teachmewp.com » Featured

The Importance of Open Source to WordPress (V2)

Dave — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:06:01 +0000

Wait, haven’t I already made this post? Well, yes, but it’s a hot issue again.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the controversial meeting of Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson (creator of the Thesis theme).
Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis, A Leading WordPress Theme?(sorry the embed code doesn’t work so you’ll have to head over there to listen to it.

Please listen to the whole thing. It’s amazing how Chris chooses to ignore the GPL, and disrespect the whole WordPress community, simply because he doesn’t think the GPL makes business sense.

Chris – if you don’t think the GPL makes business sense, go find another project to develop your themes for. You’ll have to find a CMS that runs on Windows Server & SQL server, running IIS. Yeah, there’s a big market!

I love the part where Chris claims he is one of the most important people in the WordPress community. Before tonight i’d never heard of him. For a good counter-point, check out The 10 most important people in WordPress

The solution? According to Chris: “There’s no resolving this. Either you sue me or you don’t”

So people, please stay safe, use GPL themes, hug a WordPress developer and help make the world a better place!

Matt’s Response
Jane’s Response

046 – Theme Malware and the Theme Authenticity Checker

Dave — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:00:16 +0000

Wordpress.org/extend/themes is the only place you should get WordPress themes from. Why? Googling for “free WordPress themes” is dangerous. In this episode I show how the first page results for “free WordPress themes” will return you themes full of Very Bad Stuff(tm). How can you avoid this stuff, and find out if your themes are clean? Find out in this week’s episode!
Download the episode Here

I’m going to WordCamp Savannah (GA). A WordCamp is a kind of conference where you can meet lots of other interesting people who use WordPress. I’m giving away 4 tickets to WordCamp Savannah – but you have to watch the video to find out how to get them.

Ok, so if you Google “free WordPress themes” the results are full of themes that have bad stuff in them. By bad stuff I mean encrypted code. This code could be doing anything – installing viruses on your visitor’s computers, sending spam, hacking your site (or other people’s sites). Installing random themes is a very dangerous thing to do.

WordPress Theme Authenticity Checker to the rescue. This is a WordPress plugin which will scan all of your installed themes for Bad Stuff. In the video I demonstrate how it finds encrypted code in an infected theme. You should install this plugin and run it whenever you install a new theme – before you activate the theme.

Now you’re wondering, where can I get safe themes? It’s actually very easy. Just log into your WordPress dashboard and go under Appearance/Add New Themes. The themes there come from WordPress.org/extend/themes and these themes are much less likely to have bad stuff in them. Plus they’re way easier to install – just click the install button! Also, either now or very soon, each theme in the WordPress.org theme repository will be reviewed by a group of theme reviewers, so they’ll be even better.

That’s it. Be sure to listen to the Podcast to see how you can get a free ticket to WordCamp Savannah (you still have to figure out how to get there, I’m not paying for a plane or hotel room!).

045 – ClickHeat Open Source Heat Map Software

Dave — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:00:28 +0000

Heat Maps allow you to see what people are clicking on, and optimize your web site, advertisments, and navigation. Click Heat is a Open Source (free) Heat Map program, and I show you how to set it up on your WordPress site. Enjoy!

Download the episode Here

044 – JanRain RPX:Engage Single Signon for OpenID Twitter Facebook and Other

Dave — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:03:08 +0000

JanRain RPX/Engage is a plugin that allows users to sign into your web site using many different proviers, like twitter, facebook and openid. In this episode I show you how to install and configure JanRain RPX and conifgure it to allow twitter logins.

Download the episode Here

Why WordPress is no longer a Hobby for me

Dave — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:17:54 +0000

UPDATE: The video is now available!

WordPress is great software, which allows people who don’t have much technical knowledge to publish their information on the Internet. For me, the WordPress software was a really interesting ‘gadget’, a cool piece of software that was really easy to hack around with, modify, and yes even to make a bit of money with.

The vast majority of the Internet is either outright spam, or thinly veiled money making schemes, and a high percentage of this crap runs on WordPress (because it’s so easy!). This can be frustrating – I know that some of the viewers of my podcast are using the tutorials to set up spam sites, autobloggers or other such crap. Several times I’ve thought about quitting the podcast because of this.

