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BenandJacq Moved to MediaTemple DV-Developer Hosting!

That's a fancy little logo, there. They told me I could use it.
That’s a fancy little logo, there. They told me I could use it.
Heads up, this one gets really techy really quickly. If you don’t care about Linux or Ubuntu or server-side coding, here’s a video of my son that’ll almost certainly make you smile and be far more worth your time.

I recently migrated all of my sites to DV-developer hosting over at MediaTemple. This post will walk you through how to do the same.

I’m running Ubuntu 12.04 Linux, which was the default when I signed up. From there, I followed the instructions on this tutorial page to put the AMP in my LAMP stack. In steps 3 and 5 I left the VirtualHost *:80 code at the top of both the default file and each individual site’s file alone, as changing them made all of my sites redirect to the same root.

I also added phpMyAdmin for help taking care of my databases in a graphical sort of way. In order to protect phpMyAdmin access, I edited the file at etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf, changing line 10
Allow from 127.0.0.1 by putting my IP address in (in place of 127.0.0.1) as the only one where connections are allowed. I got my IP address by visiting icanhazip.com and then I copy/pasted into the apache.conf file.

Note, I don’t have a static IP address, so from time to time I have to go back in and change that file. It’s one extra step in my routine to access phpMyAdmin, but I think it’s worth it.

I’ll detail how I went about optimizing my setup for WordPress in a future post. I’m happy to report a little over two weeks in that my setup is doing GREAT. You can sign up for MediaTemple using my affiliate link by clicking here.

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Generating Weebly xml file for export to WordPress (without Google Reader)

I made a slight modification to the weebly logo.
I made a slight modification to the weebly logo.
I recently helped a client move from Weebly to self-hosted WordPress, and in doing so discovered how to make the move slightly less painful now that Google Reader is no more.

I’m indebted to this WPBeginner tutorial for the bulk of the heavy lifting.

Before Google shut down Reader, steps two and three of the above-linked tutorial worked great. Now, I have yet to find a reader which will display more than 10 posts. So, here’s my hacky way of making it work.

Go to your site’s feed (generally at yoursite.com/1/feed or something similar).

Copy everything but the top line (start from the rss tag)

Copy everything but the top line.
Copy everything but the top line.

Paste that text into a text editor (NOT Microsoft Word) and save the file as blogposts.xml in a place you can find easily.

Now for the part that will make your palms sweat:

(This is where you start the repeating process)

You’ve got to go and delete the first 10 posts from your blog. Do this in a different tab from the RSS feed. Weebly’s web interface will warn you about never getting them back, and they are right. You won’t ever get them back in Weebly. Make sure that you’ve got all of their content saved in the xml file, and you will get them back in WordPress.

Once you’ve deleted those first 10 posts, refresh the page that is viewing your feed, and copy everything from the first “item” tag all the way to the end of all the “item” tags.

Select from here...
Select from here…
...to here.
…to here.

Once you’ve got all those posts saved, return to the beginning of the repeating process and repeat until there are no posts left in your feed. Make sure to save the .xml file each time.

(end of repeating process)

This method gets you the .xml file needed to import into WordPress. Continue the other tutorial from here.

If you aren’t comfortable with the process, I’m more than happy to execute this portion of your move for you. My rate is variable, based on the complexity of your setup. Contact me below to get started.

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How To: Westhost WordPress Login Fix

This one took me all day to figure out, so I figured someone else could benefit from it.

A client has her site hosted at Westhost, who recently made the decision to disable all login pages for WordPress because they came under a brute force attack and their servers were getting slammed. They posted a workaround to be able to get back to the WordPress dashboard, but nothing on how to fix the bajillion locations within a WordPress installation that reference or redirect to the login page. So, for example, you could get to your new login page directly, but not if you typed in “yoursite.com/wp-admin”

After some digging and mildly obscene near-cussing, I found the page you need to edit to get things redirecting correctly.

WARNING: This requires a bit of savvy and may render your website (frontend and backend) unusable. I am not able to help troubleshoot or fix things. If you don’t know what you are doing, stop. If you are comfortable with FTP and very basic PHP, continue. Also, you are changing core WordPress files here. That’s never recommended, and once you do, any update to wordpress will get rid of these changes. There, enough disclaiming.

FTP into your server and find the file at /wp-includes/general-template.php

Change all instance of “wp-login.php” to whatever your new url is. If you followed the instructions on Westhost’s support page, it would be “wp-login_new.php” There should be 5 instances. In this client’s instance (an older version of wordpress) it was lines 218, 238, 276, 319, and 341.

Save and re-upload that file, and your site should be working correctly.

In the event that they (Westhost) change anything, it might break again.

Hope that saves you hours of looking. Oh, and I recommend switching away from WestHost to MediaTemple. WELL worth the price difference. Here’s my affiliate link: http://benlikes.us/mediatemple

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SermonBrowser plugin for WordPress: RSS feed tutorial.

I’ve spent the last few days getting the sermon feed turned into a podcast over at my church website. I use the fantastic SermonBrowser plugin, and in the process of teaching myself how to use that plugin to create an iTunes-friendly podcast, I thought I’d share the wealth. Here’s a screencast detailing the process.

You can get to your podcast.php file at /wp-content/plugins/sermon-browser/sb-includes/podcast.php

I personally use and love TextWrangler (on a mac) because it can directly open (via FTP) those files.

Here’s the final code from that screencast (lines 106-119 minus my email randomly typed in)

Also be aware that any time you modify that podcast.php file, you’ll want to keep a backup copy so that when the plugin is updated you don’t have to repeat this process again.

I will update this post as folks comment or point out ways to make it more helpful.

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How To Ensure People Despise Your Product

Ahh yes, the pinnacle of neat looking design that fails at the most basic level of functionality. Click the image for Creative commons attribution.
Ahh yes, the pinnacle of neat looking design that fails at the most basic level of functionality.
Click the image for Creative commons attribution.
Have you ever owned a Brita pitcher—the type of deal that you run tap water into and then it filters it, and you pour from it into a glass and enjoy?

I love those things. But as design goes, (and I’m not sure if this is just me) it seems that the guy making it is unaware that it will regularly be tilted to about 45 degrees or more. It’s a pitcher. The primary purpose it has been assigned on this planet is dispensing water. By tilting it.

Yet, as soon as you tilt it beyond about 15 degrees, the lid that up until this point has simply been a suave looking white piece of plastic goes rogue, clacking onto the floor in front of the fridge.

Which makes me want to throw it out every time I use it, despite how cool it looks. No matter how sleek, well designed, and cool something looks, if it doesn’t work, it’s useless.

We are no longer talking about water pitchers. If your digital marketing strategy is focused on high quality production and presentation to the exclusion of usefulness, your potential customer will opt for less shiny, more functional alternatives.

If you build a compelling case for engagement on your blog, but then have “your comment is being moderated” as the primary feedback when somebody finally does take the time to say something, the lid just fell off the water pitcher.

If you make a flawless $10,000 ad campaign for your product, but the online ordering page requires a degree in computer science and a minor in long-suffering, your lid just fell off. (tweet that sentiment)

In the digital world, there are just too many things that you can do in “one click.”

That’s not to say that everything should be a clear call to action or “click here.” That comes off as a bit sleazy. (Sign up for my emails for a free course on how NOT to be a sleazy salesman.)

It’s just that when you DO call somebody to action, make it simple and rewarding, like a cup of freshly filtered water.

If you need me, I’ll be cleaning up the water I poured on my foot when I leaned over to pick up a cool-shaped plastic lid earlier.

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