Real Estate Blog Lab

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Google Chrome Browser

I’m wondering how many of you have downloaded and tried using Google Chrome to write, edit and maintain your WordPress blog.

This is my first attempt to do so. I’m finding it to be an interesting experience to say the least.  It keeps wanting to put extra spaces between my paragraph breaks especially if I switch between HTML and Visual.

When I opened the editor to write a new post, I entered the title then down to the body of the post.  I wrote a word and when I backspaced over the word and one more backspace it took me to the Dashboard, not the top line of the editor.  I tried it several times and it repeated this action each time.  ”Don’t do it”

I’ve also noticed this browser seems to learn.  One time it will not know what to do, but the next time it will do it even to the point of saying some URL’s are not available, but later it will open them.

I’ve also noticed that making options changes might require you to close the browser completely and re open to see the changes take effect.

The first time I tried to write a post in Chrome I clicked on the link button and it wouldn’t allow the pop up window to appear so I could enter the link.  However, later it worked fine.

It is stripped down,  No bells, no whistles, and even the Google things you might expect incorporated are not available like the Google Toolbar or Google Gears.  I’ve done a couple of saves and it seems a little faster than FF with Google Gears or Flock without Gears.

Preview a post can be a wild trip at times.  I’ll let you see what it does for yourself.  Maybe nothing, maybe . . .

I know I was going to watch Dirty Harry and call it a night, but I had 20 minutes to wait so thought I’d take Chrome for another quick spin around the blog.

Has anyone put this browser through the WordPress meatgrinder?  Or was that were weekend GEEK project?

Gotta Go time for the Dead Pool.

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Post Tags: flock , Google Chrome , Google Toolbar , pop up window , wordpress blog , Wordpress Blog editor

Thanks for letting me return to my youth and enjoy that momentary trek back in time.

Yesterday I wrote about Wordpress Version or GoDaddy Hosting. I love how quickly Google indexes some things and already today had a response by comment from someone at GoDaddy and a missed call (I was at the Dr. office, they don’t like cell phones there much) and a second comment in response from the person at GoDaddy leaving the comment. The tech from Godaddy said he would call me later this evening to see if he can help address the slowness of the blog.

Here are some of the things I’ve done today which have had some effect but not the kind Kirk wanted from Scotty.

1. Google Gears was already installed, but I was using the Flock browser and not FF. I’m using FF. (Still like Flock better)
2. I removed all plugins that were not being used. I have tested a lot of them over the past couple of years and removed everyone not in use.
3. I took out the database calls in the header file and replaced them with static HTML
4. I installed the Dashboard Management Plugin and removed almost everything from the dashboard except incoming links and write new post
5. I created a new database on a different server backup the lab database and restored on the other server (clean lay down of the data)
6. Tied to 5 above, the new database is MYSQL 5.0 the old one was 4.0 The new server is PHP 5 the old one was PHP 4
7. I activated the WP Super Cache plugin and configured it.

Most of these are considered to improve load times rather than navigation inside the admin panel or editor. The saves in the editor and navigation from editor, to comment management, to dashboard, to plugins is where a lot of the wait time comes in.

By putting the database on another server I split the calls to the server between images and database calls which are not on two separate servers.  Of course the down side: “Now I have to have two servers functioning to load the blog.” HUM!

I just pressed “Save” and it took 20 seconds for the save to take place and the editor to be available to continue.  I think some of this must have to do with saving Post Revisions of a single post.  I really wish this was an option to be turned off.

I also wrote a quick draft post in a 2.2.2 WP blog today and none of these issues were apparent.

Google Gears  Auto Save and Post Revisions

I thought Google Gears was to move much of the editing functions to my HD, yet with every save or move I see “Waiting on www.realestatebloglab.com” at the bottom of the screen.  The only thing it should be doing there is saving the post.  I get the same message when opening a blank editor to write a new post.  I also wish I could set the time between auto saves because it save a lot and hesitates while doing so.

Comparative Load Times

Comparative Load Times

I have to wonder if WP wasn’t experiencing some of these issues in development. Maybe that’s why we even have the TURBO option. I hope this is something that can be addressed in the next release, but I fear it is going to be more bells and whistles with more whistle time while waiting.

Save and Log In Again.

Finally ready to preview this post, pressed Save once again and after 30 seconds was sent to the login screen.  After logging back in there were a couple of words missing from my last edit.

Maybe all these auto saves aren’t such a bad idea after all.

Have a great evening, I’m going to go watch Dirty Harry for the fifth time this week.  I think it is the “Dead Pool” tonight.  I feel like I’ve been swimming in it all day.  Oh, Geez here goes another attempt at save.

