WordPress upgrade is now so easy, there is almost nothing to it.

The new upgrade to WordPress 2.9 is typical of the inbuilt update routine. It simply updates itself, but there are a couple of points to watch out for.

WordPress Upgrade Fatal Error

First, the usual warning – backup your database and files.

It is easy to be complacent here, and assume that it never goes wrong. Frankly, it hardly ever fails, but if it does, it leaves you with no website, and no easy way of recovering it. If you are happy to run the risk of starting from scratch, then skip the backup – it’s what dummies do.
For us shrewdies, a quick backup is the first step in upgrading WordPress. The backup service from your web host admin panel will do it easily in one step (unless you have a very poor host).

Second, simply click the “Upgrade Automatically” button, and wait a few seconds. It is that easy – but what if it goes wrong?

Occasionally, you will see a message like:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2515174 bytes) in [your-wp-path]/wp-includes/http.php on line 1331

Do not panic – the “Fatal error” has not killed your website. It has stopped the WordPress upgrade, so your website is still functioning exactly as it was.

The problem is very easy to solve. Simply deactivate your plugins, upgrade WordPress, then reactivate your plugins.

If you have had any problems upgrading WordPress, please add your questions, or comments, below.

I need my WordPress Tags, and I want them right. I started writing about them in my last post, and I have plenty more to say – mainly from a site management point of view, but also many technical tips.

If you are browsing this site, or more importantly seeing all my wise words about UTW in a search engine, I want you to see http://www.shrewdies.net/tag/UTW, not http://www.shrewdies.net/index.php?tag=UTW. To be honest, the latter isn’t the end of the world, but when something that ought to be straightforward doesn’t work, I get frustrated.

Frustration mounted as I searched the UTW site, trying what felt like 100 .htaccess variations. Why won’t it work?

All it needs is a simple change of the UTW options to invoke URL rewriting and that should be it. Then the more you try to understand, the worse it gets. Is it a server configuration problem? Is it a WordPress core coding problem? Have I screwed up my .htaccess with all these changes?

I just want URL rewriting.

OK, try Googling for url rewriting UTW.

Top of the list sits Using Permalinks « WordPress Codex

WordPress URL Rewrite Plugin for blogs running on IIS …. WordPress are being overly greedy and getting invoked before UTW’s rewrite rules have a chance. …

Hmm… Looks like a WordPress problem then – better check it out. Long page, but quite interesting. How can we stop being WordPress being greedy?

This usually occurs only when using a custom permalink structure (like /%postname%/). To fix it, either switch your Permalink structure to “Date and name based” or hack the UTW plugin to place the UTW rewrites at the top of the internal rewrites array. More Info on this.

And More Info (from www.naturalsearchblog.com) gives the answer. The unbelievably simple answer.

From Stefan Freimark:

rebuilding the permalink structure solves problem

All you need to do, after activating UTW and setting the options, is to go to Options – Permalinks and click Update Permalink Structure. Thank You, Stefan.

I discuss the merits, or otherwise, of SEO on my web business site. Keywords for SEO are generally recognized as being unimportant, to the extent that free WordPress.com sites do not have them. However, there is an alternative, as I describe in my free WordPress.com tag feed page. I think tagging is still important.

Tagging serves a number of purposes, definitely in order of importance:

1. Helps visitors find related content.
2. Makes me focus on what is important in the post or page.
3. Tells search engines what the article is about.

example upgrade-wordpress
All aspects of WordPress can be upgraded by tweaking the code. This is not a significant part of this site about business web hosting, but it is an important one. I try to find ready made extras for my WordPress Hosting setup, but if they do not quite do what I want, I am happy to apply one or two code tweaks to upgrade them.

WordPress upgrades are not important enough to warrant a category, but they are quite closely related to business web hosting. They will crop up across categories, and I might even do a post that is focused just on upgrading WordPress. My answer is to tag them.

The secret to choosing good tags is to focus on what visitors are looking for. They should complement and not duplicate categories. I’ll write more on technical tools to help choosing tags later, to link in to the advice on my web business management site.

My chosen WordPress plug-in for managing tags is UTW. I use it in conjunction with some other plug-ins to help focus every article on being accessible to visitors – a process I’ve heard referred to as Visitor Optimization. I call it looking after your customers – a maxim that’s served many a shrewd business owner for centuries.

The related plug-ins are:

Google Sitemap Generator

Not directly related to WordPress tags, but very important for building sitemaps (and not just for Google). I use the extra features of version 3 with no problems, despite it being beta software. Included here as it links with…

Tag Warrior – Sitemap link

… this plug-in which adds tags index pages to your sitemap.

All in One SEO Pack

A new one for me, recommended by many. It should link titles and UTW, but that means, it aint all in one.

SEO Title Tag

Now this takes me back to a pre-WordPress life. Good page titles to get attention separate from good article headlines to maintain interest. I often tried to get round this with a headline starting the post, but this is better. My only beef is the confusion with the tag word. I keep tags for in-article keywords, usually duplicated in meta-keywords. Meta-titles and meta-descriptions adequately describe the header parts of an html page.

I’ll write more in-depth articles on each of these in future. The technical part of this is quite simple, but I think it warrants further explanation.

One final point that relates strongly to tags, and is vital to every website. You need HitTail. The HitTail code can go anywhere in the body – I put it in footer.php just before </body>. There is also a plugin on the HitTail site and one called TailHitter – I’ll try this soon to avoid problems when changing themes.