Update: When I played around with my database’s ‘import’ and ‘export’ functions. I accidentally deleted this post. So I created this new one here.

However transferring your WordPress blog/website to a new host is not an easy job; especially if you are new to this realm. If one day for any reason you decide to transfer your current WordPress blog/website to a new host, these are the steps I make it as smooth as it could be for you:

• First find a host that meets all your needs.

• Second use FTP to backup your WordPress files to your computer or laptop.

• Third backup (export) your WordPRess database to your computer or laptop using phpMyAdmin in your current host’s cPanel. Check WordPress Backup with phpMyAdmin out for more details.

• Next use FTP to upload your WordPress files that you’ve backed up earlier to your new host’s root directory or any directory you prefer.

• Next create a new database using MySQL ® Database Wizard in your new host’s cPanel. See WordPress Tutorial: Setting Up A MySQL Database With cPanel for more details.

• Next change the information about your database or the absolute path before uploading (importing) it to your new host. Make sure you choose binary from Character set of the file otherwise some punctuation like apostrophe will not show properly. See the screenshot below:

• Then download your wp_config.php file, which should be in your root directory, to your computer or laptop;  edit the following lines and then upload it back to the same directory:
  

  define(’DB_NAME’, ‘databasename‘); // Change database name to be your actual database name define(’DB_USER’, ‘mysqlusername‘); // Change mysql username to be your MySQL username define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘mysqlpassword‘); // Change mysql password to be your actual password define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value.

• Finally point your domain to your new host’s name servers. In my case, they look like these: ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com. If you are not sure then you can ask your current host to have that done for you. Please be aware that DNS (Domain Name System) takes 24 to 48 hours to be completed due to DNS’ propagation.

Once you find out that everything is working properly, inform your current host to cancel your account. That is it. Any questions please ask in the comment section.

Technorati Tags: new host, transfer domain, transfer WordPress, WordPress blog

I just upgraded my existing WordPress version to WordPress 2.6.1 a moment ago. Everything went smoothly. If you are ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1, then you may find the following steps useful:

• First of all you need to check whether you meet the minimum requirement. You can use the following code to check your minimum requirement.
  

  <?phpinfo();?>

  Here is what you need to do: Save the above code in a file as checkphpNmysql.php or any name you want. Then upload that file to your public_html directory, and run it as http://www.yoursitename.com/checkphpNmysql.php in your browser to find out your PHP version and MySQL version right away. Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.

• If you fulfill the minimum requirement, then you have two choices: (1) You can get WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin to upgrade for you in about two minutes. I’ve never tried it before so you are taking that choice on your own risk. (2) Alternatively you may upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1 manually.

• Next back up your database. Follow These instructions if you don’t know how.

• Use any FTP to back up ALL of your files in your WordPress directory to your PC (personal computer).

• Check your backups to see they are usable.

• Make sure you deactivate All your plugins.

• Download and unzip WordPress 2.6.1 here to your PC.

• Delete the old WordPress files except the following files:
  • wp-config.php file
  • wp-content folder
  • wp-images folder (only older installations from 1.5.x days will have this folder)
  • wp-includes/languages/folder; if you are using a language file, and it is here rather than in wp-content/languages/, do not delete this folder (you might want to move your language files to wp-content/languages/ for easier upgrading in the future)
  • .htaccess file (if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it)
  • Custom Content and/or Plugins (if you have any images or other custom content or Plugins inside the wp-content folder, do not delete them).

• Upload your unzipped wordpress-2.6.1 files to your WordPress directory.

• Run http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin/ as your normal login. From there it will direct you whether you need to upgrade your database or not. Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.

• If your WordPress is resided in a subdirectory called blog, then you need to run it as http://www.yoursitename.com/blog/wp-admin/ or http://www.blog/yoursitename.com/wp-admin/ depending on how you set up your blog.

• The last step is to make sure you reactivate those plugins that you deactivated earlier.

Did you see your new WordPress 2.6.1 interface? How do you like about it?

Technorati Tags: upgrade, upgrades, WordPress 2.6.1, WordPress blog

• Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits
  This feature allow you to view your changes of your posts and pages with a specific date.  If you make mistakes on your blog, this feature is handy in a way that it allows you to go back to your older version of the post. Thus saving your headache. It is even handier for multi-author blogs because it allows you to track changes being make by who or when.

• Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web
  This is a feature that allows you to add a bookmark to your toolbar by simply clicking on Press This. It will provide you a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog. It is quite convenient if you want to post video on your blog from YouTube or Flickr.

• Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging
  Gears is one of the open source projects developed by Google. With this feature one can add more new features to your web browser. Gears can be installed with the following system requirements:
  • Windows XP/Vista
  • Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+

  It is optional that you want to install it or not. According to WordPress Blog in WordPress.org, your WordPress blog works fine without it.

• Theme Previews: See it before your audience does
  This feature allows you to view your selected theme in a pop-up window with your live contents in it. Therefore you don’t have to activate your theme in order to see it alive in public.

