Quick Online Tips » WordPress

How To Backup and Restore WordPress Database

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:36:07 +0000

Guest Post by Udegbunam Chukwudi.
How can you backup and restore your WordPress blog database? If you’ve been blogging long enough, you might have heard the words “Backup Your WordPress Database Regularly!” Well, this is quite true. Don’t take it with a pinch of salt! A healthy backup of your database could one day be THE ONLY means of restoring your blog should something go wrong such as a bad plug-in installation or an attack by blog hackers.

For a second time since I started blogging, this database backup of a thing, as some would call it, has saved me a lot of headache. Recently I messed up my blog’s permalink structure and my saving grace was the day before’s database backup.

DISCLAIMER: This tutorial is provided as it is. I shall not be held responsible in any way should you encounter problems like loss of database and entire blog/website along the way. Use this at your own discretion. It worked EXCELLENTLY well for me and should do the same for you hopefully!

How to Backup Wordpress Database.

1. Download, install and activate Wordpress Database Backup

2. Go to Tools in the sidebar of your dashboard and click on Backup

Under Backup options as shown below, select “Download to your computer” and click on “Backup Now”. When the backup is done you’ll be given an option to choose where to save the backup. Save the backup and you’re done.

Note: I strongly advice you schedule a daily backup of your database as issues could arise at ANY TIME. Simply navigate down the Backup option page to Scheduled backup. Select the once daily option and select which tables you’d like included in the backup. Type in your email address, click the schedule backup button and all is well. Check to see if your first backup gets delivered successfully the next day.

How To Restore Wordpress Database

The guide below will help you restore your database in no time using the backups that have been made in the past. I’m assuming that your current database has been damaged or is behaving erratically.

1. Log into your FTP account and Delete everything in the /wp-content/cache directory.

2. Log into PHP MyAdmin and select your wordpress database. It’s mandatory you remember clearly well the name of your wordpress database especially if you auto-installed it using Fantastico.

A list of all of the tables contained in the database will be shown. As shown below, click on Check all to select all the tables then select the Drop option to delete them PERMANENTLY.

You’ll be prompted to confirm the Drop action

Choose Yes and all tables will be DELETED with this result displayed on your computer screen

Now that the database for wordpress is empty, let’s proceed to uploading our database backup file

Click on the Import menu as shown above and then browse to the location of the backup file as shown below. Once you’ve done that, click on go and wait for the upload process to finish.

A successfully database restoration will show you something similar to the message below

Once the whole restoration process is done, log into your dashboard and make sure everything is working okay. Don’t forget to browse your site to see if it’s functioning as expected.

This guest post was written by Udegbunam Chukwudi who shares make money online and blogging tips @ his PR 2 dofollow blog. You can also write a guest article and share your WordPress tips.

Must Read Related Articles

WordPress 2.9 Gets Basic Image Editing

QuickOnlineTips — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:36:58 +0000

Did you know basic image editing is expected in WordPress 2.9! Though the WordPress 2.9 Codex does not reveal many new features, other than Revision of upload and media stuff and Revised admin settings screens, someone found it out.

WordPress Tavern decided to install the test versions of WordPress 2.9 on his blog and found some cool basic image editing tools like crop, rotate, flip, undo, redo, buttons. There is also a facility to scale images to custom sizes. You can check them playing with the new WordPress buttons in this video.

Though the image editing tools are pretty basic, it is an excellent start and will definitely be very useful for bloggers who use images very frequently. Now lets see if it actually makes it to the final release.

Must Read Related Articles

Add RSS Cloud to WordPress: Push Updates to RSS Readers

QuickOnlineTips — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:46:13 +0000

A new development called RSS Cloud promises to push your blog updates to supported RSS aggregators and feed readers instantly and give real time updates. With Wordpress.com announcing support of its 7.5 million blogs to this feature, the blogosphere needs to wake up and incorporate this feature.

