Warren Shea - World of Warren

Archive for the ‘worldofwarren.com’ Category

Hiatus….OVER!

Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 6:35 pm

What can I say, my hiatus lasted a little over 24 hours. :/

I sent my request to my hosting company to move to new, upgraded hosting at around 11PM.
By 1AM, my new hosting had already been created/completed: Free of charge.

By 3AM, I moved the content of
horderockcafe.com
warrenshea.com
seasaltfishandchips.com
to my new hosting.

By 3AM, I was trying to restore my 21MB WordPress SQL backup file, when the Import of the new DB was at a 2MB max. WTF.
I found a PHP script that took the SQL file, and pending correct database information, would run the SQL commands though the PHP. Effectively, rather than myPHPAdmin or whatever importing the contents of the .SQL file, it was basically a PHP script running the .SQL commands, effectively restoring the database. I ran into some minor but easily remedied trouble…but I’ve only been working on the site for like, 30m-1hour, and as you can see, by 7PM I have my backups restored.

I’m currently just archiving my content, SQL databases, etc…

My goal tonight is to install WordPress onto my new PHP5 server, for my new domain. Also, to make sure everything is running okay. If this blog works…my hopes are high.

All together, the migration seems pretty damn painless.
Now seems to be a good time to promote my hosting: IX Web Hosting. I’ve been with them since March 2007…so almost 5 years. They’ve been fantastic….no problems on my end. This was another example of a simply fantastic job.

So I’m back. Already.

Off to continue working on stuff….see you soon! :D

Posted in All Posts, Development, warrenshea.com, worldofwarren.com | 1 Comment »

Hiatus

Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 5:44 pm

I’ve decided to go on an undetermined blog hiatus. The reasoning is actually really simple though…it’s not due to content but more of a technical restriction.

When I signed up for hosting on this account, a few years, my hosting company had just started supporting ASP.NET 3.5 and hadn’t reached PHP 5 (I don’t think it was even out yet). Years later, and WordPress now requires PHP 5. And ASP.NET has moved to 4.0….but I’m still on a server that doesn’t support these things.

I haven’t been updating my WordPress on worldofwarren.com for a while now, because of this. It hasn’t been a big problem, with the exception of being unable to use a PHP 5 function here and there.

But as I have a new domain now, and I’ve decided to put WordPress on it….(and use WordPress properly this time), I gave the install a try last night and it failed. Rather than put an old WordPress on, I figure now is a good time for an upgrade.

I’ve been avoiding an upgrade for a while for many reasons:

1. I don’t want to back up my stuff, and find out that (for some reason), I cannot restore it properly.
2. It’s quite possible I go on a shared server cluster [not sure if that’s correct terminology] that sucks. Like, it’s not dedicated, it’s shared hosting. What if I go on a server cluster that uses crazy resources? What if the only reason my stuff is so stable is because no one is on this legacy hardware anymore? One bad apple can ruin it for everyone. One bad developer, infinite looping and sh!t can ruin it. I know when some of my friends went on my hosting provider, they had completely different experiences than I. Just the same, when I tried different hosting, they weren’t any good [despite recommendations for my friends]. Anyways, I’ve decided to take the chance. In worst case scenario, maybe I can just ask to get transferred somewhere else.

So anyways, I’ve decided abruptly that I’ll take a blogging break, backup all my databases and code, and do a migration. Now is a good time as my day job is getting busy and having one less distraction or priority will be a nice break. I figure I’ll back everything up…and slowly work on warrenshea.com offline if I get the itch to do something. I don’t know how long it will take….but I’ll blog again once it’s finished. Hopefully I’ll be on an equally stable server :)

This may be a good chance to get my local environments working correctly….hmmm. Anyways.

I’ll talk to you all on the other side. Don’t miss me too much. :)

Posted in All Posts, Daily Randomness, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

Google’s new top black bar

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 at 7:18 pm

As Google+ has been released, at least in closed beta, I notice they’re generally doing design upgrades to Google products. Good for them…sorta. See, as much as I think Google might be TOO simple…I really hate the new top black bar they have. They have a clean, white, simplistic design…it goes well with theme-less browser colors. But this black bar, it appears between the browser and the page…and it’s just…argh, I hate it.