• Other small features and improvements included in WordPress 2.6 are:
  • Word count
  • Image captions
  • Bulk management of Plugins
  • A completed revamped image control
  • Reordering galleries
  • Plugin update notification bubble
  • Default avatars customization
  • Upload media in a full screen mode
  • Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure by default.
  • Full SSL suport
  • No interface issues of having many thousands pages or categories
  • Allows you to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location
  • Allows you to select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click”
  • Allows you to toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one
  • Provides a number of proactive security enhancements
  • Develops stronger, better, and faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI
  • Fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Next post I’ll show you how to upgrade your existing version to WordPress 2.6. So stay tuned…

Technorati Tags: bug fixes, features, new features, improvements, WordPress 2.6

Admin of Exploring The Internet: Lanna Wuthenow

Getting a contact form is never being easier with WordPress because you can just pick any plugin to use. Before You download PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP, make sure you check out its authors’ websites: WordPress-Ready Contact Form v.2.0WP and Secure and accessible PHP contact form for WORDPRESS. They provided detail information of what features it includes, how to install it, and what WordPress themes it supports. The following are the WordPress themes it supports so far:

Default by Michael Heilemann

The default WordPress theme based on the famous Kubrick. Included with WordPress.

Classic by Dave Shea

The original WordPress theme that graced versions 1.2.x and prior. Also included

Beast-Blog by Mike Cherim

Beast-Blog Info | Beast-Blog Demo | Download Beast-Blog.

BeastBlog v.2.0 by Mike Cherim

BeastBlog v.2.0 Info | BeastBlog v.2.0 Demo | Download BeastBlog v.2.0

Almost Spring by Becca Wei

Almost Spring Info | Almost Spring Demo | Download Almost Spring.

Blix by Sebastian Schmieg

Blix Info | Blix Demo | Download Blix.

Connections by Patricia Muller

Connections Info | Connections Demo | Download Connections.

Green Marinee by Ian Main

Green Marinee Info | Green Marinee Demo | Download Green Marinee.

Ocadia by Becca Wei

Ocadia Info | Ocadia Demo | Download Ocadia.

Pool by Borja Fernandez

Pool Info | Pool Demo | Download Pool.

SeaBeast by Mike Cherim

SeaBeast Info | SeaBeast Demo | Download SeaBeast.

I just installed this contact form a moment ago. Check it out in my “Contact Us” page. I’ll add update to this post and let you know how things turn out to be.

Related articles
Contact Form WordPress Plugins
A Contact Form For Your WordPress Blog

Technorati Tags: contact form, contact forms, contact form plugin, email, emails, email address

• Automatically optimize your blog/website’s title for search engines.

• Generate your meta description automatically.

• Edit you own keywords.

• Avoid duplicate contents found on your WordPress blog.

• And more…

It is currently compatible with WordPress 2.5.1. The sad thing is it will no longer to be updated or supported by its original author in the near future; but the good thing is it found its new home - read All In One SEO Pack Finds New Developer to find out more.

I just installed it and loved it. If you are interested, download All In One SEO Pack here.

• Unzip the all-in-one-seo-pack.zip file you’ve download.

• Use FTP to upload the file to this folder /public_html/wp-content/plugins/.

• Login to your WordPress Dashboard; click on Plugins to activate it.

• Now configurate it by clicking on Options/All in One SEO (for WordPress 2.3.x) or Settings/All in One SEO (for WordPress 2.5.x); see how it is done from here.

That is it. Once you set it up, It will automatically optimize your WordPress blog/website for search engines. Some themes may not show the meta tag. That is because those themes may miss the appropriate call to wp_call() usually found in head.php. You can fix this by logging in to your WordPress Dashboard, clicking on Design/Theme Editor/head.php file. Insert <?php wp_head(); ?> right above </head> and save your head.php file. One more thing, once you use this All in One SEO Pack, there is no need to use other plugins such as Head Meta Description and SEO Title Tag. Otherwise you’ll produce duplicate title and description for your blog/website.

Related article
Free SEO Tips for WordPress

Technorati Tags: All in One SEO Pack, meta description, meta tag, search engines, search engine optimization, SEO tips, WordPress blog, WordPress SEO tips

• Shows your blog’s days, weeks, or months statistics.

  

Click to enlarge the picture

• Shows you where the referrers come from and what are your top posts and pages people have visited.

  

Click to enlarge the picture

• Shows you what keywords or phrases people have used to find your blog & what links people have clicked in your blog.

  

Click to enlarge the picture

• Shows the overall stats about your blog, incoming links to your blog, amounts of spams being caught, and etc.

  

Click to enlarge the picture

For a full version of WordPress blog, you can download a Stats Plugin here to your PC (personal computer). Unzipped the file that you’ve just downloaded, then uploaded it to this folder /public_html/wp-content/plugins or /public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins depends on how you set up your blog/website. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins, and find WordPress.com Stats to activate it. You’ll need your API Key to use it. The only drawback I found so far is that once you login to your WordPress Dashboard, you’ll need to login to your WordPress.com account to use this feature.