What happens now? When you publish your WordPress article, the feed is updated, you ping various blog tracking services and RSS aggregators using one click pinging services (which is most commonly Pingomatic in WordPress), or using modified WordPress ping lists. But the whole process gives a lag of few minutes to an hour depending how quickly your article is grabbed by these services (though we often noticed instant updates in Google reader)

RSS Cloud promises a way for people to get push notification that your feed has updated. Which basically means that as soon as your article is published, all supported RSS services will grab the article instantly. NO waiting.

So has the action started? Currently only 1 RSS reader called River2 supports the feature. With Wordpress.com lending support, you can be sure that most RSS aggregating and blog tracking services will have support for RSS cloud in a few weeks. Google Reader had begun a limited implementation of a related protocol called PubSubHubbub last month. Here is the Implementor’s guide to rssCloud.

You can now spot this code in wordpress.com feeds

How can Wordpress self hosted bloggers get RSS Cloud? Joesph Scott has created the RSS Cloud WordPress plugin which will do it automatically for you, till the next version of WP supports the tag.

More exciting news is expected after the rssCloud Meetup 2.0 on Wednedsay September 9, 7-9PM at 110 South Hall on the UC-Berkeley campus.

Update: So I added RSS cloud support to QOT using the plugin above and now find this code attached to our RSS feeds.

Must Read Related Articles

10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:53:56 +0000

This a guest post by Igor Kheifets
Which are the must-have WordPress plugins? As a blogger, I have spent months of my life researching all sorts of different Wordpress plugins. To tell you the truth – I still do to this day. From Social Bookmarking to SEO to Security, I have installed, deactivated and removed hundreds of plugins throughout my blogging career.

This being my first guest post here on QOT, I wanted to share some REALLY useful insights. I have decided to present you with a list of the Top 10 Must-Have Wordpress plugins a starting Wordpress Blog can’t do without.

Best wordpress plugins

1. All In One SEO Pack – An essential plugin for any blogger who’s interested in conducting on-page SEO. All In SEO Pack provides jillions of options but for the majority of bloggers (including me) the default ones are more than enough. All In One SEO Pack allows tweaking Meta Titles, Descriptions and Tags of your blog without changing the content. The plugin comes in handy whenever you come up with a catchy title but it doesn’t include your targeted keyword. Just stick another Title into the SEO module and the search engines will never know how creative and sneaky you really are. The plugin also protects your blog from violating Google’s Duplicate Content – a violation which seems to be a major problem these days. With Google becoming more uptight by the hour, I recommend installing this plugin just in case.

2. Comment Luv – Comments are a way of your readers showing love for you and your blog. Comment Luv enables you to show some love in return straight away by including a titled link to their last blog post or tweet at the end of their comment. The technical details are not important – what’s important is the fact that this plugin drastically increases user interaction on your blog. People are happy to comment if they know that they are getting extra exposure in return.

3. Popularity Contest – This plugin helps to see which posts are the most popular by evaluating views, comments, impressions, etc. All posts are tracked and given configurable point values to determine popularity. Popularity Contest allows you to determine the popularity between dates as well. You can create sidebar widgets with the most popular posts this year, this month, this week, etc.

4. TweetMeMe – The Easy ReTweet Button. Using TweetMeMe drastically increases your blog’s chance of going viral on Twitter. This plugin optimizes the ReTweeting process to a single click, which makes it much more attractive to your readers.

5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – YARPP provides a list of posts and/or pages related or similar to the current post/page introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. This plugin utterly improves the click through rates and blog navigation by simply giving the reader more of what he wants.

6. WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache makes your blog load faster. Why wouldn’t you want to download and install this plugin?

7. Smart Update Pinger – Plugin protects your blog from over pinging by pinging only when you publish a new post – not when editing. I wish I could say more about it, but I can’t. It’s just a great security plugin, that’s all.

8. Redirection – Often, bad SEO is caused by broken links and indexing problems. Redirection enables you to prevent Google Bots and Yahoo Spiders locking themselves in a loop. This plugin improves your site indexing and navigation by allowing you to create simple 301 redirects in order to avoid those pesky indexing problems.

9. Contact Form 7 – Every major blog has a contact form. They used this plugin to create it.

10. Sexy Bookmarks - The sexiest sharing plugin for your Wordpress blog. I haven’t yet found a sharing plugin that can top the looks of Sexy Bookmarks. Sure, there are plenty of alternatives and some of them are probably much better than Sexy Bookmarks, but unlike any other, this plugin actually makes you WANT to share.

