I helped someone finish up a site move earlier today.  They had already moved the files and the database over.  All I needed to do was help set up the files, import the database, make sure the permissions were proper and double check any final configuration settings.

When I was finishing it up I always check the permissions of the .htaccess file.  It’s one file that is easy to miss.  On a fresh install it doesn’t even exist so I normally create it and make sure it has writable permissions since WordPress is fully capable of setting up the .htaccess file for you if you change the permalink settings.

In this case, the file was missing, the person who had moved the files didn’t move this particular file.  It does happen on occasion.  In Linux anything that starts with a period is a hidden file.  If you download via FTP you might not see it by default.

But on this site I didn’t even think about it not being moved.  I was busy at the time and I had checked the site and it was showing up so I assumed good to go.  I did however create the file and give it writable permissions.  I figured some people don’t use the permalink setup, but in case they ever did in the future it’s set up so WordPress can write it for them.

Well you know what they say about assumptions.  Naturally, I found out later none of their post links were working.  A quick check on the site and sure enough it was trying to use permalink but the .htaccess was empty so it wasn’t working.

Luckily this was an easy fix.  I had already created the file and made it writable.  I logged into their admin, went to permalink settings, turned the settings off, saved, turned it back on how they had it, saved, and good to go.  The site was back to working.

Lesson for me, don’t assume.  Lesson for others, make sure you move those hidden files.  Those little buggers are hiding after all.

Most of you know that installing WordPress is a pretty easy and straight forward job, and if you don’t know it already just try it out once or twice and you’ll see how easy it is.  But if you’ve been around the block you’ll also know that different hosting environments and situations can throw some different scenarios at you.

Not too long ago I came across a problem that I haven’t seen before.  The situation was installing WordPress in a hosting environment with a Plesk Control Panel.  Although this situation could arise in multiple other environments, I just hadn’t encountered it because I normally prefer to stick to VPS and VDS hosting without a control panel, and I really stay away from purely shared hosting like it’s the plague.

After installing WordPress any time I tried to upload media (with the setting to organize by date) into the WordPress system I would get the error:

Unable to create directory /var/www/vhosts/[mydomain]/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/2009/11. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

The part that threw me off was that I had created the uploads directory, I gave the directory 777 permissions so that Apache could create files and folders beneath it, and I actually found that the installation would create the “2009″ directory, but nothing any further.  If I went ahead and created the “11″ directory and gave it write permissions then it could write uploads, but once the next month came around same problem again.

To top it all off, I first came across this problem in front of a client that I was teaching some hosting tricks.  So now I was just looking like an idiot.

Turns out the problem was related to Safe Mode.  My own bad habits persisted when normally setting up domains so I would turn Safe Mode off in my own VPS hosting, but when teaching the “correct” way I recommended leaving Safe Mode on.  Well if your scripts are owned by your domain user, and then naturally running under the Apache User, then Safe Mode won’t create objects underneath a path that has mixed ownership.

It will allow the first directory to be created “2009″, but then the next won’t be allowed.  So the easy solution is to turn off Safe Mode.

Some people probably won’t think this is the best option.  The same people don’t like to set public folders to 777.  But if you are on VPS hosting with a Plesk CP inside your container and it’s just your container you are good to go.  No one else has access to your system but you in the first place.

Of course if you are on or providing shared hosting for many customers, this might not be ideal.  With Shared Hosting you will be giving access to those folders to other customers in the same shared environment.  It would be more ideal to just change the ownership of all the WordPress files to “Apache:Apache” or whatever user:group that apache is running as.  Then you can leave Safe Mode on, and folder permissions to be writable only need 755.  Keep in mind that this only works if you are the provider, if you are just hosting on a shared system you won’t have the ability to do this.

The new WordPress 2.7 has a lot of cool features, but it also has it’s draw backs. Nothing major and nothing that can’t be fixed of course, but there are still a few things that need to be addressed or they will annoy the heck out of you.

One of those very annoying things is the new “post revisions” feature built into the new WordPress 2.7.

By default, WordPress has this turned on and it adds a lot of un-needed and un-wanted data to your database. The more un-needed data in your database, the longer it takes WordPress to load on your server.

