I’ve been busy this week, so I haven’t thought much about a decent blog post. So for this week, I’ll just post a bit of stuff I have been doing.
Yesterday I updated my WordPress installation to the most recent release. Running the most recent software is important for security, and so I actually blocked access to my website until it was updated.
Since I have no FTP server (purposefully, since that means less things open to attack), I had to do a manual update. I was somewhat concerned about doing this, since on my test system doing an update had broken the installation. However, I realized the cause of the issue: file permissions! For security reasons, its nice not to have new files on a server readable by all users, but make sure your website files are readable by the webserver process, or it can’t display them.
Once I understood this issue, doing an update was as simple as following the instructions. Make sure you have a backup before doing an update. I prefered to manually remove each file and then copy in the new ones, all at my server’s command line. Another lesson: make sure you type all your commands correctly, so you don’t accidentally mess up your site.
Since I am using a modified version of the twentyfourteen theme at the moment, I used Kompare, a diff front-end, to merge the changes of my theme and the updated twentyfourteen theme.
Actually, doing an update was relatively painless. In the end, I get to enjoy a new version of WordPress. What does it look like? Exactly the same as the previous one. But there are a few nice additions, including a rescaling input box in the post editor, which is useful as I am writing these lines.
In other news, this post is also the first installment of TWIA! This Week In Aidan features the things I have been doing during the week, both here on AidanMontareDotNet, and elsewhere. TWIA will also provide an overview of the updated content on this site, so people who subscribe to my blog can see the work I have done elsewhere (as most of what I do makes more sense in a permanent page).