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Post Tags: GoDaddy Support , godaddy-hosting , wordpress auto save , WordPress Editor , Wordpress Post Revisions

I just opened the Lab to the Dashboard.  It took 30 seconds to get to the Dashboard.  Then I clicked on Write New Post, it took 20 seconds to open the editor.  If I click “Save” it takes from 20 to 40 seconds to save.  All the while the message in the bottom of the screen is “Waiting for www.realestatebloglab.com”

I don’t know if the slowness is due to the size of the blog, the slowness of the web, the version of WP, or the hosting.  But I do know this:

I’M REALLY TIRED OF WAITING ALL THE TIME TO GET WORK DONE!

Tired of Waiting

I’ve tried IE, FF, Flock, and Chrome (it doesn’t seem to allow popups)  none of them seem to be any faster.

I’ve been sending out emails this morning to friends asking about hosting company options then it hit me:  “Why not write a Lab post about this issue and see what others are experiencing” before I pay to have another hosting company, move the some of the blogs and find I still have the same issues.

I tried Scribefire this week, but it doesn’t have support for “Captions” on images.  I’ve become a huge fan of captions.  They let me throw in quick pertinent information.

Anybody noticing the same things?  Anybody who isn’t experiencing this have a different hosting company than GoDaddy.  I should add I’m on the $6.30 a month shared hosting package for all the blogs, I have two of those.

Any suggestions?  I anqiusly await any input.  I’m sure there are others that will be interested in this topic as well.  At least I hope so.

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Post Tags: godaddy-hosting , Slow editor , wordpress

Top is pencil & under it the buttons for backup and restore

This past weekend I combined two blogs into a single one.  It all went, it didn’t all go smooth.  But in the end they are now combined and happy campers.

I’ve told the story in  a couple of post about the process if integration and the duplicated posts, categories and unpublished posts (I found those today).

Since the integration the admin panel seems slow and I often get apache error popping up which a refresh so far has handled.  I decided one more step in the process might be appropriate.

Lay down the Data To a New Database

There are a lot of ways to backup a database.  Most are pretty easy to do.  What I’ve found a bit daunting is Restoring the database.  Today after an hour of feeling my way around the various methods for both backup and restore landed on the one I wanted to try.  It worked, flawlessly and fast.  You can do this too.

1. I created a new database.
2. I went to the hosting package, databases, selected the existing old DB, clicked on the pencil to the right of the database name and chose the “Backup” button at the top of the window.
3. Backup was pending, then completed in a couple of minutes.
4. Verified the file created and placed in the root directory for the hosting package folder named “_db_backups”
5. exited from the existing database
6. clicked on the new database and the pencil to the right.
7. selected import and the newly created file is the one available.
8. select that file and click “go” in the lower right hand corner
9. restore “pending”  in a couple of minutes “done”
10. made a note of the database code to be placed in the wp-config.php file
11. changed the database in the wp-config.php file and FTP the new config file to the blog directory (I changed the name of the original file rather than overwrite it)
12. Went to the blog, everything looked the same. (As it should)

It has the effect of doing a defrag on your database.  It also means I have a backup database up to today if for some reason I need it.

So far no apache errors, the editor seems to load and save faster than it was before the new database was created and attached.

If you are going to integrate two blogs I would recommend doing this procedure to give yourself a nice clean copy of the database.

The graphic at the top is a combination of two screens.  The first above the line shows the database name and pencil to the right.  Under it is the window that is opened when you click on the pencil.

Good Holiday Geek Project

It is also something you can do once a quarter or once a year depending on how desperate you are for something to do on the next holiday weekend.

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Post Tags: defrag mysql database , mysql database backup restore

Holiday weekends are tough on Geeks. We are supposed to be doing things outside, with family, going to community or family outings and cookouts. When all we really want to do is that geeky project we have been putting off and now we have the time to do it. Saturday, I pulled the trigger on integrating two blogs into one. It wasn’t as pretty a picture as I had hoped but all is well.

The Combining of Tucson Real Estate in the News with Tucson Real Estate

Tucson Real Estate New Theme

I wrote about the testing process and how that had gone on last Monday, my internet day in Hell so to speak. I planned and planned and did more testing on how to pull of this integration project.

I thought I had it pretty well worked out DUH!

First I created the 301 redirect file for all the blog posts 250 + of those. Then I did backups and more backups and wrote down the procedure like it was a check off for a NASA lift-off.

When I ran the test integration last week I noticed the pages which were duplicate on each site were integrated so I had 2 contact pages and 2 sitemap pages and 2 archive pages, etc. I didn’t want to have to delete all these duplicates once the integration was complete. I deleted each of the duplicate pages from the original blog before exporting the files.