Related articles
WordPress.com Stats
Automattic’s Free Stats Plugin for WordPress Blogs Reviewed

Technorati Tags: a Stats Plugin, statistics, stats, WordPress blog

Post via e-mail

To post to WordPress by e-mail you must set up a secret e-mail account with POP3 access. Any mail received at this address will be posted, so it’s a good idea to keep this address very secret. Here are three random strings you could use: dU)Xlo7PFeA%, W3QDkr1M*eL2, (d$b^h1QxZsq.

The question is: how can you set it up to use it? Post to Your Blog Using Email provides details of how to make it work. I was able to follow the instructions below to make mine work:

• Login to your WordPress’ Dashboard.

• Click on Setting/Writing.

• Create a new email account on your web host’s mail server.

• In Mail Server, type in your new email account you’ve just created. Something like mail.example.com; make sure you change example to be your real domain name; leave the port as 110.

• In Login Name, type in something like login@example.com; here change login to be your new email’s login name and change example to be your real domain name.

• In Password, type in your new password you’ve just created.

• Choose the default category.

• Make sure you click Save Changes to save it.

In order to publish those email messages on your blog, you still need to set up WordPress to do the job. Either you activate your browser manually or activate your browser automatically. I prefer to use automatic browser activation because it will save your headache that you don’t need to send an email to your new email account every time you send a new post. This is how I’ve done it and I find this is the easiest way: add the following code in your footer.php file right above <?php wp_footer(); ?> line. You can open footer.php file by clicking on Design/Theme Editor/ from your WordPress Dashboard.

where you must change yourblogdomain to be your own blog domain name. If your blog is resided in your website’s sub-directory, then make sure you follow your blog’s real path. Alternatively you may use Postie Plugin, and WP-Cron plugin to publish those email messages on your blog. Learn how from Post to Your Blog Using Email

Now it comes to the verification, you need to send an email to the new account you’ve just created. To see the result, you have to refresh your browser to see the new post. For some reason, my testing post showed up on my post list but with the status stated as pending review.

Update: I’ve just found out that in your WordPress acoount, you need to have the same email address as the one you’ve used to send an email to your web server. So if you send an email using login@example.com, then login to your WordPress’ Dashboard, click on Users/Your Profile/; in E-mai, type in login@example.com as well. This way you’ll be able to publish your email message(s) directly on your blog. I’ve just tested mine out and it works. If you have any doubts, feel free to leave your comments here.

Technorati Tags: email, emails, post via email, WordPress blog

If you first downloaded Cutline theme, its Sitemap page is not functional. You have to do something in order to make it work. Do you want to know how you can make yours work? Actually it is not hard. Mine is already working in this blog. See Sitemap on top of the navigation menu in this blog. The Cutline’s author, Chris Pearson, has provided detail instructions of how to make it work:

1. Upload sitemap.php to your active WordPress theme directory.
2. In your WordPress administration panel, go to Write and then to Write Page.
3. Fill in a title (it can be anything you want), do not enter anything into the text area of the post, and create a Post Slug called “sitemap.”
4. Most important, from the Page Template dropdown box, select the Sitemap template.
5. When you’re done, click on Create New Page.

The above instructions are for Cutline 1.03 or older only; and you need to download a sitemap.php from here and upload it to public_html/wp_content/theme/your_cutline_theme/. Make sure you change your_cutline_theme to be your actual theme name.

If you are using Cutline 1.1 or higher, then there is no need to download a sitemap.php because you current theme has already included a correct sitemap.php file. Just follow the steps below instead:

1. In your WordPress administration panel, go to Write and then to Write Page.
2. Fill in a title (it can be anything you want), do not enter anything into the text area of the post, and create a Post Slug called “sitemap.”
3. Most important, from the Page Template dropdown box, select the Sitemap template.
4. When you’re done, click on Create New Page.

Creating an Archive Page

If you are using Cutline theme, its Archives page doesn’t work either. In order to make it work, I suggest you read Chris Pearson’s Creating Archives and About Pages. Here are the steps I quoted from his site:

1. Log into your WP Administration panel and click on the Presentation link.
2. Assuming you have the Cutline theme activated, you’ll notice a link in the sub-navigation menu called Cutline Options.
3. On the Cutline Options page, simply check the box next to “Enable the Cutline Archives Page.”
4. Click the Update Options button to create the Archives page.
5. In order to ensure that your new Archives page gets published properly, you’ll need to click on the Manage link in the main navigation menu.
6. Once there, click on Pages in the sub-navigation menu.
7. One of your pages will contain the text “Archives” in the Title field - find that page, and then click on the Edit button for that page.
8. Locate the Save » button (which resides just beneath the main text entry box), and click it. You’re done!

For step 1, Presentation now is called Design. For step 8, the Save button now is resided on the upper right side of the main text entry box. The instructions are pretty straightforward, but if you encounter any problems, just let me know.

Technorati Tags: archive page, Cutline, sitemap page, WordPress blog, WordPress theme