Ying and Niq’s Niche

I’ve been delaying this for far too long. My last version was 2.6.2. Since then, the Automatic Upgrade did not work anymore. I had to tackle the daunting task myself.

1. Make a backup of the database
2. Make a copy of files and folders where WordPress was installed in the server.
3. Delete the old wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
4. Unzip the WordPress 2.7 zip file into the WordPress location, replacing files and folders.
5. Copy contents from wp-content backup to the new wp-content folder.
6. Copy the information from old wp-config.php (like database name, username, password) to wp-config-sample.php, then rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.
7. Go to WordPress admin page. Then click on button to update database.

That’s all!

For more details read upgrade instructions.

I am proud to announce that Ying and Niq’s Niche is now self-hosted at Free Hostia running on WordPress 2.6.1. Since moving from Blogspot to Wordpress, I found that there are functions that I missed. Blogs at WordPress.com have several limitations – customizing themes, adding plug-ins and monetizing. All these are made available by self-hosting using the latest version. The development process was rather difficult without a step-by-step guide. The WordPress guides had many complicated steps. After successfully self-hosting our blog, it is in actual fact quite easy. One has to proceed systematically:

1. Create account with Free Hostia
2. Download WordPress zip file to your local drive
3. Upload WordPress zip file to Free Hostia (select unpack archive option)
4. Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
5. Edit wp-config.php with your preferred database name, user name and password
6. Open install.php in wp-admin folder to install WordPress
7. Export your WordPress.com blog as .xml
8. Import your WordPress.com blog to your self-hosted blog.

Refer to http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress for more details (except for download and extract section). My main problem was uploading files. In the beginning I unzipped to local drive, then upload to web-host using FTP. FTP did not work well, with many files not successfully uploaded. There are many files involved, so it is difficult to trace which files have been uploaded and which ones have not. I gave up on FTP. Then there is the Elefante Scripts installer in Free Hostia with WordPress 2.5 available for installation. However this limits you to an older version of WordPress. Then I tried to upload the zip file and to extract within Free Hostia – it worked! I would have saved many days trying to upload files. Use the same way to upload themes and plug-ins. Free Hostia is not always reliable. Their server may be down sometimes but I can’t complain much about something that is free.

Ying and Niq’s Niche begins a new era in WordPress. It has a lot more options to make writing more fun. I’m still dizzy with all the new stuff. It’s totally mind-blowing. Adding stuff is also so much easier - for example custom header image, a list of your favorite blogs, and statistics - all at a click of a few buttons.