The procedure I followed to the best of my memory LOL

1. Delete the duplicate pages from the News Blog (the one being integrated)
2. Export the pages, posts, categories, comments, tags using the Export Function under the Manage tab.
3. Backup the receiving blog database using the WP Backup plugin
4. Backup the content using the same Export function above
5. Import the file created from the News Blog into the Tucson Real Estate Blog
6. Upload the new .htaccess file with the 301 redirects
7. Process complete go do something else (This didn’t happen)

Where it all went wrong

Everything proceeded according to plan till I got to step 5. After the first 65 post were integrated I got an Apache server error. I think it timed out. I repeated the process it passed those first 65 posts and said “already exists” it added another 65 posts till I got the same error. There were 250 + posts to integrate so it took 5 times running the import process to get to the bottom of the list and have the “All Done” message show up at the bottom.

Duplicate posts 5 copies

Not all the post were imported 5 times, it seemed two or three posts which were on the bubble of the 65 time out limit each time were added each time I did the import, even though it said “Already exists”.

The solution: I went to the manage tab and went month by month and removed all but the first import of the post. Everything about those posts was imported so it didn’t really matter which one I deleted just so I got it down to one.

The News blog had 7 months of content predating the other blog that is where I found the most duplicates, once I got to where those post were integrated into existing post the duplicates stopped.

Duplicate Categories

This got a little trickier. It duplicated the categories as well but it showed 4 of them with no posts in the category and all the posts in the first one created. This meant I had to be careful to delete only the empty duplicates (which I did).

I had one category show up as empty which I knew had 9 posts associated with it. Rather than try and figure out what this might be caused I I decided to close the browser now that the duplicate posts and categories had been taken care of and reopen. That did it. That category filled with the 9 posts.

The .htaccess file and redirect 301 saga

I thought it might take a little time for the new .htaccess file to “catch”. I was wrong! I got 500 server errors immediately and after waiting an hour switched back to the old file, immediately everything was back. What to do.

Try adding a few redirect lines at a time instead of all of them at once.

First 10 went well. Second 10 didn’t Then a light bulb went on.

The Easy Solutions that took hours to figure out

I had moved all the posts and categories and the permalink structure was the same on both blogs, (THIS IS IMPORTANT WHEN COMBINING TWO BLOGS) Maybe all I had to do was redirect the main directory change and that would be all I needed. A single line instead of 250+ lines.

I took the old .htaccess file and added this line

redirect 310 /tucson-real-estate-blog/ http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/

The important part was that final / at the end of the redirect. It worked prefect. Hours of creating a huge .htaccess file with lines of 301 redirects wasn’t necessary and besides, it didn’t work.

What’s happened since Saturday Aug. 30, 2008

The reader reported from Feedburner have gone from 32 to 74 as of this writing.  The news blog was showing 87 readers when I made the integration.

The blogtopsites went from 56 to 27 as of this moment.  Traffic to the site hasn’t doubled but it has increased significantly and I suspect as the week progresses the desired effect of combining Google juice and incoming links will have the desired effect.  I’ll write an update on the progress in a month.  (Note to self Oct. 1 blog post on the integration of the two blogs).

Blogroll Change Request

If you have linked to Tucson Real Estate In the News http://www.barbaralasky.com/tucson-real-estate-blog/ in your blogroll, would you please change the link to http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com I would really appreciate it.

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Post Tags: .htacess file , 301-redirect , blog integration , tucson-blog , tucson-real-estate

Site Indexed Pages Heart Attack

A couple of month ago I upgraded the lab to WP 2.6.  You will remember I wasn’t to happy with what was going on at the time.  I’m still finding some issues but for the most part have learned to live with it.

I’ve also upgraded three other blogs to WP 2.6.1 in the past week.

Google Sitemap Generator

When I upgraded the lab I also upgraded the Google sitemap generator from 2.7.1 to the current version 3.1.0.1 A couple of days later while checking my Google webmaster tools, specifically the sitemap, I stopped breathing when I saw out of 175 pages there were only 9 indexed.  It took less than the time of a speeding bullet to reach the end of a gun for me to run a quick site search and discover they were really all there.

I also started getting WARNING messages about pages not being able to be found, lots of them.  I’ve not done anything about it.  I probably should have, till now that is.

All the other blogs were reporting normal stats and no warning messages, TILL TODAY!  I upgraded on Monday and today they are all showing similar results ALL BUT ONE.  The one blog still reporting accurately I did not upgrade.  I’ve just set the other blogs back to the 2.7.1 version of Google Sitemap Generator.