On May 1, that all changed. For the second time I made the trek to San Francisco for WordCamp 2010, which is basically a gathering of WordPress users and fanatics. I knew this one was a ‘must attend’ because Richard Stallman, guru of Free Software was speaking. Now, Richard (aka: rms) has an important message about the importance of freedom and the role open source plays. And WordPress is open source software, which is why it is such a huge success. But rms himself came across as a childish, religious fanatic, and to be honest, I spent most of his presentation laughing and mocking him on Twitter.

(and no you can’t watch his talk. He had the stream turned off, because they weren’t streaming in an ‘Open’ video format)

I was kind of bummed. The big talk of WordCamp was a flop.

Then came the ‘lightning sessions’ – quick 5 minute talks. Kudos to the organizers for trying something new, but mostly it was ‘in person’ spam.

Finally Rinat Tuhvatshin got up on stage and started talking about his little WordPress MU site that he runs. Kloop.kg (or Kloop.info for english version). In Kyrgyzstan. Actually it’s more of a new site. They get young people, and teach them how to be reporters, and these people report the news on the web site. Now Kyrgistan isn’t exactly a stable country – just check out Google News. Human rights issues and violently oppressed protests are not uncommon. Kloop.kg reporters report what is really happening, and the Government isn’t happy about it.

Rinat explained how he once received a call from a representative of the government, who told him he had to take down a certain post or he would be killed. We (the audience) all burst out laughing. But he wasn’t joking and the laugh died off quickly, as the audience realized this wasn’t just another ‘SEO Expert’ or Author with a book to sell. This was a man who was willing to risk his life to get the word out about a repressive government. This was a man who had received and defied death threats from his own government. Who’s reporters were risking their lives every day, so that they could post updates to their WordPress blog. How stupid we all were to laugh.

This was the most serious, important talk of the day and it was only 5 minutes long. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, myself included.

Maybe 25% of the WordPress blogs out there are spam. Maybe 50 or even 99.999% could be spam – who cares. As long as there is at least one person like Rinat and his band of reporters, who are risking their lives to get the word out about important stuff (like a repressive government), the WordPress project is worth contributing to. If 29,999 of the episode views of my podcast were spammers trying to build better faster Viagra spam sites, and only one single view of one single episode helped one single person make life a little better for his or her fellow citizens, that makes this Podcast and all of the thousands of dollars (yes that much) I’ve spent worth it.

That’s why WordPress is no longer a hobby or cool gadget for me. WordPress is an obsession. WordPress is a world changing tool. WordPress is serious, and important. WordPress is a software program that IS making the world better, and not just in some theoretical way.

At the time of this writing, both Kloop.KG and Kloop.info were down. The last twitter post on the kloopinfo account was over a month ago.

Do you want to contribute to WordPress? The Contribute page at Wordpress.org. has many ways you can contribute, even if you aren’t a programmer. Please, help make the world a better place by contributing to WordPress!

043 – Make Wordpress Go Faster!

Dave — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:48:22 +0000

How to install and configure the W3 Total Cache, and set up a CDN (content delivery network) using AWS S3 and Cloudfront. Don’t worry, it’s much easier than it sounds, and you’ll get more visitors to your site!

Download the episode Here

042 – Backing up Wordpress and Google Font API

Dave — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:18:04 +0000

Backing up your wordpress installation (or installations) is extremely important. For all you know, as you read this your web hosting provider could have just gone out of business. Or a hard drive just died. Or somebody just deleted the wrong folder. How will you recover?
In this episode I show you how to do a full back up of all of your sites (even non-wordpress sites). Please, please back up your data ASAP!
Once we get that over with, I also show you the cool Google Font API, which allows you to add fonts to your web site, without your end users having to have them installed. Exciting stuff!

Download the episode Here

041 – Wordpress SEO Tips

Dave — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:50:09 +0000

This episode is chock full of SEO tips for your wordpress blog. Tips that are easy for a normal person to impliment! Meta tags suck, Google XML Sitemap, Page Rank checker and more! Visit teachmewp.com for more episodes

Download this episode

040 – New Media News Roundup

Dave — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:23:19 +0000

In this episode I cover the facebook controversy (are you a quitter?), the secret history of the kubrick theme, the Wordpress state of the word video, and Inc magazine’s incubation nation. Enjoy!

