WordPress

I have created and edit the templates for my WordPress blog long enough to come across a few confusing errors. While I have had good success solving many of the errors fairly quickly, there is one that has continuously come up, and caused my blog from loading.

Recently, however, I managed to find the cause of this common error, and since then have quickly corrected any problems that have caused the error. This post explains the error, and how I solved the problem.

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For some of my larger images, I usually show a thumbnail in the post, and then allow the visitor to enlarge the image by clicking on the thumbnail. While there are many ways of doing this, I simply used WordPress’ built in ThickBox code to display a larger popup image of the thumbnail. After using ThickBox, I quickly ran into a slight problem – the path to the files wasn’t correct so some of the images weren’t be displayed.

In order to correct the problem, I manually edited the ThickBox Javascript file to point to the correct location, however, each time I updated WordPress to a newer version, the file would be overwritten. This caused me to once again go into the Javascript file and edit the file. I managed to find a better solution on the WordPress forums, which I explain below.

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A few months ago I updated the WP Super Cache plugin on Technically Easy and ran into a major issue. After updating, I didn’t check my blog to ensure that it was still up and running. The next day I logged into Technically Easy, and then attempted to view the blog. Sure enough, the blog wasn’t up – all I got was a blank screen. It had been down all night. Not realizing the problem at first, I began to think about what changes I had made.

The only thing I could think of was the update to the WP Super Cache plugin. I immediately disabled that plugin and recheck my blog. It appeared in my web browser instantly. The update to the plugin had prevent my blog from loading. From that point until a few weeks ago I hadn’t been using a cache plugin. I decided to once again look at plugins to cache my blog, but I wanted to see what other cache plugins existed before retrying WP Super Cache. I managed to find another plugin, and am currently using it on Technically Easy.

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It is important to find and fix 404 errors that can occur in your WordPress blog. This allows you to take corrective measures to ensure visitors to your blog are presented with your content and not an error page. Earlier this year I wrote a post that explained how you can remove broken links in your WordPress blog. The post talked about using a plugin to detect any broken links within the posts on your blog. This plugin proved very useful as it found many links that were no longer valid.

I recently decided I wanted to see if I can detect links that were pointing to my blog, but weren’t valid. Such links would produce a 404 “not found” error on my blog, and may prevent some traffic from reaching a specific destination. To help with detecting 404 errors, I installed a plugin that will notify me when the errors occurred.

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Well I did it again. Not being happy with my last theme, I decided to start a new theme from scratch. The good news was that I was able to reuse some of the PHP code from the last theme, so I saved some typing. I’m happy with how this theme turned out, so I’ll keep it for a while.

One issue I did notice was that this theme became slow after I applied it to Technically Easy. I couldn’t understand why, as the amount of code is actually less than my previous theme. Upon further investigation, I was able to determine a problem, which was unrelated to my theme, and was able to find a solution.

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I recently upgraded to the current version of WordPress. I am always weary about upgrading as there are many things that can go wrong. I realize that upgrading WordPress is required for bug and security fixes, but I also realize that all plugins that I use may not be compatible with the latest version.

That being said, I decided to upgrade when I had time to solve an problems. I waited for some time to see if others have had issues, and when I was satisfied, I performed the upgrade. Once the upgrade had completed, however, I ran into a problem when I accessed my plugins from the admin panel. The problem was related to memory, and it prevent me from viewing the plugins I had installed on my blog. The good news is that the fix was simple, but did take some quick searching to find.

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When someone first starts out using WordPress, and then their blog starts getting some traffic, one thing they may notice is the amount of comment spam that they receive. This is a problem that can cause panic among first-time bloggers. In a matter of days a blog can be spammed hundreds or even thousands of times.

The good news is that there are many plugins available for WordPress that can help decrease, or better yet, eliminate spam. While you don’t need to use all of them, there are two that I like to use to help control spam on Technically Easy.

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