On Website Fun

I have no idea what someone visiting my website this afternoon might have seen.

I needed to upgrade WordPress. When WordPress 2.8 dropped, I uploaded the files, and found my Dashboard (that’s the admin panels I see when I blog) completely trashed. WordPress 2.8, in its initial release, was a total freaking memory hog, and it required more memory than my server was willing to give it.

I bit a bullet. I downgraded back to 2.7.2, and I decided I could wait until the clear problems with WordPress’ memory bloat — and let’s be blunt, it is memory bloat — were sorted.

2.8.1 came and went. So did 2.8.2 and 2.8.3. And then 2.8.4 came out, and it was absolutely urgent, hair on fire urgent for anyone on a previous version of WordPress to upgrade. Security flaw of some sort.

But was the memory issue dealt with? I had no idea. I couldn’t find out.

So I waited. I searched hither and thither on the ‘net. I couldn’t find an answer. Mostly because the problem of memory bloat wasn’t seen as a problem — a solution was offered, but it wasn’t a solution, per se. It was a workaround. (Allocate more memory to WordPress. That’s not a solution.)

Finally, I said, I’m going to upgrade. I knew that 2.8.x worked on my server, even if the Dashboard was fucked. And then I could ask my host to increase my memory allocation. That seemed like a plan.

I deactivated my plugins. I turned WordPress back over to that wonderfully awful WordPress design, Kubrick. I hate Kubrick. It’s worse than Moveable Type’s default style, Vicksburg.

Of course, it take for-fucking-ever to upload WordPress core files. And my server decided to disallow an FTP connection about midway through. Joy.

Files were uploaded, I logged into WordPress and upgraded my database, and…

I had to restart Opera. It refused to let me enter the admin areas; instead, it kept showing me a cached “You must upgrade your database” screen.

Not a big deal. I love Opera. 🙂

Except for when Opera fucks up e-mail synchronization. That’s frustrating as hell. Especially because it didn’t use to do that.

In any case…

Much to my surprise, WordPress ran in 16 megabytes. The dashboard wasn’t fucked. I could access everything.

I’m trying out a new theme, Brian Gardner’s Core Blog Theme. It’s pretty plain, but it’s good for a change.

The grungy theme I had for a few weeks? Yeah, it didn’t do it for me. That happens.

I’m upgraded, and things don’t appear to be broken.

That’s a good thing. 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

One thought on “On Website Fun

  1. I see you’re using SP’s Core theme……did you modify/customize it…..like the footer…..i can’t get the title to read anything other than CORE even after changing settings and wordpress dashboard page has new name….what’s my point? If it requires modification, i better figure out another strategy because I don’t know what I’m doing……i chose it because it was supposed to be straightforward (well…. and free).

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