I’m hoping in a few day the error and WARNING messages will go away and things will return to LOL “normal”.

Have you checked on your Google Sitemap lately?

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Post Tags: google sitemap generator , Google Webmaster Tools

I’ve recently upgraded three blogs to WP 2.6.1.  When I try and do anything with a comment that is flagged spam, I get an error message.

If I check them as not spam an error message appears about not being able to modify a header file.

If I try and delete them SAME MESSAGE.

The workaround has been to go back to version 2.1.6.  Everything functions as it should in that version.

Is anyone else experiencing this same thing with Askimet 2.1.8 ?

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Post Tags: askimet 2.1.8

Working out the Bugs

I recently installed the WP Super Cache plugin on Tucson AZ Real Estate.  I’ve installed it here at the lab as well.  I hadn’t noticed any difference in how fast the blog loads, but I did notice something this morning.  I’m using the Header Image Rotator Plugin on that blog. The Header images which should be rotating every minute weren’t rotating.  It seemed as if whatever images was displaying the first time I opened a page or post became cached with that page.  Every time I now open a page/post it has the image associated with the first time I opened it.

If you want the image to rotate every minute, you will need to turn off WP Super Cache.  But if you like the idea that as readers navigate your site they will have different headers images appearing in less than a minutes time the way they function together becomes a bonus.  But it will always be the image first associated with the page/post when it was opened by them the first time during your cache cycle.

Even forcing an F5 refresh does not rotate the image.  The good news, it does eventually cycle to a new image, it depends on the expire time you have set for the cache.  The posts do seem to load quicker.

If you have been banging your head against a wall trying to figure out why your images aren’t rotating.  This could very well be the reason if you have both of these plugins activated on your blog.  Each is doing it job.

WP Super Cache and Theme Edits

One last thought, if you are making changes to your theme, it would be a good idea to turn off any cacheing while you are doing so.  It might keep you sane for a little while longer, or maybe not. : )

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On Monday I wrote about the Hosting Day from Hell that took almost 12 hours to get everything back up and running. I was going to have this post live yesterday, but something call “Life” intervened and I was in the real world for most of the day. Geez out there it is really scary.

Options, I really needed options and I needed them fast. I don’t know about you but I get a lot of targeted traffic on my blogs and having two of them unaccessible was unacceptable. There are more than a dozen blogs on this particular hosting package and they were all down. The gateway to their folders was blocked. I had tired the usual of removing the htaccess file but that hadn’t worked. What to do.

One of the bogs hosted is a relatively new one. For No REal Reason. It is just about “stuff”. None related random thoughts and stuff I want to write about but don’t have anyplace to put it. So I bought www.ForNoREalReason.com and set up a blog.

Move to the other Hosting Package

I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket. I’m running a business off my blogs. I don’t blog to get leads, I blog because it is my business model for marketing. If my site is down I’m not doing business. It is also why I have more than one site. If something should happen to one, I have the others. If by some freak happening one of the blogs suddenly disappeared from Google search results I would have the other still up and running while I found the issue and corrected it. Therefore having two hosting packages with blogs on each also means if one server goes down at my hosting company I have the other one up and running and if need be can move sites to the other package.

This is what I decided to do as a first step. I would move For No REal Reason to the other hosting site.

1. Make a copy of all the files for the site to my local computer
2. remove the URL from the hosting package
3. copy all the files to a directory on the other hosting site
4. Point the url to a directory on the other hosting site
5. Wait for the DSN to reset

It took about an hour to do these steps. I did move the image directory because it was small. I did not move the MYSQL database to the new hosting site. It was functioning fine. Yes you can have your blog database on one hosting package and your blog a different hosting package.

It worked. As a last resort I now knew I could move the main blogs to the other hosting site if need be.

Find the Block to the Gateway

I knew something was blocking access to the folders and since it wasn’t htaccess related it seemed logical to remove the index.php file from the root and see what would happen.

A little background is necessary. I did something I wouldn’t do again and should probably address in a post of its own. In short here is the issue which can cause problems.

The Site itself has orovalleyhomes4sale.com as the “home” url to which the hosting package is assigned. Since that URL is associated with the root, I installed the Oro Valley blog in the root. If I want to have another blog with its own dedicated URL I create a folder, copy the Wordpress files to that folder and install a new copy of WordPress. Because I use a custom permalink structure it can take some time for it to be recognized. But to date this has worked just fine

I backed up all the files in the root and deleted the index.php file and all the related blog files. Within 10 minutes all the other blogs came back up.

