As of Wordpress 2.3 the tables categories, post2cat, and link2cat have been removed. New tables replace them but they aren’t the same. Wordpress is moving more towards tagging / taxonomy, which is fantastic. However, many plugins are still using the old table terminology. After I upgraded I did a search in all the plugins I used and disabled them until they get updated. One of them I don’t really use anymore as WP has the features I need to replicate it built in (customizable post listings) while I do want Google sitemaps back.

So, keep that in mind when upgrading that it might break some of your plugins if they do business with the categories, post2cat or link2cat tables.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Plugins, Upgrade, 2.3.x

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The Wordpress Theme Generator has to be one of the coolest tools for Wordpress I’ve seen in a while. Not only does it make it easy to generate a customized theme for Wordpress it also makes it easy try different colors, something I’ve been known to struggle with. I may have to write my own version of this for internal use to work with my new template that will be used on upcoming projects. This is something that could be useful to Blognetworks too as a tool to let their bloggers customize their own designs more.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Themes, Theme Generator

Today I was doing some database work for a client and I had to delete some recent entries from a database. Like a moron, I forgot to add a “where” close and emptied the entire thing! No big deal, I’m the one who wrote the backup script so I went to grab the backup for yesterday. Yup, you know it. There wasn’t one. The backup stopped working back on July 3rd! Ouch. That burns. Luckily the host is also a good friend of mine and I shot him an email asking if he had a recent backup of the raw MySQL files. I knew that he did regular backups of the entire server so the raw files should be there. I don’t count on that, you should never count on anyone elses backups, but in this case it saved my bacon. Gary had the backup and gave me the quick instructions on restoring them, which I’ll share with you:

Get a copy of your raw mysql file. In my case, I didn’t want the whole database, I wanted one table from one database. Luckily MySQL stores each table in a 3 files called:

database_table.MYI
database_table.MYD
database_table.frm

So, once I located them – Gary sent them to me – I just needed to restore them. It’s pretty easy.

1. Stop mysql
2. cp database_table.* /var/lib/mysql/
That’s the typical path, but of course it may vary from host to host.
3. Restart mysql

And if everything went well (it usually does) you’re back in business.

Caveat: This won’t work if your database type is innodb. Ugh. The disturbing thing to me is that my automated backup stopped running for some reason. It looks like the process was killed at some point and never restarted. You should add “check that backups are working” to your weekly, or at a minimum, monthly checklist. Never ever count on your host or someone else to do it. Murphy’s laws are still very much alive and in effect.

Technorati Tags: MySQL, Backup, Restore, Disaster

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Chris Garrett writes about The Myth of Freelance Pay, a post inspired by the Writers’ Strike. The strike is hitting home for plenty of people and I think web publishers, bloggers and other content producers are keenly interested in what’s going on. Chris points out that some people are being pretty negative about the writers for wanting more money assuming that they get paid too much already. I don’t know if you know any freelance writers or not but most of them don’t make a living at it. More than a few freelance writers have a “regular” job that helps pay the bills. Chris compares it to freelancers (web dev, design, seo etc) in our field. He brings up some good points, like dry spells, waiting for checks to come in and those kinds of things. Freelancing can be tough for a lot of reasons:

• You don’t have a boss. You have lots of them. Instead of answering to one person you know have lots of bosses.
• There are times when you should be billing someone but you aren’t because you’re too nice, like when your doing research or answering emails or in meetings.
• You look at everything in terms of how many hours it’s going to cost you. That new HD TV might be 15-20 hours of work.
• Taxes stink! You think you got it bad as an employee. Oh no my friend. Oh no.
• Everyone thinks your job is easy and they have a 12 year old who could do it.
• Communication is harder. Email and Phone just aren’t the same as doing it in person.
• It can be kinda lonely. This is also a benefit ;)

Freelancing can be great too!

• You can sleep in after working late the night before.
• You don’t have to worry about office politics or office mates bugging you all day
• You can wear whatever you want to work most of the time.
• You commute time is reduced to 0 and not paying $200/month in gas is awesome!
• You get somewhere like 2 hours back in your day (lunches, commute, bs meetings etc.)
• If it’s not working out you can fire your client! While you can quit work, it’s just not the same.
• You get to meet more people than if you were just in one office. If your lucky, like I have been, you get to work with great clients!
• I can do chores while I’m waiting for lunch to cook or while a long upload is finishing, etc. Multi-tasking is so much easier.

Freelancing has been a tough adjustment for me, I admit it. I’m a very task and schedule oriented person and I sometimes miss working in an office. But it’s a means to an ends and brings me one step closer to relying solely on my own projects to make a living. I’m loving freelancing and learning so much from the experience. I’m sure it’ll get easier the longer I do it. It’s hard to imagine giving up working from home.

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, Work From Home

I was reading this weeks copy of Entertainment Weekly and they did a feater on the Writers’ Strike. One of the major issues the writers want resolved is residuals and compensation for their content used on the Internet. The last strike like this was back in 1988 if I remember right and lasted several months. The lasting effects were years of recovery for the TV and Movie business. Don’t get me started on the fact that it created the whole reality TV genre. But when TV shows started going to re-runs people found other things to do. Many shows, especially ones struggling to get their legs under them never recovered from the strike. Entertainment Weekly suggested that there’s an alternative now that people didn’t have before: the Internet. The irony is that this could be the catalyst that pushes the Internet ahead of TV.

