Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I fixed my WordPress 2.8 Visual editor problem – sorta

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Seriously … I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix the problem I’ve been having with the new WordPress 2.8 on 7 of my blogs! As I said in my last post the visual editor wasn’t working, and since I tend to post pictures in many of my posts (and always on my photoblog) that was a BIG problem!

I spent so much time searching on the web and reading posts and the WordPress.org forum trying to figure out a fix for this problem that I think it caused a delay in my posting new posts on my blogs over the last few days. I was seriously determined to fix my blogs.

So do you want to know how I fixed my blogs visual editor problem? I discovered that during the automatic upgrade WordPress didn’t upload some of the necessary files in the wp_includes/js/tinymce folder! I found the answer to my quest in the WordPress.org forums near the bottom of this page.

My WordPress install on all of my Feverishthoughts.com blogs were missing the following files in the wp_includes/js/tinymce folder:

wp-tinymce.js
wp-tinymce.js.gz
wp-tinymce.php

I downloaded a fresh copy of WordPress 2.8, unzipped the files, and then used my FTP program to navigate to the wp_includes/js/tinymce for each of the affected blogs.

I then deleted the FILES – (not folders) in the tinymce folder and uploaded the tinymce files from my copy of WordPress 2.8. This got rid of old files that were no longer being used by this WP upgrade and added the three extremely necessary new files (listed above).

I actually did this for all of my blogs (17) in order to get rid of the old files that are no longer being used.

Once I was done adding the files that weren’t included in the automatic upgrade I cleared my browsers cache, and restarted my browser. Once I logged back into my WordPress sites I found that the Visual editor almost always loads. When it doesn’t I just do a CTRL- refresh (for a hard refresh) and it loads.

So now I can once again upload or add photos to my blog posts, alter their size if necessary and add tags to my posts! Yeah!

I think the reason why I ran into this problem was that I had upgraded from 2.33 to 2.62 using the WordPress Upgrade plugin (this was many many months ago) and then when 2.7 came out I used the plug to do the upgrade and finally used the WP automatic upgrade to update my Feverishthoughts blogs to 2.8. Neither the plugin or the built in automatic upgrade seem to delete old files and in the case of the 2.8 upgrade it missed a few very important files!

All the rest of my blogs worked fine. I had updated them using Fantastico in my C-panel.

So the moral of the story … maybe wait about a month before upgrading your WordPress installation when a new version comes out as this will give them some time to discover and hopefully fix the bugs. And two – if you are having a problem with your WP installation, back everything up and then read the instructions on how to do a proper manual install. That will probably fix the most major problems.





Anyone else having trouble with WordPress 2.8?

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For the first time ever, I updated to the newest version of WordPress on the day that it came out. I believe that was June 11th. I spent that day upgrading all my blogs – all 17 of them!

Most of the installations went well, but I’m having trouble with my blogs on Feverishthoughts.com. The visual editor doesn’t work. Normally this wouldn’t bother me all that much since I do most of my writing in the plain text HTML mode, but if you want to add a picture via the “add an image” tab it doesn’t work. I click on the tab and nothing happens.

Same goes for adding post tags. I have to add tags for my posts by saving the post as a draft, then going to the Post section and doing a quick edit to add the tags.

I tend to upload most of my pictures to my Flickr account and then use the Flickr code to add them to my posts, however without being able to use “visual mode” I can’t re-size my images if they need an adjustment.

The two blogs that suffer the most from my lack of ability to use visual mode and add pictures are my photo blog (naturally!) and my gardening blog. I have tons of new photos of the flowers that are blooming in my garden and I can’t post them! How frustrating!

It sounds like the current beta version of WordPress 2.8.1 will address these issues, but given my experience I think I’ll hold off downloading the beta version for now.

Oh and it’s not a plugin conflict. Even with all my plugins deactivated I still can’t use the visual editor. I’ve also cleared my browser cache and tried re-installing wordpress (automatically) and that didn’t help either.

I think I’ll try manually upgrading one of my blogs and see if that helps. Maybe some of the files were corrupted when I used the automatic upgrade.

Anyone else having similar problems with WordPress?