Well, a new friend of my I found on Twitter (@wpthoughts), has done a great quick and easy to follow blog post on how you can disable the very annoying revisions thing in WordPress.

Here’s a little quote from his blog…

I noticed on the WordPress Support section, that a number of people have taken a dislike to this feature, especially the fact that it doesn’t have an option within the Admin section to disable this feature. However there are ways to combat this, and they are part of the advanced configuration of WordPress.

You can veiw this whole post (and I recommend it) by visiting his blog at: http://wpthoughts.com/2009/01/post-revisions/

This feature SHOULD be an optional thing for the blog owner but is turned on by default.  So, go check out the blog post and learn how you can disable the post revisions and save yourself a lot of time later cleaning un-needed and un-wanted data from your databases.

WordPress recently released their latest update, making it 2.7.

I was (and am) excited about it because it’s a whole new look and feel for the admin backend of things and they have some very cool added features to.

Stuff like…

• Install new plugins right from your WordPress install without using FTP
• Automatic WordPress core updates right from within WordPress
• New “QuickPress” posting dashboard widget
• New admin design
• New tools section to make WordPress faster

Like I said, there are some cool new things in WordPress 2.7.

The new backend alone makes it worth the upgrade and all of the other added stuff is even more of a bonus for everyone.  There are a lot new changes and all of them are very cool.

But there’s one “bug” that will be hurting a lot of people!

WordPress 2.7 Permalink Issue

The new WordPress has a big issue with permalinks after you upgrade if your server isn’t setup the way the script files are needed.

This is what happen to me.

I have a few different blogs online on different topics (WordPress, Self Help and some others), and I’m also setting up a whole new blog network where other people can blog on topics and get paid for it, so I try and stay up on WordPress as much as possible when I can.

So when I saw the the new version out and saw all of the changes that came with it, I jumped on upgrading one of my blogs so I could give it a go.

I went and installed the newest version (2.7) and when I was done, I went and started clicking links to make sure everything still worked correctly.

Well, I found that things were not working correctly.  Permalinks to be exact.

I kept getting 404 pages when ever I would click a post title.  I did everything.

1. Turned off all plugins and tried
2. Made sure my .htaccess file was writable and redid the permalink section
3. Changed my theme back to default to see if it was a theme issue
4. Change my permalinks back to original and back again to what I wanted

None of this worked!

So I did some searching in WordPress forums for help, and found nothing helpful at all.  There were a few people talking about similar issues, but not the exact same thing and no solution.

I finally went to Google and did a search on the issue and was taken back to the WordPress forums but this time to a post on this exact issue.

What Was the Solution?

Well, it turns out the new WordPress version and PHP’s ‘magic_quotes_sybase’ don’t work well together.

I tried turning it off in .htaccess with a few different types of commands, no luck.  Things actually got worst sometimes shooting up 500 internal errors do to htaccess file stuff.

Finally, I went to my WHM (server management section) and changed my PHP configuration file to turn off the magic_quotes_sybase and all was fixed.

NOW – the problems is this…

…what if one of my other websites needed magic_quotes_sybase on?  What if I had to choose between one site working and another not working because of this.

I know the good people over at WordPress are doing their best to make things work and work right, and their doing a GREAT job to.  I just can’t help but wonder what other people are out there doing with this same issue.

See, if you don’t backup your WordPress DB (always recommended), you could end up screwing yourself into having a WordPress install being down for a few days, if not longer, till you figure out the issue and find the solution.

And most people out there don’t have the resources to go making server configuration changes either.

Anyway, I figured it out – fixed it and all is good now.

WordPress 2.7 Permalink Issue Fix Re-cap

1. Try and turn magic_quotes (magic_quotes_sybase) off in your .htaccess file so no other sites are effected by it
2. If that doesn’t work, turn off the magic_quotes_sybase in your PHP configuration file

If you can’t do this yourself, or don’t know how to, either ask your hosting provider to do it for you, find someone on a site like Guru.com or Google it.

I hope this helps a few people with the same issue I had.