Download . . . → Read More: 040 – New Media News Roundup

039 – Wordpress 3.0 Preview

Dave — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:09:00 +0000

Wordpress 3.0 is almost here – sometime this month. In this episode I give you a preview of some of the features in Wordpress 3.0 including the new twentyten theme, with customizable headers and background, bulk theme updates and the new multi user stuff. There’s alot in this episode, be sure to check it out.

Download the episode here

Looking for a co-host

Dave — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:31:23 +0000

Hi, I’m looking for a co-host for a couple of podcasts I have in mind. One is a podcast about how to podcast, so if you know a lot about podcasting and are interested in being a co-host for a weekly podcast let me know. I’d also like to do an audio only podcast about Wordpress – not sure if it would be part of teachmewp.com or a seperate podcast, but I’d like to talk about wordpress with a co-host about once a week.
The only requirements are a) you’re good at talking and b) you can use Skype and have a good enough setup to match my audio quality.

So if you’re interested in either, please drop me an email: david@holowiski.com

038 – Naked Podcasting

Dave — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:08:59 +0000

Setting up a podcast – without any plugins. Heck, without Wordpress. Acutally, without a web site even. I show you how to set up a podcast for $0 (free!) without having to have a web site. Pretty cool.

Download the episode here

The list is back

Dave — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:56:48 +0000

I’m starting my email list back up. If you would like to subscribe, for updates and exclusive information, just fill out the form below. Thanks!

Ultra Super Easy Wordpress Installation

Dave — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:41:28 +0000

Having trouble installing Wordpress, or customizing your Wordpress site? The videos on this site are an excellent resource, but if you just want it done, now that’s an option. For $99 I will install and customize Wordpress for you, on the web host of your choice. You provide the hosting and domain name (But I’ll handle all the details) and in just a few hours you will have a fully functioning Wordpress site.
Install and configure themes and plugins for you, show you how to use Wordpress, and even set up a Podcast for you, if that’s what you want.

Interested? Want more information? Give me a call on my Google Voice number: (917) 512-9397 and we can talk!

An open letter to Bill Gates

Dave — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:00:46 +0000

Hi Bill. I know that as a geek, you really want to do everything yourself, which of course includes setting up your web site and doing a podcast, but sometimes you need help. I saw your “podcast” , but I have to tell you from one geek to another, that’s not a podcast, all you’ve done is post some WMA and MP3 files. I think you have a really great idea though, I bet you could have millions of subscribers if you had a real podcast, and I think you’re doing really great things so I’d love to help you.

So Bill, I would be happy to set up a web site for you to host a proper Podcast, for no charge. I would build this site on the free and open source platform – Wordpress. I would configure an RSS fed for you and even set you up with some great stats packages to know how many people are listening. You know what, I even have a spare Behringer PodcastStudio USB package which has a Microphone and a small mixer that is just perfect for podcasting – I’d be happy to send it to you at no charge. I assume you would have no problem getting listed in the Zune marketplace so I’ll let you handle that, but I will take care of the dirty details of getting your podcast listed in the iTunes podcast directory – you won’t ever have to talk to anyone from Apple. I bet we could even get your podcast featured on the front page.

This isn’t a joke Bill, I would be happy to help a fellow geek out. If you’re interested just use the call me button on the top right hand of this site, or drop me an email: podcast@teachmewp.com and let me know.

Thanks
Dave Holowiski

The danger of downloading themes!

Dave — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:56:48 +0000

Well if you just listened to my rant about the importance of open source to wordpress, what I’m about to say is not a surprise… if you download a theme from anywhere but Wordpress.org, you risk doing really bad things to your web site.
It seems that if you google for wordpress themes, almost all of the top results host modified versions of wordpress themes, with obfuscated code inserted in them. This code might do something benign like just adding backlinks to other sites, but it could potentially do terrible things, like installing malware on your viewer’s computers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Never install plugins or themes from any site other than wordpress.org!

