Tech and Life
I sat here at my desk for about an hour trying to figure out why I kept getting an error whenever I tried to open my Google Analytics page. The error said:
Missing permissions
You do not have access to the account, property, or view. Contact an Analytics administrator who has the Manage Users permission.
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It can be perplexing to move a WordPress website to a new host. There are quite a few steps, and if everything isn’t done correctly you could lose data or suffer downtime. There are a couple of ways you can go about migrating your site to a new host. If you’re a pro and are familiar with MySQL, I recommend you use the first method. If you’re a bit on the novice side, use Method 2. This tutorial does assume that you know your way around FTPing into your server and doing a few things in cPanel though.
Let’s get to it.
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I recently attempted to get a new site up and running with WordPress and the WP Super Cache plugin on Dreamhost. After configuring everything and being confident things were working just great, I started receiving errors at the bottom of the page that said “Page not cached by WP Super Cache. Could not get mutex lock.”
The FAQ page for WP Super Cache mentions how this is a file locking issue. A possible solution would be to modify the wp-content/wp-cache-config.php and uncomment the following line:
$use_flock = true
It also mentions setting $sem_id to a different value. So I changed the following line:
$sem_id = 5419;
to
$sem_id = 5420;
These steps didn’t work. So I was lost as to what to do next.
Fortunately the WordPress Forums proved useful with the solution. As dragonwize suggests, I set the “wp-content/cache/wp_cache_mutex.lock” to writable via FTP client and things started working once again.
I purchased the Thesis theme about a 2 years ago with the promise that I would be able to get the new Thesis 2 when it was released. So I setup Thesis version 1.5 on my blog and patiently waited for the 2.0 release. Then I waited some more. Then after a year and a half with still no Thesis 2, me and much of the Thesis community began to think that maybe it would never arrive. Just when I lost hope, Thesis 2 finally arrived and became available for download.
That first day, I was so anxious to get Thesis 2 loaded on my blog and start using it. I read a few of the instructions for installing and using it, but like most techies, I figured I could just skip over them and figure it all out while using it. After about 20 minutes of messing around with Thesis 2 though, I was left confused. Confusion led to frustration. Frustration led to sadness. Where were the simple fields to fill in things like font size and color? Where was my “Big Ass Save Button”? Where was the ease of use I had become so accustomed to? They were gone, and what appeared before me was a complicated mess. I immediately began to think Thesis 2 sucked. With that thought, I logged out of my blog and carried on with my life, never intending to look back.
A couple of months later, I began to think that maybe I missed something on Thesis 2. So I gave it another try. I watched several of the tutorial videos before tackling it this time. But once again, I found myself confused about how to use the system. So I Googled other blogs to see whether or not others thought Thesis 2 sucked or if it was just me. I found quite a few bad reviews. Once again, I gave up, intending never to look back.
Another week went by, and I had some maintenance to do on my old site that was running Thesis 1.8. I went into the classic Thesis interface and made a few quick changes with ease. It was then that I realized I had been looking at Thesis 2 the wrong way. Thesis 1 and 2 are completely different products. Thesis 1 is the simple to use framework for novice coders. Thesis 2 is for the big boys, the advanced users who really want to do something serious with their site.
I originally felt that I shouldn’t have to take the time to learn how to use Thesis 2 when Thesis 1 was so easy to use. Maybe it’s also because I’m lazy. Like anything in life though, if you want to do something great, you have to learn how first. With that, I began to play around with Thesis 2 some more. I watched more tutorials and with little effort came up with a pretty decent looking website (the one you see here, built in under an hour). The ability to move blocks around my entire site and place items like comment boxes, bylines and post thumbnails right where I wanted them was worth the learning curve alone.
Now, after spending a weekend getting to know the system better, I’m starting to realize that you can do some very powerful stuff with Thesis 2. It doesn’t suck! The problem is the expectation that Thesis 1 users have for version 2. If you have the expectation that Thesis 2 will do everything Thesis 1 does only better, you’re only going to be disappointed. In reality, they are two totally different products. They should probably be called different names. Maybe Thesis 1 should be called Thesis Basic and Thesis 2 should be called Thesis Pro. Though, I do believe that Thesis 2 should have an editor that is similar to the one in version 1 as an option. Maybe that will come in time.
For now any Thesis user should be satisfied with either version. It just depends on how far you want to take your site. Purchasing the Thesis framework will still provide you with both options. Both are great for any WordPress Website.
Update: Thesis 2.1 has been released! This new version addresses many problems users experienced with version 2.0. There is even a new “Classic Responsive” theme that allows you to modify the design similar to the way you can with version 1.0. DIY Themes have also released a ton of documentation to go along with version 2.1 to help you get acclimated to the way the system works.
For one reason or another, you may decided that you don’t want Google Adsense ads appearing within certain posts on your WordPress blog. It’s a difficult task since you most likely added the Adsense ad code within the template file.
Using PHP and with just a slight change to your code, you can exclude Adsense ads from specific posts.
Let’s say that I want to exclude Adsense ads from 3 posts:
I would exclude each one by using the slug for each post with this code
<?php
if (!is_single(array('how-to-enjoy-your-vacation','the-best-android-apps','wordpress-for-dummies')))
{
?>
Your Adsense code
<?php
}
?>
You can also exclude posts via the post ID.
if (!is_single(array('133','145','200')))
{
?>
Your Adsense code
<?php
}
?>
Years ago, I removed all timestamps from my posts. This was because people are biased when it comes to reading a post that is old. Google indexes date information on your page too, which can cause people not to even click through to your site.
Though I couldn’t tell how much of an impact this made, there was something not right about not including a timestamp on my posts. Since readers may want that kind of information, it becomes a question about designing my pages better for the reader. So I recently reintroduced timestamps on my posts. This time though, I decided not to provide the date the post was published. Instead, I use the date the post was modified. It’s way more relevant to a reader to provide the last date your post was updated rather than the first day it was posted.
In WordPress, you can hack your theme to provide the date your post was modified by inserting this code:
Last modified: <?php the_modified_time(‘ F j, Y’); ?>
Personally, I like providing this information at the end of posts. That way, it’s indexed by Google, but it’s not right at the top of the page.