I’m hoping the backlash causes them to revert back….but if they don’t, I should update my GMAIL theme(s) to follow suit. It’s an easy change, and I want to/could implement it now…..but I’m hoping Google gets smart and changes it back.

Anyways…I was supposed to spend all day working on warrenshea.com…but I haven’t done anything :/ I spent almost an entire hour re-doing my Gmail labels. What can I say, I like to be organized.
Hopefully, I’ll be productive tonight. African Lion Safari tomorrow!

Posted in Daily Randomness, Design & Art, GMail, Web Design | 1 Comment »

F. U., WordPress 3.1.2

Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 10:52 pm

I upgraded my WordPress to 3.1.2 last night….my website was okay, and my WordPress seemed okay.

Since everything was okay, I decided to move my warrenshea.com site to worldofwarren.com. In theory, it should have been a smooth transition. It wasn’t. While my worldofwarren.com site rendered flawlessly (connecting to the database fine, etc), I couldn’t get back in to WordPress. I thought something broke when I migrated it over. I attempted to log in to my warrenshea.com WordPress, still on my domain. It didn’t work. I thought I crossed the wires somewhere…so I was trying hard to find out where.

I spent 8 hours today trying to figure out why I couldn’t log in (on either domain) to WordPress. I tried reinstalling WordPress…on BOTH domains and it wouldn’t work. I installed WordPress on a fresh, clean domain. AND IT DIDN’T WORK. WTF. I was getting pretty scared now, worried I might have to transfer all my table stuff over…but WTH, even fresh installs aren’t working. Could it be something on the server? I had even created brand new folders to put my stuff in….New folder + Fresh WP 3.1.2 didn’t work…seriously, WTF.

Anyways….I spent so much time looking at the domain problems because I thought it was all the migration. And after 8 hours, I found out it wasn’t. It was WordPress 3.1.2. Desperate, I decided to try WordPress 3.0.6 and viola, it worked instantly, perfectly, and as intended.

While I do believe the migration had been part of the problem, it seems WordPress 3.1.2 was the real culprit.

Man…I couldn’t log in no matter what I did. My login URL would simply redirect back to the login screen with a querystring of &reauth=1 added on the end. It was brutally annoying. Anyways…yeah, again, reverted back to 3.0.6 and there were no problems.

I think I’ll stick with 3.0.6 for a bit….I’m a bit afraid to upgrade now.

Note: With my PHP Proxy, I modified my warrenshea.com/?feed=rss2 so that everyone’s RSS feed did NOT break. Basically, if the ?feed=rss2 querystring exists, then it does a check on worldofwarren.com/?feed=rss2 and retrieves the XML results and outputs them. Hopefully it makes things seamless to those who link to my blog :)

Posted in All Posts, Site Updates, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

Site Updates – Secondary content boxes + WP 3.1.2 + GMAIL Theme

Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 1:41 am

Apologies for repeated content…it’s better centralized in this post than the last

Secondary content boxes
Created a PHP Proxy to retrieve Cross-Domain XMLs (RSS Feeds).
Modified the AJAX Request to correctly retrieve various feeds.
With the help of my co-worker, implemented concurrent the AJAX Blog requests.
Boxes only show (with a jQuery fadein) when all the contents of that box have loaded.

Result: Rather than have WordPress load the RSS and have the site load and compile via PHP and render the HTML all at once, now the site will load first, and retrieve the RSS after/during load.

Upgraded to WP3.1.2
Haven’t updated my WordPress in a while…because when I do, I have to make code changes to the files WP changes.
With my recent blog changes, it actually eliminates much of the changes I have to do…updating WP is twice as easy.

GMAIL Theme
Google has changed the top of their page, as well as GMAIL’s top. I modified my site to mimic it. Nothing too fancy. Hover over the top links to see…

Timeout
I think I solved the timeout issue. Also, I know why I never got it…the issue was related. Anyways…let’s see how it goes but hopefully, it’s gone!
(this is like, my 5th time saying that…but maybe it’ll be true this time!)

Posts
I’ve been removing some of my…questionable posts. Well, just “Drafting” them. You will see why in a few weeks or months…

Posted in All Posts, GMail, Site Updates, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »