Wendy Cholbi

Technology-to-English Translator

How to install WordPress

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When you're tinkering with technology, you need a pretty big toolboxIn all my WordPress how-to posts here, I’ve never covered how to actually install WordPress.

I haven’t taught any classes that cover WordPress installation, either.

Why would I leave out something so obviously needed?

Well, partly (only partly!) because you can pay me $99 for a basic WordPress installation package (quick note: That $99 price isn’t changing, but the prices for the Bonus and Bonanza packages are going up quite a bit next week, and if you were on my Invitation List you’d already know that).

One of the other big reasons I haven’t covered how to install WordPress is that most good web hosting companies have installer scripts — they’re usually called things like “one-click install,” “quick WP install,” or something similar. And these installers can vary quite a bit from host to host.

So if someone asked me to teach them to install WordPress, I’d just tell them “go ask your web host for information on their WP installer script.”

Until now.

See, two things happened that made me realize that I needed to write at least one decent WordPress-installation tutorial.

Stuck in the middle

The first thing was that Pamela Wilson and I created a free e-course called Love Your Website to explain how to set up a domain name and a web hosting account, and at the same time we released a paid product called Site Setup Kit to teach people how to use WordPress to create and maintain a unique website.

I’ve been tremendously gratified at how well both offerings have been received. People around the world have told us that the e-course explains technical terms for Regular People, and our Site Setup Kit owners have already gotten to work creating beautiful sites.

But we had left a gap between the two! Love Your Website walks you through getting a domain and a web host and leaves off right before WordPress installation, and Site Setup Kit starts out assuming that you’ve installed WordPress and are ready to learn how to use it.

So I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to find that our readers were asking us how, exactly, to install WordPress.

It’s as if we handed out toolboxes that were each missing a hammer. D’oh.

You deserve better

The second thing was that I struck out in search of a friendly WP installation tutorial on the Knowledge Base of a large and fairly decent web host. I found a video tutorial for using their quick-install script, and I’m sorry to say that it was just terrible. It was full of jargon, not very explain-y, and assumed a higher level of tech knowledge than “beginner.”

There was no way I could send my Site Setup Kit owners a link to that tutorial! I knew I could do better. And I also knew that you deserve better than a confusing jargon-y guide.

If you ask for a hammer, you want a hammer, not a 328-piece ratchet-and-screwdriver set that requires an engineering degree to decipher.

So I wrote not one, but two tutorials explaining how to install WordPress, on two different web hosting systems. They don’t have video, but each step is illustrated. Here you go:

  1. Installing WordPress on a DreamHost web hosting account is specific to my very favorite web host, which I use myself for all my websites. They created their own one-click installer (which actually takes more than one click but is still pretty easy to use).
  2. Installing WordPress on any web hosting account that uses cPanel will work for quite a few decent web hosts, since cPanel is the industry standard in web-hosting control panel software.
There you have it. I hope you’ll let me know if these tutorials work for you!

Upgrading: The zeroth step

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WordPress Updates: What to do first?

If you haven’t been inside your WordPress dashboard for awhile, you may be confronted with multiple update notices when you log in. You probably have a handful of plugins that need updating, and perhaps your theme has come out with a new version (yep, that’s an affiliate link, since I use and recommend that theme), and WordPress itself might need updating.

WordPress is famous for its easy one-click updates, so even if all three of these things need attention, you can probably do them pretty quickly, probably within minutes.

So which part should you update first? The plugins, WordPress software, or your theme? What’s the first step?

Backup backup backup

The best answer is actually “none of the above.”

Before you update, especially if you have multiple updates, you should back up your site.

The backup step is so important, it should come before the first step. It’s the zeroth step (hat tip to Asimov’s Laws of Robotics here).

Which means that backing up needs to be easy and quick. So easy and quick that you can do it in one or two clicks and know you have the ability to restore your site just as easily. “Drat, I have to make a backup first” should not be a barrier to updating.

BackupBuddy to the rescue

My favorite backup method is a premium WordPress plugin called BackupBuddy. It’s not free, but the support forum and documentation are extensive and helpful, and I now use this plugin for all my own sites, all my new client sites, and all my Website Tune-Up and Peace of Mind Program clients.

I’ve used it to migrate (move) WordPress sites from one host to another, and from testing sites to launch. Once it’s installed, it really is one-click easy to run a backup (zero clicks if you set up automatic scheduling, which I highly recommend).

The makers of BackupBuddy have created a free 28-page PDF guide to using the plugin, available for download without even giving them your email address. Take a look if you’re thinking of buying the plugin, then if you do decide to purchase, use the special promo code RESCUE30 to save 30% during the month of March 2012 only.

What about that update order?

Once you’ve got your backups created and safely stored in case you need to roll back your site, you are cleared for updating. If you need to update multiple parts of your site, think about it in order from large to small.

When you update multiple pieces of your site, be sure to do it in this order:

  1. WordPress (the biggest most important piece, because it runs your whole site)
  2. Your theme (gives your entire site its look and feel)
  3. Plugins (smaller pieces that affect particular site functions)

If you update a plugin before update WordPress, and that plugin requires a later version of WordPress, you could end up breaking your site (or at the very least, losing the plugin’s functionality). Same with themes.

I’ve seen both things happen, and fortunately with BackupBuddy and FTP access, I’ve been able to fix things up pretty quickly, but it’s easier to just avoid breaking them in the first place.

So make a backup first, and stick to a safe update order. And may you never need your backups!

How to use Gravatars on your WordPress site

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Gravatar: Globally Recognized Avatar

Globally Recognized Avatar = Gravatar. Get it?

This post was sparked by a question I received from a client who is working his way through Site Setup Kit, my complete guide to building a unique website. Check out Site Setup Kit today.

Have you ever wondered why some blog comments show up with pictures of their authors, while others have generic “mystery mannequin” icons or geometric shapes?

If you’d like a picture of your choosing to show up when you comment on a blog, you need a Gravatar.

Gravatar, which sounds like a Soviet-era science-fiction robot but is really short for Globally Recognized Avatar, is a free service provided by the same people who created WordPress.

In fact, if you have a WordPress.com account for any reason (such as using the Akismet spam-protection plugin), that same username and password will log you into Gravatar.com.

How to sign up for your own Gravatar

If you don’t have a Gravatar.com or WordPress.com account, signing up is incredibly easy. On the Gravatar sign-up page, just enter your email address.

You’ll get a confirmation email with a link to activate your account. Once your account is active, you can upload a photo of your choice, which will then be associated with that email address.

Every time you use that email address to comment on a blog that’s Gravatar-enabled, your chosen image will automagically appear next to your comment. And you can change that image any time you want by logging into your Gravatar account and changing your profile picture.

If you use more than one email address, the service allows you to add multiple email addresses and associate a different image with each one.

You can optionally add more information to your profile, such as a brief bio statement, geographic location, and links to your website and social media profiles like Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Other built-in uses for Gravatars

Those handy little icons are used for more than just blog comments.

Gravatar in the WordPress Admin Bar

Gravatar in the WordPress Admin Bar

For instance, all WordPress sites use Gravatars for their internal User profiles. If you have a profile picture associated with the email address you use to administer your own WordPress site, you’ll see a tiny version of that image on the right side of your admin bar (right next to where WordPress greets you with “Howdy, [display name]”), and next to your username on the Users –> All Users screen.

Another nice use of Gravatars is in the Genesis User Profile widget, which is available to you in the Appearance –> Widgets screen if your WordPress site uses the Genesis Framework or any Genesis child theme (my site, for instance, uses Dynamik, the only Genesis child theme with design controls — did I mention that Site Setup Kit teaches you exactly how to use those controls to create a site that’s 100% unique?).

This widget allows you to create and customize an About Me box in your sidebar, and the profile picture it uses comes straight from Gravatar.

Turbo-charge your Gravatars

If you use the Jetpack plugin, you can enable a function called Gravatar Hovercards. With that function turned on, hovering your cursor over the profile picture of one of your blog commenters will display that person’s public Gravatar profile.

My site is using this feature right now, so if you get yourself a Gravatar, come leave a comment and try out the Hovercard function for yourself!

How to fix the WPAudio plugin if it’s not working

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I’ve recommended the WPAudio plugin for placing easily playable and downloadable audio files on your WordPress site. But with the release of WordPress 3.2 in 2011, the plugin stopped working on many sites (including mine).

In this post, I’ll show you how to get this plugin working again.

Fair warning: This fix involves directly editing the plugin’s source code. I’ve provided all the necessary code so you can just copy and paste. This has worked on all the sites I’ve tried it on, but it’s possible that it won’t work for you — you might have a different hosting setup or a plugin conflict that I haven’t run across.

But even if this fix doesn’t take, really, the worst that can happen is that your copy of the WPAudio plugin still won’t work. What I mean is, a copy-paste mistake isn’t going to break your entire site or erase your database or anything disastrous like that.

Why you might not want to fix this plugin at all

I chose to research the fix because I like to know how things work, I’ve got a hardcore DIY streak, and I’m stubborn — I like the way WPAudio looks and works and I just don’t want to switch, doggone it.

However, I fully realize that I might be in a tiny minority here and that you might decide that it’s just easier and simpler to switch to a different audio player on your WordPress site. And that is totally OK (I’m actually researching some WPAudio alternatives and will post about those later this week).

One big reason to switch to a different plugin is that WPAudio’s author is no longer supporting it or releasing new versions. WordPress will continue to change and improve, and it’s very possible that future versions of WordPress will break this plugin again. So this code fix is a bit like wrapping a frayed wire with electrical tape — a temporary measure that’s fine for now but not built to last.

Still here? On with the tinkering!

Step 1: Download these two text files. You’ll need to copy and paste their contents later in these instructions. Right-click (on a PC) or CTRL-click (on a Mac) the filename, and choose “Save Link As” or the closest equivalent.

  1. wpaudio.js.txt
  2. wpaudio.min_.js.txt

Step 2. Open the files in a text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, or the like). Because they have the .txt suffix, they may automatically open with the right application if you simply double-click them.

Step 3. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins –> Editor. 

Step 4. Choose “WPaudio” in the drop-down list at the top right corner of your Plugin Editor screen. When you first arrive at this screen, it will show the first plugin in alphabetical order (often Akismet). After you select WPaudio, click the “Select” button next to the drop-down menu and you will then see a list of that plugin’s source files.

Step 5. In this list, click the link labeled “wpaudio-mp3-player/wpaudio.js” to display the contents of that file in the editing pane. It should begin with these lines:

/*
 * WPaudio v3.1 (http://wpaudio.com)
 * by Todd Iceton (todd@wpaudio.com)
 *
 * Converts an mp3 link to a simple player styled by HTML & CSS, powered by
HTML5 with SoundManager2 Flash fallback

Step 6. Copy the entire contents of the first text file you downloaded — the one called wpaudio.js.txt — and replace the entire contents of the wpaudio.js file onscreen with your copied text. You want to completely overwrite the file contents, so in the WordPress Editor screen you can either Select All and Paste, or Select All and Delete before Pasting.

Step 7. Click the blue “Update File” button at the bottom of your screen. You should see a success message appear at the top of your screen that reads “File updated successfully.”

Step 8. Repeat steps 5, 6, and 7 with the file named wpaudio.min.js. You’ve just replaced the entire contents of two of the plugin’s source files, and saved your changes. Your site is still there, right? No smoke coming out of your hard drive? Good! On to the final step:

Step 9. Go to Settings –> WPaudio, and click the blue “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the screen. It’s a good idea to check the settings to make sure they’re correct, but go ahead and click the blue button even if you don’t make any changes. This is similar to refreshing a web page to get the latest version — you want your copy of the plugin to read the new code you added.

Now go test one of your audio files on your site. Fingers crossed that it plays the way it is supposed to! And if not, stay tuned for my upcoming post on audio player alternatives (you can subscribe to get updates in your inbox or grab the RSS feed to get it in your reader). And feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite WordPress audio plugin, too!

It’s important to note that I didn’t do this coding work on my own. All the code fixes came from helpful users on the WordPress.org support forum; I’m merely trying to let more people know about these fixes, and maybe make them a bit less scary to implement. Here are the original posts describing the code changes:

Frayed cord image by blmurch on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License