Check out the video and links to some articles below…

Stop downloading Wordpress themes from shady sites
How Downloading a Premium Theme/Plugin From the Wrong Place Can Ruin Your Site
Watch Where You Download That

037 – The importance of Open Source to Wordpress (Audio Only)

Dave — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:51:17 +0000

In this Audio only episode of the podcast I discuss how Open Source, and free, is very important to Wordpress. This is a hot topic right now, with core plugins and . . . → Read More: 037 – The importance of Open Source to Wordpress (Audio Only)

036 – Image Editing in 2.9 and a Custom 404 page

Dave — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:58:21 +0000

A quick look at the new image editing features with Wordpress 2.9, and I show you how to customize the 404 (Page not found) page in your Wordpress Theme.

Download the episode here

035 – Viewer stats from iTunes and the last Theme you will ever need

Dave — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:48:19 +0000

How can you get viewer stats from iTunes? You can’t but I show you how to use Podtrac to get viewer stats. I also introduce you to the Atahualpa Wordpress theme which is highly configurable.
I use Podtrac to count downloads of my podcast. I use them specifically because they are free and it’s a simple redirect in the download link so it doesn’t affect download speed.
It’s fairly simple to use, you just modify your download link. As an example here is how I would modify a download link for my podcast:

The original file is:
http:///blip.tv/file/get/Dholowiski-034__Page_Redirection_and_Click_To_Call261.flv

To modify it to work with Podtrac (first make sure you have a podtrac account) remove the http:// and add the podtrac url:

http://www.podtrac. com/pts/redirect.flv/blip.tv/file/get/Dholowiski-034__Page_Redirection_and_Click_To_Call261.flv

The stats update daily, and are usually necessary if you are looking for an advertiser.

I also show off the great Atahualpa Wordpress theme, which is highly configurable. Some of the things you can configure:

How many sidebars
header graphic/behaviour
Highly configurable widgets
Fonts, sizes are all changeable through the theme options
HTML and CSS can be inserted through the theme options without having to edit files

That’s all for the podacst, have a great day!

Download the episode here

034 – Free Click to Call, Page Link Redirection and a Podcast Status Update

Dave — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:09:27 +0000

An update on the status of the podcast, and I show you how to add a super simple click to call button to your web site. I also show you how to redirect a page to an external web site! Fun stuff. Please be sure to fill out the listener survey at teachmewp.com/survey.

First I want to thank all of the viewers from the past year. I really appreciate you sticking with the podcast, through it’s on again off again, variable video size and quality and everything. If you want to know how many people viewed the podcast, be sure to watch this week’s episode.

For the first tutorial, I walk you through adding click to call to your web site. This is basically an icon a user can click on, and they will receive a phone call – so will you, and you will be talking to the user. This is great for marketing, but I also use it on teachmewp.com and point it directly to voicemail so that users can leave feedback on the show, from their phone, just by clicking. Be sure to watch the video for the details.

In the second part of the tutorial I show you how you can make a page link to an external site using the redirection plugin. Check out the “Discussion” tab along the top of this site, which started life as a page, but now links to the discussion forums at teachmewp.ning.com.

There are now many ways to give feedback on the show. First, you can just leave a comment on this post! That’s probably the easiest way. You can also use the click to call button, you will receive a phone call and be able to leave a voice message that I can play on the next podcast episode. You can also go over to the discussion forum at teachmewp.ning.com and start a discussion, or you can email podacst@teachmewp.com or you can even get ahold of me on twitter @dholowiski

I look forward to hearing from you! Enjoy the podcast!

034 – Free Click to Call, Page Link Redirection and a Podcast Status Update

New plugin Installed – Socialite

Dave — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:58:50 +0000

I just installed the Socialite plugin for wordpress. This plugin should automatically update Twitter, and the TeachmeWP.com Facebook Fan Page. This post is basically to test and see if this is . . . → Read More: New plugin Installed – Socialite

WordPress › JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID « WordPress Plugins

Dave — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:30:51 +0000

Update: There is now a Video Tutorial for installing and configuring this plugin.

I just found this cool plugin – the JanRain plugin. It basically allows users to sign into your web site using multiple authentication methods – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open ID, Windows Live, and Yahoo!
Pretty cool, and it reduces the barrier to entry, making it much easier for users to leave comments and interact on your web site.
I might do a tutorial on this in the future, what do you think?

WordPress › JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID « WordPress Plugins: “JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID”

(Via Wordpress.org.)

