Tag: WordPress

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WordPress and Windows

PTR Sites Logo

Well, continuing on with WordPress and exploring the multi-site network installation, I’ve discovered that WordPress and Windows, just don’t get along at all!

Error 500 pages are caused every time Jetpack is upgraded on a Windows server, I believe it’s a Timeout issue as this is a large Plugin, whilst the smaller plugins don’t seem to have a problem.

PTR Sites, WordPress hosting made easy.

So, based on this, PTR Systems has purchased an additional Linux host, dedicated to a Network WordPress installation, which we’re currently setting up as a subdivision of PTR Systems, called PTR Sites.

So, all PTR Systems’ WordPress hosted sites are being migrated slowly but surely to the new Linux host. It’s much quicker and offer’s new features like Clef login.

This site is also hosted under the same PTR Sites network installation, and we’re looking at getting a collection of the best plugins together so that if you’re a small business that wants a simple blog site, WordPress is here for you, when you get larger and you now want a shop, WooCommerce is there for you, along with Storefront. When you build up a community and want people to login and share info, we’ve got BuddyPress for you, and if you need a forum, we’ve got bbPress for you.

Not to mention the whole network site is backed up using BackWPup to three separate locations daily.

Once the whole network site is setup, along with all the plugins and select themes, there will also be a forum, which will allow shared sites to request a free plugin / theme to be installed, if it meets PTR Systems’ requirements, it will happily be installed, otherwise, we are also looking at single hosted sites too, with full Super admin privileges for people that need a little more power and want a full installation to themselves. There will be a slight premium for your own site, but will still be highly competitive.

Check out www.ptrsites.com for more information, but bear with us, as that site is under construction too.

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WordPress 4.4.1 Upgrade

PTR Systems hosts and manages a number of WordPress sites, and they run on a Windows Shared host at GoDaddy.

During the upgrade of one of the sites, the upgrade kept failing. Now as it’s a Windows host, the error message is an Error 500 Server error returned from IIS, not the PHP runtime. So this is pretty useless information.

GoDaddy has the functionality to install and overview your WordPress installations. Thankfully when you visit the overview of the failed installation it shows you error returned from the php runtime, and this information you can use to diagnose your problem!

In my case, the Jetpack plugin was causing the issue, so I simply deleted it from the plugins folder and the site is back up and running, but it states the upgrade has failed, at this point I simply re-installed the upgrade and it worked and then upgraded the remaining plugins.

So, I recommend in the future to make sure all your plugins are up to date, BEFORE you do the 4.4.1 upgrade in case one of your plugins is not fully compatible with 4.4.1. I believe the version of Jetpack I had installed was quite an old version, hence my upgrade issue. Hey, you live and learn!

Please note, the site I was upgrading is not live yet so it didn’t matter that it went down! All my other hosted sites are backed up and these major upgrades are performed on copies of the site then transferred over to reduce downtime, and these upgrades are performed in the early hours of the morning!

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Website Construction and Migration

So, I thought it would be about time to start getting the company website setup and updated, but thought it would be a nice idea to transfer all the blog info from my previous mojoPortal site to this WordPress site, so I can have it all in one place, and I may drop my mojoPortal site soon.

Therefore below is my previous Under Construction blog for info on setting up mojoPortal with GoDaddy and issues I had back all those years ago! It makes setting up a WordPress site seem trivial, but I still won’t knock mojoPortal it is a good solid CMS that I still recommend.

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Switching to WordPress

Shame to leave mojoPortal behind

Well, it’s been a long and lonesome road! Can’t say there’s been much activity here, and each time I’ve come back time and time again, I’ve noticed little tweaks here and there from the last update I did, quite a while ago now.

But have I loved using mojoPortal and I do still recommend it as a very good, if not excellent CMS system.

The only thing that swayed me towards WordPress is it’s large Community and massive collection of supported Themes and Plugins, and also it’s simplicity. Although mojoPortal is just as simple, WordPress’ Dashboard and responsive design is 2nd to none and seems to be easier to teach people, as there’s plenty of other people teaching people on YouTube, so saves me a job!

Also I’m not much of a designer, I’m more of a developer, so I can easily tweak a design I like and make a Child Theme much easier than I can integrate a theme into mojoPortal.

But, my WordPress site is up and running, again it’ll be updated as often as this one! Hopefully slightly better!