
WordPress 2.5+ only. Extends admin functionalities by introducing: toggling post/page visibility inline, changing page order with drag’n'drop, inline category management, inline tag management, changing publication date inline, changing post slug inline, toggling comment status open/closed, hide draft posts, change media order, change media description inline, toggling link visibility, changing link categories

  Akismet
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  AsideShop
» Raimonds Kalnins (url)
A WordPress plugin which allows you to create templates for your asides posts. Instantly.

  Bad Behavior
» Michael Hampton (url)
Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.

  Better Blogroll
» Jon Dyer (url)
Pulls a configurable number of links and their categories from the WordPress 2.3 Link Manager and gives you more control of your blogroll.

  Better Howdy
» Matt Martz (url)
Remove ‘Howdy’ and restructure the ‘Howdy’ line. Props to Ozh for No Howdy.

  Bluetrait Event Viewer
» Michael Dale (url)
BTEV monitors events that occur in your WordPress install.

  Broken Link Checker
» Janis Elsts (url)
Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.

  Category Icons
» Brahim Machkouri (url)
Assign icons to your categories easily.

  Comment Analysis
» Mark Styles (url)
Various functions for analyzing comments

  Contact Form 7
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

  CoppermineSC
» Brad Guilford (url)
Include images from Coppermine Galleries in WordPress entries. Based on original script by Lennart Groetzbach that was enhanced and adapted as a plugin by Matthias Jell.

  Dashboard Widget Manager
» Viper007Bond (url)
Greatly enhances your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard by allowing widget re-ordering and storage of preferences on a per-user basis.

  Different Posts Per Page
» MaxBlogPress (url)
Show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page. Adjust your settings here.

  Drain Hole
» John Godley (url)
A download management and monitoring plugin with statistics and file protection

  Drop Caps
» Thomas Milburn (url)
My first plugin used to generate the code for drop caps.

  Excerpt Editor
» Andrew Ozz (url)
Add or edit excerpts for Posts and Pages.

  Exclude Pages from Navigation
» Simon Wheatley (url)
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.

  FD Feedburner Plugin
» John Watson (url)
Redirects all feeds to a Feedburner feed

  GeneralStats
» Bernhard Riedl (url)
Counts the number of users, categories, posts, comments, pages, links, tags, link-categories, words in posts, words in comments and words in pages.

  Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page

  Improved Include Page
» Vito Tardia (url)
This plugin is an improved version on the Include Page plugin by Brent Loertscher (http://beetle.cbtlsl.com/categories/include_page). It adds an iinclude_page() function that allows you to include the contents of a static page in a template with several options. It also adds a shortcode allowing you to include the same page into a post or static page.

  Insights
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Insights allows you to quickly access and insert information (links, images, videos, maps..) into your blog posts.

  K2 Date Stamp
» Steve Lam (url)
Displays the post/comment dates in stamp fashion.

  KB Advanced RSS Widget
» Adam R. Brown (url)
Gives user complete control over how feeds are displayed.

  Maintenance Mode
» Michael Woehrer (url)
Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options → Maintenance Mode to get started.

  NoFollow Free
» Michele Marcucci (url)
Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget.

  Nofollow Reciprocity
» Lazar Kovacevic (url)
Searches for links to large sites using ‘nofollow’ tags for external links, and puts the same tag on links to those sites (Wikipedia.org, StumbleUpon.com, and similar) Added top 1000 sites from Quantcast.com. This plugin is based on Wikipedia nofollow and Identify External Links.

  No Self Pings
» Michael D. Adams (url)
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

  Ozh' Admin Drop Down Menu
» Ozh (url)
Replaces admin menus with a CSS dropdown menu bar. Saves lots of clicks and page loads! For WordPress 2.5+

  Page Links To
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.

  Platinum SEO Pack
» Rajesh - Techblissonline Dot Com (url)
Complete SEO solution for your Wordpress blog.

  Plugin Central
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Wordpress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins.

  Popular Posts
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of the most popular posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Post-Plugin Library
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

  Random Posts
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of randomly selected posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Recent Comments
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of the most recent comments. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Redirection
» John Godley (url)
A redirection manager

  RSS Footer
» Joost de Valk (url)
Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.

  Running Time
» Andrew Hamilton (url)
Outputs the date of the oldest post and/or the newest post. Also will output how long the your site has been running for based on the first post date or a specified start date.

  Samsarin PHP Widget
» Chris Pettitt (url)
A text widget with support for including PHP.

  Search Unleashed
» John Godley (url)
Advanced search engine that provides full text searching across posts, pages, comments, titles, and URLs. Searches take into account any data added by other plugins, and all search results are contextually highlighted. You can also highlight incoming searches from popular search engines.

  SEO Friendly Images
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.

  Similar Posts
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Don’t be disturbed if it takes a few moments to complete the installation — the plugin is indexing your posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Simple Image Link
» BlogWell (url)
A simple way to add an image with a link to your sidebar

  Simple Tags
» Amaury BALMER (url)
Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags !

  Simply Exclude
» Paul Menard (url)
Provides an interface to selectively exclude/include categories, tags and page from the 4 actions used by WordPress. is_front, is_archive, is_search, is_feed.

  Sociable
» Joost de Valk (url)
Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites. Go to Settings -> Sociable for setup.

  Subscribe2
» Matthew Robinson (url)
Notifies an email list when new entries are posted.

  Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

  Thank Me Later
» Brendon Boshell (url)
Sends a customizable “thank you” message after (a few hours, few days, weeks) a comment has been posted. This acts a reminder of your blog and can bring “one-time” readers back

  TinyMCE Advanced
» Andrew Ozz (url)
Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE.

  Tippy
» Chris Roberts (url)
Simple plugin to display tooltips within your WordPress blog.

  What Others Are Saying
» SarahG (url)
Use the RSS field in your Blogroll and display the most recent post from sites that you link to.

  WordPress.com Popular Posts
» Frasten (url)
Shows the most popular posts, using data collected by WordPress.com stats plugin.

  WordPress.com Stats
» Andy Skelton (url)
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.

  Wordpress.com Stats Helper
» Vlad Bailescu (url)
This plugin helps you extract data from wordpress.com stats and use it across your blog.

  Wordpress Gravatars
» Rune Gulbrandsøy (url)
Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section. Uses the comment authors email to display their Gravatar. It also gives the user an Author Profile picture, based on his or hers Gravatar. Developer blog at this site.

  WP-Cumulus
» Roy Tanck (url)
Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress

  WP-DBManager
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

  WP-dTree
» Ulf Benjaminsson (url)
A fork of Christopher Hwang’s WP-dTree, improving performance and adding useful features.

  WP-PageNavi
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

  WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP Greet Box
» Thaya Kareeson (url)
Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

  WP Security Scan
» Michael Torbert (url)
Perform security scan of WordPress installation.

  WP Super Cache
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching module for WordPress. Once activated, you must enable the cache. Based on WP-Cache by Ricardo Galli Granada.