Also, today I just recieved two books to review for the podcast. Of course it will take me some time to read them, but I will be doing book reviews on the podcast in the future. Yay!

I used Drupal, and I liked it

Dave — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:16:35 +0000

Yes, it’s difficult to admit it, but I went over to the dark side yesterday. I’m setting up a new web site (teanoob.com if you must know) and going to be doing a podcast over there, and I thought I’d try out something different for a change. WordPress is fast, WordPress is easy, and I easily have 20 different WordPress sites running right now. But there are other CMS’s out there, and some of them are very popular, so I thought I’d find out why.

I did use Drupal once in the past but I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know any PHP or even what MySQL was so I was totally lost. This time, I came prepared. I selected Drupal pretty much at random – it was either Drupal or Joomla.

So the Installation of Drupal is fairly easy – pretty much the same as WordPress. You create a MySQL database and user, then run an installation script and it does the rest for you. I did this via SSH (command line) and I suspect if I had done it through cPanel it would have been much easier. I did run into two speed bumps. First, I had to change the configuration file to be world writeable (yikes!) and the same for a folder. I did make quite sure to change the permissions back when I was done.

Second, I had to go set up a cron job. Actually I haven’t set up the cron job yet, so I’m sure my site will explode in a massive firewall any minute now.

Once it was set up, I went on to select a theme, and had to add some modules (think Plugins). This was relatively easy, but there is no ‘one click install’ in Drupal like there is in WordPress, so I had to download and unzip the files by SSH (I could have used FTP too).

It did surprise me that I had to install a non-core module (think ‘third party plugin’) just to get pretty URL’s with the post name in the title. It was also kind of tough to wrap my head around modules, and blocks which are almost like plugins and widgets, but just different enough to make my head explode.

What I did like is that it is highly customizable. Once I installed the ‘Views’ module, I was able to build almost exactly the type of site that I want, actually I was able to build something in Drupal that I’ve been wanting in WordPress for quite a while. Have a look at the layout of teanoob.com (not the content, because there is none yet).

It will always show a box with the most recent video podcast episode, with normal posts going below it. There is also tons of extra places to put ‘blocks’ and a very configurable hierarchical menu system. All of this without touching any code. I am kind of enjoying it, although I’m sure I will have to get into some PHP coding once I try to figure out how to post Podcast episodes, and who even knows how the RSS Feed will work.

Anyway, I am enjoying using a different CMS for a change. I certainly wouldn’t recommend Drupal to anybody who doesn’t decide they need it on their own. It is much more “hands on” thank WordPress and definitely requires some Unix, PHP, and Apache skills that you can easily get by without in the WordPress world.

So that is my Drupal adventure. Stay tuned… once I get a working podcast I will post some more. I might even do a podcast episode about that. Nah… you don’t want that, do you?

033 – Your own URL Shortening Service

Dave — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:01:28 +0000

URL Shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl are very popluar right now, why not have your own? In this episode i show you how to use a PHP script to create your own URL Shortening service.

To accomplish this I use the PHPURL script from: http://blondish.net/resources/scripts/phpurl/

It’s a pretty easy script to install. First you download the file from the above URL, then extract the files using winzip or any other file compression software

Then you can FTP the files up to your web server.

Once you’ve done that, you need to create a database, and a user, and give that user access to the database. I do this from the MYSQL command line, using the following commands:

create database databasename; (I used a database name of ‘tinyurl’)
create username@localhost identified by ‘password’;
grant all on databasename.* to username@localhost;

Once that’s done, you edit the config.php file and enter this information, as well as entering a admin username and password (make sure to change it from the default password of password!)

Then you run the install script at yourdomain.com/install.php

That’s it! Once that is done you have a fully functioning URL Shortening service that anybody can use. It works great. Enjoy!

Download the episode here

032 – Wordpress Security

Dave — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:41:39 +0000

Wordpress security can be confusing and even a little bit scary. In this episode I show you some simple things that you can do to secure your wordpress blog and prevent it from being hacked.

First thing I cover is a article that talks about some great tips for securing your wordpress site: bit.ly/7sKOJE the most important thing from this article is choosing a secure password.

You can go to grc.com/pass to get a very secure randomly generated password, or if you choose to create your own, make sure it’s 8 characters or longer, with numbers and letters and some upper and lower case passwords.