I reinstalled the Wordpress files in the root and the blogs all disappeared again. (Drat)

I started looking at the index.php files for all the blogs one at a time, then noticed something. The index.php file for Wordpress 2.6.1 was very different from the earlier versions. All the blogs including the new experiment blog had been updated to the latest version. HOWEVER, the blog on the root directory had not.

It took about an hour of trial and error but I finally was able to reinstall Wordpress in the root, leave out the index.php file, run an upgrade routine to the latest version. Copy the index.php file from one of the upgraded folders to the root directory and within 10 minutes all the blogs were back including the one in the root directory.

Time 9 pm.

This entire adventure started at 8:32 am just 12 1/2 hours before, in which time I had only aged a year. Yes I obsess and treat these blogs like they are my children.

So that’s the rest of the story, as far as it goes. I’m still going to combine the news blog and the Tucson AZ blog into a single blog. NO that isn’t putting all my eggs in one basket. I still have other blogs I write on other servers and in different hosting packages.

The next step will be once combined, quickly removing the duplicate pages such as Contact Us CMA request and Home Finder pages.

Then begins the process of 301 redirects for those posts to the Tucson AZ blog. I can hardly wait for the adventures that lie ahead.

Finally, since I’m closing in on 1000 words I thought I would throw in a picture which has nothing to do with this post.

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Post Tags: htaccess , index.php , wordpress

It all started out as an early morning experiment that went horribly wrong and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about patience and URL resets.  I’ll try and keep this short and break it into section.  Yeah, I learned a lot today.

Combining Two Blogs into One

Dave as a Lab Rat

The experiment that went wild.  I have decided after a lot of hesitation and hair pulling (which is getting thin) I wanted to combine the Tucson Real Estate in The News blog with the Tucson AZ Real Estate Blog.  I write a lot of blog posts in the course of a month.

There has been less of a need to post to the news blog. At this point everyone knows there isn’t much good news or new in real estate and I want to post daily and fight depression doing it.

My issues.

1. How to bring over to the Tucson AZ Real Estate blog all the posts/pages/ and comments from the Tucson News blog.
2. How do I create an htaccess file with the 301 redirect code that will be needed so these posts can be found by the search engines.
3. How to notify everyone that has linked to the Tucson News blog it was going dormant and if they are willing shift their link to the Tucson AZ blog.

The first step was to create a new test database to try and integrate the two blogs.  I initially thought I could use the MYSQL database upgrade routine to accomplish this but soon found out the files were to large.  I decided to use the Export function under the Manage tab in 2.6.1.  It exported all posts/pages/comments/ etc to a new file.  I did this for both blogs.  I set up the new blog and imported both sets of files.  It took almost no time and I had both blogs integrated.  Step one was a huge success.

Then the lab rat (that would be me) took it one step further.  I thought it would be nice to attach the Tucson AZ blog to the newly created Database containing both sets of files. It went downhill fast from that point.

I realize soon the internal url structure for that database pointed to the location of the test blog.  I couldn’t just point to it in the config file like I could when I did it from the server using the MYSQL routine I described before.  Since I had set up a blog the url was inside that database file different than using the other method.  It didn’t like that and I switched it back.

I had the database, I knew it could be done experiment over.  I deleted the test directory using my FTP program and just like that all the blogs on that hosting site disappeared.  I couldn’t get to the admin panel, I couldn’t get anywhere.  In the past if this happened (YES IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE)  I just renamed the htaccess file so it couldn’t be found and waited a few minutes for things to reset.  This time they didn’t.

I called GoDaddy support which has helped me through similar issues a couple of times over the years which usually resulted in renaming the htaccess file.  This time they said it might have been something in the directory I had deleted, but the server was fine,  They could point to the welcome.html and it would come up, it was just those dynamic php files that were the issue and according to “Scott” that was “My Problem”.  Yeah.

I learned I can combine two blogs into one.  I haven’t addressed how to handle the 301 redirect from the old News blog to those integrated posts in the Tucson AZ blog.  Anyone with this kind of experience, I”m all ears.  I know I can do each of the 255 posts in 14 categories by hand, but “PLEASE Somebody Help The Boy”.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the rest of the story.  All the blogs are back up live, all the blogs have been upgraded to WordPress 2.6.1 and functioning nicely (Fingers Crossed)  Here is a hint at what else I learned while trying to figure out how to recover from this.

I learned how to move a blog url from one hosting site to another and bring it back up live.  That is good to know how to do.

I learned not to upgrade a blog living in a folder as a sub directory to a higher version of WordPress than the version on the root drive.

Oh Yeah, I was a big time Lab Rat today.  More on this Rats adventure tomorrow.  I hope you sleep well tonight, I’m at least going to be able to sleep.

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Post Tags: combining two blogs into one , lab rat