I’m actually quite pleased with this WordPress software for my blog website. It is quite easy to use and has many features. With each upgrade, some new features were added. But my last upgrade caused some problems and took me a whole day to fix it.

Ryan asked me whose fault was it. Come to think of it, it was not the upgrading installation fault, but an old issue. When I first installed it, I place it in a directory called journal. After making quite a number of posts, I decided I didn’t like that folder because the URL was affecting the kind of ads displayed from Google. I could of course just delete the installation and start all over again, but it would be very tedious to repost the blogs. Another way was to somehow back up the SQL and restore it to the new installation. However WordPress has a feature in which it allows the blog to be displayed on another directory. This feature was actually for those would like to keep their root directory of their website clear from clutter. So I decided to try it.

Setting up was quite easy. Just go to the settings page and change the Blog address URL to where you want the WordPress to be displayed while keep the WordPress address URL pointing to where your installation is located.

Next was to have your .htaccess file in the new blog folder to point it to your current WordPress installation location:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

This went on fine for a long time, I could make my post and it showed up in the folder that I wanted till I made a recent upgrade to WordPress version 2.5.1

Somehow the post did not show up when the URL was clicked and I ended up on my Drupal site which was installed in my root directory. At first I thought it was my Drupal installation or the root .htaccess file that was messing up with my WordPress program. After tinkering with the root .htaccess with no success, I finally stumbled upon the problem when I reverted the WordPress to its original location. The post could be displayed without any problem but it was using the original installed directory, not the directory that I specified. I didn’t want to change back to the original directory because I have many incoming links pointing to the blog.

To work around, I took a chance and shifted the entire installation by copying it over to the directory that I wanted. Not all program can be shifted just like that because of internal linking. However WordPress do not seem to have any problem after shifting it. All my URL addresses are correct again, though I now have to log in using the new location. To make sure it worked, I rename the old folder just to see whether WordPress would crash. It seems to work fine and I decided to keep it that way for now.

Moving the installation did pose me one problem, the Fantastico DeLuxe that came with my BlueHost hosting provider would now not know where my WordPress is installed. If I were to use its automatic upgrade feature, it will not upgrade the new location. I would have to either manually upgrade it, or copy over any upgrades to the old WordPress location and keep my fingers crossed that it would not crash. One possible idea is to reinstall the whole WordPress installation to make use of the auto upgrade feature by first backing up the SQL database, then after installation, restore the SQL database. I’ll probably do this project next time after running some test to see if it would work.

I’ll continue with this set up for now as the project seems tedious and I have other fishes to fry.