Next up is the “Secure Wordpress” plugin which does several of the things shown in the article above, but in a convenient plugin.

Last but not least is the Login LockDown which automatically locks a IP address out if it tries to log in unsucsesfully 3 times within 5 minutes.

So that’s the end of the show, please check out the new discussion forums at teachmewp.ning.com, and be sure to fill out the listener survey if you haven’t yet, because it really helps out the podcast.

Thanks for watching!

032 – Wordpress Security

031 – Post to Wordpress.com using the Twitter API

Dave — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:45:09 +0000

Automattic just made it possible to post to Wordpress.com and read Wordpress.com blogs using the Twitter API. I show you how to configure Tweetie to post and read Wordpress.com, and talk a bit about the implications of this – which are huge! Enjoy.
Links from the show:
Matt’s blog entry – Post and Read via twitter API
API Root: https://twitter-api.wordpress.com/
And please fill out the listener survey.
031 – Post to Wordpress.com using the Twitter API

15 – Installing Facebook Connect

Dave — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:09:58 +0000

Facebook connect allows people to sign into your blog with their facebook credentials (without having to create an account on your site) which makes it much easier for them to leave comments). In this episode I show oyu how to install and configure Facebook connect on your blog, including the somewhat tricky setting up of a Facebook app (and setting up a canvas url). Enjoy!

Play the Episode

Please note that the video opens in a pop-up window. You will need to enable popups for this site to view this video!

14 – Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7

Dave — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:59:53 +0000

In this episode I walk you through backing up your wordpress installation and upgrading to Wordpress 2.7. Enjoy!

Full transcript after the break.
Hi and welcome to teachmewp.com your best wordpress how-to resource.
Today is finally the day, Today we’re going to be upgrading to wordpress 2.7.
If you’ve noticed I have waited a little while since wordpress 2.7 came out, this is specifically because I didn’t want to upgrade right away and cause any problems. Usually with a big software release there’s always some kind of problem and it seems like most of them have been ironed out by now.
One problem I would like to mention is the podpress plugin doesn’t work with wordpress 2.7. It kind of doesn’t look like there’s going to be any update for that so at this point if you’re using the podpress plugin I would not upgrade and I would hang on and see what happens.
Ok as the first step to upgrading what we need to do is back up our web site. This is in case something goes wrong we want to make sure we have something to restore from.
When you’re backing up your web site there are two things you need to back up. You need to back up the database, this is where all of your articles and posts and comments are stored, and you also need to back up the directory structure, this is where all of your templates and CSS files and PHP code are stored.
If you only back up one or the other you’re probably not going to be very happy.
So we’re going to back up the database first, to do that we have to log into our cpanel. Once you’re logged in you want to go the phpmyadmin application.
I know that my site is this database, 12, but if you’re not sure the way that you can find out is to click on it and you’ll see the different tables, I want to look at WP_OPTIONS, I’m going to click on the browse button and you’ll see that one of the options here siteurl is teachmewp.com.
I’m going to back up, I want to click on the export tab along the top.
So you want to make sure that you have all of your tables – select all. So here they are unselected, I’m going to select.
You do want to export to SQL format and here under structure you want to have the same check-marks as I do. These aren’t the same as what the defaults would be. So make sure you have structure, add drop table, add auto_increment and enclose table and field names with backquotes.
Uncheck any of the other options.
For data the same thing goes. You want to check off data, you want to change the defaults so uncheck these, you want to only have use hexadecimal for blob selected.
And down here you select save as file because that’s what you want to do. Just leave the filename template as is, and for compression you may as well use zipped. And once you’re ready hit go. This is going to back up the database and it’s going to download a file to your desktop.
So we’ve done the first half now what we need to do is back up all of the files and all of the templates and all of that stuff.
To do that we’re going to use filezilla. Any FTP program is going to work, filezilla is just the one I use because it is both mac and windows.
I’m going to connect to my website. The ftp address is ftp dot and then your web site address, so ftp.teachmewp.com or in this case it is a shared server so ftp dot and then whatever the address of the main server is.
Again your username and password is the same one you used to log into control panel not the same as your wordpress username and password unless you’ve made it the same.
So I’m going to connect, and in here I’m going to go into my public_html folder. And them in here I’m going to go into my teachmewp folder. If this was on it’s own server not a shared folder you would just go into public_html.
So on this side I’m going to throw this just on my desktop, so I’m going to go to my desktop which is users/demo/desktop and I’m going to create a folder called backup and I’m going to drag from the right to the left and I’m going to drop the files.
This will take a couple of minutes and it’s going to transfer all of the files from the web site down to my computer.

