Category Archives: Website Update

Website Changes for July 2015

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Blog

My blog was updated to WordPress v4.2.3 a couple days ago. Backed-up the files and database like usual and clicked the update button. This post is also a test to make sure everything still works correctly.

Galleries

Updated both my galleries to Zenphoto v1.4.9 a few days ago. Followed their upgrade instructions and backed up the themes and zp-core directories as well as the database before copying over the new files.  I then used Windiff and code comparisons in PSPad to integrate any new changes in the default Garland theme into my custom Garland theme.

Mysstie’s Website

Well, the folks at EverQuest II introduced new Time Locked Servers. As such, I created a character on the PVE server, Stormhold, called Mysstie and updated Mysstie’s Website to reflect the addition (Mysstie on Stormhold).

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. If I think of anything else I’ll add to this post. 🙂

My Websites Might Crash Tomorrow

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This is just a quick note to say that my websites might quit working or start acting weird later tonight or tomorrow. Actually, most were generating 500 Internal Server errors already today.  I corrected that issue so I can make this post now. The reason is that my webhost, Surpass Hosting is upgrading the server to one of the PHP 5.4 versions from 5.3.28. Oh boy.. 🙂

Galleries Upgraded to Zenphoto v1.4.8

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Well, since I didn’t say much about upgrading my galleries to version 1.4.7, I figured I’d talk about upgrading them to Zenphoto v1.4.8. I followed their upgrade instructions with some slight deviations. Following are the steps I performed:

  • I downloaded and unzipped the archive and then re-zipped it only including the zp-core and themes directory as well as the files in the root folder.
  • Backed-up the database to my local MySQL server. Actually, I backed-up both my local development database on my PC and my production database on the web server to my local MySQL server.
  • Made a backup copy of index.php (since I had some custom code in it) and copied the zp-core and themes directories to zp-core147 and themes147, respectively.
  • Deleted the zp-core directory and the standard themes from the themes directory while leaving my custom ones.
  • Unzipped the new files into my gallery’s directory, replacing all files.
  • Re-added my custom code into index.php and /zp-core/zp-extensions/html_meta_tags.php.
  • Compared the changes between the Garland themes in version 1.4.7 and 1.4.8 using Windiff and saw that no changes had been made. Thus, I knew I did not need to update my customized Garland theme to incorporate any changes.
  • Refreshed my browser so that Zenphoto’s setup would run. Saw there were no problems on the initial setup screen and clicked the Go button.

I then tested it in my development copy before changing my production one and did uncover one bug. When editing a single image from the front-end, it would go into batch edit mode after clicking “Apply” to save the changes made. I posted 1.4.8: Single Image edit mode bug that returns to batch edit after apply on their GitHub Bug Tracker. Their latest master support version has corrected this bug. I basically performed the same steps with the support version. Since I had already backed-up the database and files, I just re-deleted the zp-core and themes directories.

After I verified everything worked correctly as far as I could tell with my development gallery, I proceeded to upgrade the galleries on the web server. Both gallery.markheadrick.com and gallery.mysstie.com have been running version 1.4.8 for several days now. 🙂

Oh, for those curious, my custom code in html_meta_tags.php was to change the image being referenced in the og:image meta tag:

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case 'image.php':
    $pagetitle = getBareImageTitle() . " (" . getBareAlbumTitle() . ") - ";
    $date = getImageDate();
    $desc = getBareImageDesc();
    $canonicalurl = $host . getImageURL();
    if (getOption('htmlmeta_og-image') || getOption('htmlmeta_twittercard')) {
       // mrh use the normal sized image since Facebook has a 200x200 minimum.
       //$thumb = $host . getImageThumb();
       $thumb = $host . html_encode(pathurlencode(getCustomImageURL(NULL, 520)));
    }
    break;

Blog Updated to WordPress v4.2.1 and Other Changes

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WordPress came out with version 4.2.1 today to address a security issue. I have thus updated my blog to that version. I have also made a couple other changes.

First, Version 4.2 introduced this Emoji stuff which I didn’t really care for and it broke some of my smileys in older posts, namely the “confused” one: 😕 (or

:???:

as one of the textual representations). It came across as an unrendered character on my system instead of the smiley image icon_confused.gif. I found a new plugin called Classic Smilies which removes the Emoji CSS and JS from loading and restores the older images.

Second, I decided to change the character set in my blog’s MySQL database from latin1 to utf8 which has been the default for some time. When I started my blog, latin1 was the default. I found Fixing a MySQL Character Encoding Mismatch and followed it. Here’s what I did:

  1. I used SQLyog, which I bought a long time ago, to first backup the database to another database and then to dump the original database as a SQL file.
  2. Edited the SQL file and changed all the CHARACTER SET= latin1 and CHARSET=latin1 statements to utf8 instead.
  3. Emptied the database to remove all tables and data.
  4. Altered the database to make the default charset utf8.
  5. Restored the database from the edited SQL file.

Now, all the fields in the database have a charset of utf8 and collation of utf8_general_ci. So far everything looks normal. I actually converted the database before updating to 4.2.1. 🙂