To be honest, I’m hoping for a prolonged strike. Don’t get me wrong, I love TV but I make my living on the Internet. And I’m just curious to see what effect this will have. Will advertisers starving for eyeballs spend more online during and after the strike while theres little or not content on TV? We won’t know for sure what kind of effect this will have until January or February when scripts for popular shows finally run out. Daily shows will be the first to suffer, but they should all have troubles come the beginning of 2008. If the strike lasts more than say, 2-3 months it could literally be the end of new TV until next year. Even then it’ll have trouble rebounding.

My advice to the rest of you web publishers out there and that’s get ready for a surge in Internet usage in early 2008 or even sooner. Take advantage and capture some of that traffic and turn it into loyal readers. I’m going to give it my best shot.

Technorati Tags: Writers Strike, Web Publishing, Traffic

JM from Fiction Scribe sent in the first question for the “Ask Chrispian” section. Thanks JM!

I know you’re the one who can help me with this. :) My husband and I were discussing it and neither of us knew enough to know we were right.

When it comes to buying domain names, you buy the name but you also buy the IP address. (Correct?) My husband says to change 100pounds.com to overthemoon.com, it should only be a matter of altering a DNS entry and that the underlying IP address could stay the same with a new name. (Taking for granted no one else has that name.) Thus eliminating the need to buy a new IP with the tag/label overthemoon.com. Yes, there could be a charge for changing the tag/label for that IP address, but it shouldn’t be as much if one is just switching instead of buying overthemoon.com *in addition* to 100pounds.com

I say that even if it’s merely changing the DNS entry, I still have to go buy overthemoon.com for the *same price* I purchased 100pounds.com before I can use it – even if I want to switch from one to the other instead of purchasing one *in addition* to the other.

No, you don’t buy an IP when you buy a domain. IPs are controlled by the web host and you can move from host to host. IPs are leased to the web host and they let you use them while your with them. Here’s how it works. Domain names and IP addresses work together, but they aren’t tied to together. Think of a domain as a house and the IP as the address. You can move to a new house and then your address has to change. But it gets complicated because you could also be in an apartment with many people sharing the same IP. That’s how hosting woks these days. IPs are no longer the location of just one web site, it’s the location of the server and the server looks to see which site was requested and then responds with that site. IPs can change and are used in the background to locate where a domain is.

The bottom line is, you shouldn’t worry about the IP. It doesn’t matter if you are staying with the same web host or moving, just buy the new domain and get it setup and you can then redirect the old domain to the new one so that visitors automatically get forwarded. When you buy the new domain all you have to do is give the name servers for your host and setup the domain with your host. They’ll automatically assign an IP if they use dedicated IPs or they’ll add you to a shared hosting server, which is most likely the case. Either way, you’ll likely never need to know your IP unless you are trying to do something specific. For general hosting purposes though, you don’t even have to think about IPs.

So the process for setting up your new domain should be like this:

1. Buy the new domain (Set the DNS / Nameservers for your web host)
2. Get hosting setup for the domain
3. Get your site setup
4. Redirect your old site to the new domain

Hope that helps!

Technorati Tags: Domain, DNS, IP

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When I set out to re-launch this site I was stuck for color ideas. Some people have a natural eye for color. Not me. I struggle with it. More often than note I think women have a better eye for color than guys. We tend to think five shades of blue is a color pallet. There are exceptions, of course. There are plenty of talented male web developers and artists of every kind who have no trouble finding the perfect color pallet. But if your like me you might find yourself needing inspiration.

Here are my 7 Sources for Creative Color Ideas

• Magazines - Look at the layouts and design of popular magazines. Let other designers do all the hard work!
• CSS Galleries – I’m sure you’ve seen these, but check them out with an eye for color ideas: CSS Vault, Stylegala, CSS Zen Garden, CSS Drive, CSS Elite, CSS Beauty and many more.
• Fashion – Color and texture are these peoples lives. Learn from them.
• Nature – No one does it better. Go out and take a look around. Trust me, they always match.
• Art – Check out Art.com, Art.org, Deviant Art or Digital Art. Aside from wasting hours, days and weeks browsing all the incredible images, if you can peel yourself away you’ll probably find yourself very inspired.
• Photographs – Photographs have a way of capturing color pallets, sometimes without even knowing it. This may go back to the whole nature thing, but photographs have a way of giving you ideas for color that you might not have expect. Keep that in mind and go browse Flickr. Find some pictures and use This tool to generate a color pallet for you.
• Paint Samples & Home Decoration – best kept secret in color pallets. Go to your local hardware store and stock up on samples. I’ve got a box of them sitting next to my desk. Don’t think about it, just go do it.

One of my favorite places to check out is Color Lovers, a cool web site with a web 2.0 kind of vibe that has plenty of color ideas and pallets that you can browse. Do a quick search on Google for color pallets and you’ll find more resources than you’ll know what to do with.

Even with all that help I went with a monochrome gray/white/black pallet. I plan on adding a pinch of color in the mix later, just haven’t decided which ones yet.

Do you have any great color tips? Leave them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: Web Design, Color Pallets, Color Ideas, Colors