Guest author Igor Kheifets is a 21 year old internet marketing expert. Igor blogs at IgorHelpsYouSucceed where he shares advanced strategies in SEO, Copywriting, Lead Generation and Social Media. Follow Igor on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook. You can also share your favorite tools by writing a guest article on QOT.

Must Read Related Articles

All Wordpress.com Blogs Get WP.me Short Urls

QuickOnlineTips — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:22:17 +0000

All Wordpress.com blogs and pages now have their own wp.me short urls. Automattic decided to follow the short url craze and now grants wp.me urls to all permalinks in Wordpress.com blogs, giving more branding to these WP blogs.

Firstly WP.me claims to be the only two-letter .me domain in the world! From now on every blog and post on WordPress.com will have a WP.me URL, which will be linked in the section of the webpage html using rel=shortlink. Wordpress promises these permalinks will stay around the internet forever and they will regularly monitor these urls for spam.

So can you get a short wp.me url for your blog? Sorry, WP.me urls will only work for Wordpress.com hosted blogs.

Where is the wp.me url? Click the “Get Shortlink” button next to your permalink when you edit or write a post, and when you click it you’ll get a popup with the wp.me link.

Must Read Related Articles

How to Change Cron Time on VPS cPanel

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:36:15 +0000

I was trying to change our server cron timings which is usually set at 1AM. But when you change your server time to match your own local time, the Cron activities still continue at 1AM. So how can you change the cron timing on your VPS Cpanel?

1. Go to WHM >> cPanel >> Manage Plugins

2. Install the cronconfig cPanel plugin which allow users to edit cPanel cron settings/program run times.

3. Now refresh the WHM, you will find the plugin option loaded in the bottom of the left panel.

4. Set Cron time – WHM >> Plugins >> Configure cPanel Cron Times

upcp is the program that updates cPanel and it is recommended to run this script once a day. It has, by default, been set to a random time between 9pm and 6am local time. cpbackupcpbackup is the program used to run backups on your server and set by default to run at 1am. However, it is a good idea to set these cron jobs to run at an off peak time of your site.

Setting cron time – Remember the Hour is always set in military time; Day set to 15 means 15th day of the month; Month is coded as 1=January and 12=December; and weekdays are noted as 0=Sunday and 6=Saturday.

Here is what sample settings mean – Minute = 47; Hour = 1; Day = *; Month = *; Weekday = *. This process would run everyday at 01:47AM. Have you set you server cron functions at non peak hours?

Must Read Related Articles

9 Best WordPress Security Plugins

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:08:29 +0000

Guest post by Srikanth.
Do you know the best security plugins for WordPress? WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms; though it comes packed with security features, hackers always looking for vulnerabilities to hack into your blog.

In order to eliminate attacks if not minimize them, here are some of the top WordPress security plugins which will help you in this regard.

1. WP Security Scan
This plugin will scan your entire WordPress installation and will suggest you regarding security vulnerabilities like passwords, database security, file permissions, admin security. It will also hide the version of your WordPress and remove the META tag from the core such that hacking to your WordPress installation would be hard.

2. Secure WordPress
It will help secure WordPress installation by removing miscellaneous items after the installation process which may aid hackers. It will remove error information from the login-page and also remove or change the WP-version data but leave it unchanged in the admin area. It is suggested to remove any unwanted information to the non-admin for security reasons so it will remove update information about plugins, themes and core update information. Secure WordPress will add a blank index.html to the plug-in directory such that if anyone is trying to view the contents of the directory they will be viewing a blank page instead of the contents.

3. WordPress Database Backup
This is the first plug-in to be installed soon after you complete WordPress installation. It will help you backup all your core data and other content of your choice to the destination your choose: hard disk, email or remote server. In the event of crash either by your fault or from hackers, you can restore your WordPress blog from the backup file easily. It is recommended that you use this plug-in for WordPress version 2.0.3 or later.