So while the file transfer is going I’d like to take a minute to mention our sponsors. The first one I’ve got is godaddy. Godaddy is your domain name registrar and it is the one I recommend specifically because they have the total DNS control which allows you total control over your dns records.
So if you’d like to support the podcast go to teachmewp.com and click on the godaddy deal here and it will actually display whatever the current deal is.
And their current one is if you register a .com domain for 3 years you get it for $7.49. Definitely make sure to google for godaddy coupon code because you can probably get at least 10% off that if not more.
I don’t usually recommend getting hosting from godaddy. If you do that go to teachmewp.com and go to the hostgator deal.
I highly recommend hostgator. Hostagotr is the hosting provider that this web site is hosted on. I’ve also set up several friends and family on hostgator as well.
It’s pretty cheap. The $7.95 is if you sign up for a whole year in advance but if you sign up for monthly it’s only 10 dollars a month and you get a virtual dedicated server which basically means you can host unlimited web sites. It is great.
One of the nice things that hostgator has done is they’ve bought carbon credits for all of the electricity they use in their data center so now your web site is powered by wind power.
Other ways to support the podcast are donations. I’ve got two donation buttons here if you’d like to just make a one time donation of $3 or if you’d like to make a monthly recurring $2 donation you can do that right here.

So let’s see if the file transfer is done yet. It looks like it is done so I am going to quit filezilla.
So if I go into my documents folder i have backup and I’m also going to grab my sql file and I’m going to throw this in the same folder and so now here I have a complete backup of my web site so if anything goes wrong which it can and often does, I can restore from the backup.

Now that I have a full backup I’m going to upgrade to Wordpress 2.7.
As you’ll find out this is much much easier than you might think, assuming that you’ve used hostgator’s fantastico to install wordpress. This is what I show you how to do in the earlier podcast and again it’s what I highly reccomend because it’s very esay.
So I’m going to go into my cpanel and I’m going to go into fantastico deluxe and here I’ll see a list of my websites and I’ll see the current version and I’ll see a link to upgrade to 2.7.
Now I have alot of web sites and most of them arent used anymore and that’s why they haven’t been upgraded yet but I’m going to go through today and upgrade the rest of them as well.
So I’ve got teachmewp.com and upgrade to 2.7.
And it is going to backup my current installation but I always like to make my own backup anyway just incase the backup fails.
So I’m going to upgrade, and it’s upgraded.
Now you’ll see that it has made some backups so I have double backups which is good.
Now I’m going to go back to my website and see if everything went ok.
Here we are at teachmewp.com, it all looks the same, which is good it shouldn’t look any different here, and if you log in you’ll see it looks quite different.
So I’m not going to take you through a full tour or show you where everything is because over the next podcasts you’ll see me using it. And it’s really pretty self explanaatory.
I am going to show you a couple of things so you can at least get back to working.
So up here near the top right is your new post, if you click on this it’s going to do a new post, or if you click on the on the drop down arrow you can do a new page draft or comments.
Along the left here this is the bar that used to be along the top you’ve got your plugins so if you need to go manage plugins you can click on that.
You’ve got your appearance which is where you can manage themes widgets or edit files, and you really have most your other categories here as well.
One neat thing is the quickpress, you can do a post right from your dashboard if you just fill in the information and hit publish.
So that’s a really quick way to make a post.
And that’s all for the podcast today. If you have any questions comments or suggestions for future shows please go to teachmewp.com and leave a comment on the show or you can also email podcast@wordpressvideohowto.com.
Also I want to make sure that everyone knows there is a new feed for the high resolution version of this podcast.
I am now recording and broadcasting in 1024×768 so if you’re either watching this on revver or if you subscribe to the old itunes feed then please go to teachmewp.com and hit subscribe here.
This links to the new high resolution feed in itunes and if you click on it you can subscribe.
So that’s all for the podcast today have a great day.