“If Obama was serious about change he would stop saying ‘God bless America’ and instead end every speech with ‘The Spice must flow.’”
– Matthew Baldwin
If Obama Was Serious About Change
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Monthly Archives: February 2009
WordPress Automatic Theme Upgrade Deletes Custom Files
When I made Dojo, one of the main features of the theme is the ability to add a custom.css file in the same directory, and the theme will load it – that way you can use the theme as a starting point, and just change the colors and stuff to match what you want. That’s how Sean’s blog works. It’s a stock installation of Dojo with a single custom.css file.
A few days ago, I released an upgrade to the theme to add support for some new features in WordPress 2.7, so I logged into Sean’s blog to upgrade the theme. Newer versions of wordpress added the ability to automatically notify users when a new version of a theme is available, and let them click on a link to automatically upgrade. Since I wasn’t sure how it would work, I backed up Sean’s files first, and then used the Upgrade Automatically feature.
It worked perfectly, except it deleted all his custom files! His custom.css file and some other images in the theme directory were just gone. No notification, nothing. Thankfully, I had the backup, so I could restore those files quickly, but I hate to think that someone out there is going to upgrade their installation of my theme this way, and lose all their work.
So please, if you use the Upgrade Automatically feature, make sure you have a backup of your files first, otherwise your custom files will be deleted!
Dojo and WordPress 2.7
I’ve had a few inquiries about whether Dojo works under WordPress 2.7, and the answer is yes! You can drop it in, and it’ll work just fine. However, there are some new features to allow comment threading and paging which don’t work yet. It’s not broken, it just uses the old non-threaded, non-paged comment style. I’m in the process of adding these and a few other new features, and I should have a new version of Dojo ready to download within a week. Thanks for your interest, and check back soon!
Update: And, it’s done! Dojo 5.1.2 is released with full WordPress 2.7 support.
Ten Years of Blogging
Ten years ago today, I started blogging. Since that time, this blog has moved through four domains and changed from being hand-rolled to using WordPress. When I started, I thought that blogging was somewhat voyeuristic and I felt like I needed to justify why I was posting my journal online. Now, blogging is so well-established that it’s actually part of my job description. In my spare time, I help maintain over 15 blogs for friends and family. It’s changed from being something that felt I somewhat exhibitionist about to being something that I put on my resume. When I wrote that first post, I had no idea that was I starting to take part in something that would have such a large impact on my life, but I’m glad I did.
Why Aren’t You Using Fireworks to Compress Images?
I’m sure you’ve all heard the Fireworks vs. Photoshop debate. When I started at Pop Art, I was a Photoshop user. It was the application that we were taught in my graphic design program, and when I found out that the creative team used Fireworks, it took quite awhile for them to convince me that Fireworks is better for the kind of work a web agency does. Over time, I became a convert, but recently I had an experience that cemented Firework’s status for me.