4. Force SSL
Having a secure SSL connection to communicate with your users is beneficial. To enable this, your site must be SSL enabled first. To implement this, you need to buy the SSL certificate. By installing this plug-in it will force your user browser to connect to your site via a SSL connection. This eliminates any third party attacks between the connection and all the data that is transmitted to and from the site will be encrypted for better security.

5. Chap Secure Login
If you are not having a secure connection like SSL to protect your password , then you can use this plug-in for encrypting passwords. It will use the Chap protocol to hide the passwords and transmit it encrypted. The only information that is transmitted unencrypted is your username. Protecting password will give full security because password leaks will enable the hacker the gain full control of your WordPress blog.

6. Anonymous WordPress Plugin
All the WordPress versions 2.3 and above have the feature to get automatic updates for plugins. During this process it will send some of your information like your blog’s URL, version number, list of installed plugins and activated plugins to Wordpress.org. This information could be of potential use for hackers. So to avoid this, installing Anonymous WordPress plug-in is a feasible option. It will strip off your blog’s URL and version number and empty the activated plugins list. This plug-in is compatible with WordPress 2.3 and above.

7. Login Encrypt
This will help encrypt the login information using the complex DES and RSA combination. It uses the JavaScript appended and encrypted the password of the user and generates a unique DES key. And by using this key, user can have secure login each time they login to your blog.

8. Admin SSL
This plug-in will work with both the private and shared SSL connections and it will force a SSL connection in every page where password can or has to be entered. It is very helpful to protect the admin area, posts and all the pages of your WordPress installation and secure the login page. This plug-in works on WordPress 2.2 to 2.7.

9. AskApache Password Protect
It will block the bots and creates a safe wall for any vulnerability your WordPress blog may have. It will protect your password as well as your WordPress directories like the wp-includes, wp-content, etc. It is like placing your WordPress blog behind a security wall.

Guest blogger Srikanth writes on Tech Inspiration blog about tips, gadgets, and technology. You can also write a guest articles and share more useful tools you like.

Must Read Related Articles

5 Best WordPress Plugins to Shorten URLs

QuickOnlineTips — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:49:15 +0000

Guest post by Srikanth.
Looking for Wordpress Plugins to shorten urls? Many people would like to share the URLs of web pages or an article which they find interesting with their friends. But most of the URL’s are very long and these days micro-blogging is the hot trend which allows users to post messages only up to 140 characters. Due to this, many of the URL’s will be chopped off at the end making it useless to share them. So, to solve this problem URL shortening is a feasible solution.

There are plugins available for WordPress that allow you to shorten the lengthy URLs and enable you to count the number of clicks for each shorten URL. WordPress plugins are very easy to install and use. You can include a short URL for every post in your WordPress blog so that users can easily share posts with others right from your blog.

Wordpress Url Shortening Plugins

Here-in are the five handy WordPress plugins for shortening URL’s.

1. Short URL Plug-in – This WordPress plug-in allows you to shorten the long URL’s easily and it even enables you to keep track of the short URL’s so that you can know how many times each short URL has been clicked. This feature is really useful to track downloads and other links in your blog. If you wish to reset the counter you can click on the ‘clear all’ button to zero the counter. It includes pagination of links, easier setup of htaccess (permalinks) and allows administrators to pass variables to their redirects.

2. YOURLS WordPress plug-in – This is a URL shorting service that lets you to shorten the long URL’s on your post and tweet them to the Twitter site automatically. You can configure the settings according to your needs such that you can set it to tweet when you have added a new post or page on your blog. It will send a Tweet with the title of the post and a shortened URL which will redirect to your post. It is very simple to install and works automatically after the initial configuration of the plug-in. It is also compatible with other URL shorting services like the Tinyurl.com, bit.ly is.gd, tr.im etc.

3. WP-Chunk – This WordPress plug-in will shorten the URL’s that are present in the comments field. Most of the visitors would like to add or share some other information related to the post in the comments. In that case, they just add the URL of the page that contains the related information. This WordPress plug-in will help shorten the URL’s present in the comments field so that you do not have problem when editing the comments or your blog will look just tidy with all the short URLs.

