Updating WordPress Plugins

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Updating WordPress plugins used to be a hit or miss deal.
You had to go to the plugins page to check if there was an update available.
Not anymore.

With the latest versions of WordPress all you need to do is go to the Plugin page
of your blog and you can see right there which plugins have an update available.
(click on the thumbnail to see what I mean)

This feature not only makes it easier to see what plugins have an update, but also make it easy to go to the download page for the plugin and get the update.
Now you have the update what do you you do with it?

Well of course you have to upload it to your plugin folder of your blog.
Sometimes I delete the old version first and sometimes I don’t, for me it depends on the mood I’m in at the time.
Usually I’ll delete the old plugin first and I haven’t found a problem doing it that way.
For the few seconds it takes to upload the new version of the plugin it hasn’t effected anything negatively with the plugin not working.
Also sometimes the old version of a plugin may be a single php file while the new version may have more features that require multiple php files and requires the uploading of a folder instead of a single file. When you run into that you should delete the old version first.

Sometimes the version of a plugin you are using may not be compatible with the version of WordPress you are currently using. You wil see that happen when you upgrade WordPress from say 2.2.* to 2.3.*. In that case it is almost always better to delete the old version of the plugin and then upload the newer version.
An example of that would be with the Google Sitemaps plugin. Originally it was a single php file and now it is a folder of files. Of course there are alot more features to the plugin also.
But if you are using the older version and upgrade wordpress when you write and publish a post you will get a whole boat load of error messages.

So in closing let me say to make it a habit to check out your plugin page every day you wite a post. The little bit of extra time it takes is well worth it.

Google Sitemaps Generator

Sitemaps have been used for a long time on websites.
Originally they where simply a page on your site with all the sites pages listed with links going to each page. The idea was to place a link on your index page to the sitemap. This way your visitors could find it and use it like an index or table of contents in a book. Also search engine’s would follow the link from your index page and then be able to find and index the whole rest of your site. Many large sites still use (and should) this type of sitemap.

But in 2005 a new style of sitemap was introduced, the XML-Sitemap.
Google was the first to introduce the XML-Sitemap and naturally it wasn’t long before Yahoo, MSN, and Ask adopted the same format.

It was long after Google introduced the new format that Arne Brachhold
created the first Google Sitemaps Generator Plugin for WordPress.
Sitemaps and WordPress have come a long way since then, and the latest version of the Sitemaps generator has kept up with it all. I say latest because as of this writing the version is number 3.0.3 and was released on 11/28/2007. Read Full Entry

What to blog about

I was down at the local Stewart’s this morning getting a cup of coffee when I ran into an old friend I haven’t seen in over a year.
Jim made a mistake right off by asking me if I was still on the Internet.
Naturally I started talking about WordPress and blogging. After going on for a while, Jim interrupted to ask me a question.
“But what do all these people blog about.” Read Full Entry

Yet another favorite plugins list

It seems if you blog about WordPress, eventually you have to write a ‘favorite plugin’ list.
Well not wanting to disappoint, I’ve decided to through my list out there for you.

Keep in mind this is my favorite list, for the moment.
As I explore the many different plugins available for WordPress I always find a couple more that I like and after using for awhile can hit ‘my favorite’ list.
The ones I am offering up in this list are ones I use on a regular basis and install on all my blogs and all my clients blogs. These are in no particular order. Read Full Entry