Next time I’ll wait a couple of weeks before upgrading after a new version comes out.

Thinking of going back to school?

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In recession times it’s not uncommon for those who’ve been laid off or those who’s jobs might be on shaky ground to think about returning to school. I’m sure there are many people who have recently considered returning to school either to study further in their chosen field or to make a complete career change.

In the early 90’s, during that recession, I did a complete career change and so did my husband (boyfriend at the time). We were both jewelers and the jewelery trade wasn’t doing well, so we took turns going back to school. I became a nurse and my husband became a computer technician.

If you are considering going back to school you might be interested in taking a look at the online Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership course at Lewis University.

There are five concentrations in this course which will equip you with leadership and progressive management techniques, they are organizational management, not- for -profit management, Public administration, training and development, and higher education – student services.

They also offer an online Masters of Science in Information Security. The course is highly dynamic and it provides students with the managerial and technological tools to work with government agencies and businesses in order to safeguard them from threats to their data and computer systems.

I actually like the idea of online courses. They offer flexibility in that it’s often easier to fit an online course of study into your life. Lewis University also offers competitive tuition and has generous financial aid programs.

I know that if I were thinking of making a career change and possibly going back to school I’d probably look into an online course first. Have you ever thought of furthering your career by going back to school?

I wish I could afford a new Laptop

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I’m getting so frustrated with my Laptop lately. It seems to be getting slower and slower – especially when I run my weekly antivirus scan. Man that takes forever!

I’ve been looking at new Laptops over the last month or so each time we go to a store that sells them. I thought our 60 gig harddrive was big, but it looks like most new laptops have 300 gig harddrives now! Oh and more memory too!

I certainly can’t afford a new Laptop right now. We just had the brakes fixed on the car and bought two new front tires, plus two weeks ago our brake line had to be replaced too. So with all the money we put into the car this month, plus regular bills there’s no way we can shell out more for a new Laptop no matter how much we’d love to have a second laptop in the house.

This weekend I think we might try to buy some more laptop memory. This notebook has 1 gig of memory but if we can double that I’m sure it will help the computers performance when memory hogs like the antivirus scan.

BTW my computer is completely virus free. I’ve done all the checks and as I said scan it regularly. So it’s not a virus that’s slowing it down. It’s a too full harddrive and software that hogs memory.

Anyone having problems with Hostgator lately?

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I’m having hosting problems again. If you’re a regular visitor to this site you’ve probably noticed that at times my blog (and all the other blogs I write) load really slow and sometimes you’ll see error messages scattered throughout the page as well.

I’ve also had problems with my Wp-posts databases crashing and needing repair too. Plus I often can’t edit old posts and get error messages when I try. Nor can I always post when I want to because of server slowness or errors. I’m just about at my wits end.

This started happening near the end of March. I think the reason my sites are having trouble is because HostGator upgraded their MySql to PHP 5.1 and it’s causing all the errors and slow load times.

Anyone else on HostGator experiencing problems in the last month or so? I’m sure there’s a few, as I’ve noticed some of the blogs I visit regularly loading really really slowly lately when they didn’t have problems in the past.

If they don’t fix the problem soon ie go back to a trouble free version of PHP I may be forced to look for a new host. I hate that idea! I’ve loved Hostgator since I started with them in 2007 after a terrible experience with Lunarpages.

Any suggestions? I have over 20 websites and blogs now with more on the way so I need a very good shared hosting package from a company that doesn’t overcrowded/oversell their servers or else move up to VPS hosting.

Speaking of Lunarpages … I finally transferred some of my old domains from their service in April. I didn’t have a hosting account with them any longer, but when I left I let them continue to handle my domains registration … bad move as this meant I had to deal with support several times each year begging them to renew my domains. Believe me, their support people need support and sales training in a big way! Anyway … my domains are now with GoDaddy … but get this … Lunarpages sent me a renewal notice today for one of my domains that they no longer control! So I’m still stuck dealing with their support trying to tell them that I really don’t have anything to do with them anymore! Arghhhh! Frustrating! They’d better not try to bill me!

So again, if you have any good hosting suggestions I’d love to hear about it, plus if you have any hosting horror stories feel free to pass that on too. LOL

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