4. Pretty Link – This is another handy WordPress plug-in that allows you to shorten any web page URL’s. It will help you to track the hit count of the shortened URL’s, where each hit came from, the browser used, OS and the host. One cool feature of this plug-in is that: you can use your own domain name to shorten the URL’s.

5. Shorter Links – This WordPress plug-in will generate shorter URL of the posts on your blog so that users can easily post the link on any of the web services like Twitter, friendfeed, share it etc., When you save the post to WordPress, the shorter link that is generated can be edited into more meaningful characters. You can further configure the plug-in using the provided settings.

Guest blogger Srikanth writes on Tech Inspiration blog about tips, gadgets, and technology. You can also write a guest article and share your favorite tools and services.

Must Read Related Articles

6 Best Facebook WordPress Plugins

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:38:05 +0000

Guest post by Srikanth
Looking for Facebook WordPress Plugins? Facebook is one the biggest social networking sites and most of the users update their account regularly and it is a good medium to share stuff with friends. So installing a Facebook plug-in to your WordPress blog enables your users to easily share the posts. Herein are 6 cool WordPress plugins for Facebook.

Facebook Wordpress Plugins

1. Add to Facebook
Once you install this plugin on your WordPress blog, you can see a footer link at the bottom of each blog post. By clicking on this link, user can add the current post to their Facebook mini-Feed. You can choose either a text link “Share on Facebook” or a Facebook button or both can be displayed at the bottom of the post. By clicking on the link, the user can sign in to the Facebook account it he is not already logged in and the post will be automatically added to his Mini-Feed.

2. Facebook Comments
This plug-in will import all the comments that are written on Facebook to your blog to the exact post such that you can see all the comments that are been made for a particular post directly in your WordPress blog. By this way you will not miss a single comment made on your post and it automatically updates the comments. (Edit: Plugin is not working for some people and pending update by author)

3. Facebook Dashboard Widget
This WordPress plug-in for Facebook allows you to see all the updates from your friends and allows you to know what your friends are doing. This is a dashboard widget that allows you to go side by side with your friends on Facebook and your WordPress blog. Using this widget you can know the updates from your Facebook friends even if the Facebook site is blocked.

4. WP-FBConnect
This plug-in will add Facebook functionality to your WordPress blog using the Facebook Connect APIs. You have to link WordPress and your Facebook account, and once they are linked you need not have to sign in again. You can publish the comments on your blog through the newsfeed and Facebook avatars will be displayed in the comments field.

5. Gigya
All the features in this plugins are fully configurable by the WordPress administration panel. By installing this plug-in to your WordPress blog, you can have a secure signup and login for users in your site. You can update your states on various social networking sites at once and also invite all your friends on various networks to visit and join in your blog site.

6. Facebook Photos plug-in
This plug-in allows you to add photos to the posts directly from the Facebook. All that you have to do is install and activate the plug-in and link your Facebook account with the WordPress blog. After that when you edit a new post in WordPress, a new Facebook icon in the add media section will be present – by clicking on the icon you can see the photos that you have uploaded to your Facebook account. You can then insert the photos to the post as small, medium and large size and can also align the image position.

Guest blogger Srikanth writes on Tech Inspiration blog about tips, gadgets, and technology. You can also write a guest article and share your favorite tools.

Must Read Related Articles

Download WordPress App for Blackberry Mobile Phones

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:03:07 +0000

Now you can manage your WordPress blog from your Blackberry Mobile Phone easily. Get the Blackberry App for WordPress, its free and open source and will surely bring joy to Blackberry bloggers out there.

The Blackberry app will work with all new BlackBerry devices such as the 8700, Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm, with BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 or newer. The Wordpress app will work on WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress version 2.5.1 or newer. For self-hosted WordPress sites, ensure you have XML-RPC enabled on dashboard under Settings -> Writing.

Wordpress Blackberry App

Point your BlackBerry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install to install the Blackberry app for WordPress. Remember its a beta software, so is bound to have bugs, which means dont use it to manage your primary blog to avoid surprises. The app will frequently prompt when new versions are available, which you can easily upgrade. Support is available at the WordPress for Blackberry Forums.

Here is a video explaining the features