Many changes around here lately — new styles, new software, new hardware, and a whole lot more. I will be covering several of these items in greater depth in future posts, but for now, here is an overview of some of the recent happenings unfolding here in Perishable land..
New Mobile Styles
I finally took the time to throw down some tuff mobile CSS styles for Perishable Press. Before, the site was virtually impossible to use via mobile devices because of the comprehensively applied screen styles, which completely overwhelm the screen real-estate and system resources of the average mobile device. The new styles are clean, lightweight and minimalistic. If you have mobile access, please drop by and share your experience with us. Even better, if you are able to capture screenshots, send ‘em along with your system stats and I will include them in an upcoming article focusing on the new styles.
Bad Behavior Upgrade
After streamlining the mobile CSS styles for Perishable Press, I discovered that mobile users were not able to leave comments on the site. After investigating the mysterious “Precondition failed” error associated with each mobile comment attempt, I traced the issue to an older version of Bad Behavior. After upgrading from version 1.2.4 to the currently fresh version 2.0.10, the “Precondition failed” error was resolved and mobile commenting was enabled. Next time you are in the mobile neighborhood, drop a shout and check it out ;)
DB Export Settings Backing up your database as often as possible is essential. For WordPress, as well as for other applications, plugins and other scripts that help automate the task are easily obtainable. However, for several reasons, it is a good idea to understand the process of manually creating a backup copy of your database. This brief tutorial1 should help cement the process into a solid reference. We are assuming that you have an SQL database and have access via phpMyAdmin.
Before reading through the gory details written below, check out the screenshot to the left (click on the image). That picture is literally worth a thousand characters. Another way to avoid the forthcoming verbose explanation is to skip the next paragraph to the neatly summarized list.
First, open phpMyAdmin and select from the dropdown menu the database you wish to backup. If there is only one database available, select it by clicking on its name. Now, along the upper-right row of tabs, click on the "export" tab. From that screen, under the subcategory "Export", click on "select all" and make sure that the "SQL" option is selected. Then, under the SQL Options/Structure category, make sure "Structure", "Add DROP TABLE", "Add AUTO_INCREMENT value", and "Enclose table and field names with backquotes" are checked. Finally, under the "SQL Options/Data" category, make sure "Data", "Complete inserts", and "Use hexadecimal for binary fields" are checked. The "Export type" should be set to "INSERT". Finally, check "Save as file" and do not change the "File name template". It is advisable to save both a compressed copy and a zipped copy. Click "Save" and you are done.
Open phpMyAdmin, select database, click on "Export"
Within the "Export" screen, click on "Select All" and select "SQL"
Then check "Structure", "Add DROP TABLE", "Add AUTO_INCREMENT..", and "Enclose table.."
Also check "Data", "Complete inserts", and "Use hexadecimal.."
Check "Save as file", select a compression format, and "Go"!
Footnotes
1 This brief tutorial is merely a hybrid of personal experience and Podz' priceless Backup your data tutorial.
Recently, every website on our primary server was simultaneously attacked. The offending party indiscriminately replaced the contents of everyindex file, regardless of its extension or location, with a few vulgar lines of code, which indicated intention, identity, and influence.
Apparently, the attack occurred via Germany, through a server at the University of Hamburg. This relatively minor attack resulted in several hours of valuable online education. In this article, it is our intention to share experience with website attack recovery. This article is aimed at website developers, designers, and administrators.
First, the setup. Perishable Press is a WordPress-powered website. On our previous server, we were running a Fantastico-installed WordPress version 2.0.2, upgraded from version 2.0. Permalinks were enabled and everything was running smoothly. Our database was only 13MB in size and around 12MB of that was disposable statistics information from WP-ShortStat and Bad Behavior. The crucial part of our database was a friendly 1MB in size.
About a year ago we signed up with a hosting provider that offered one of the best hosting deals around: lots of space, bandwidth, and transfer — plus all of the usual server software amenities that make life easier. Everything went smoothly at first…
In fact, the first six months of service were close to 100%. The few help-ticket items submitted were promptly resolved in a professional manner. We were ready to start some business and everything was going great. Then, about five months ago, we began noticing a serious increase in server downtime. Help tickets were also slow-going and the responses were like these cryptic one-liners that failed to address the actual problem, demonstrating a serious lack of concern and providing virtually no help. Further, multiple emails concerning account billing and renewal went (and remain) completely ignored. Indeed, email remains their only method of communication. At this point, we felt stranded, ignored, and utterly alone. Given this level of service, we were not comfortable hosting websites for our clients.
Looking ahead at the events planned for this year, I feel the need to completely restructure, reorganize, and streamline my entire digital universe. This will take a sweet amount of time, I realize, but given the complex behemoth that my digital archive has become due to the accumulation of over seven years’ worth of projects, reformats, and acquisitions, the time is now.
It all started out simply, with my first computer a mere two folders, “art” and “business,” were all that I needed to keep things in order. As time progressed, there were a few digital expansions, where loads of new software, hardware, documentation, support files, and resulting experimental files were heaped onto the already flimsy organizational structure that my “archive” had at that time become. Then there was college, various lines of employment, and a million scanned documents determined too important to simply toss. By this time, my artistic output had increased as well, with bandwidth intensive projects like Dead Letter Art, F-Disk Media, and StopSystem, my then new 250GB external hard drive was almost full. Along the way, I’m afraid, most attempts at “starting fresh” and reorganizing everything were shortsighted if not temporarily efficient.
So now, after having attained a small foothold on the internet with a newly designed, all-powerful Perishable Press website, I have taken a few steps back to contemplate the “big picture” and evaluate an optimal plan of attack. I truly cannot believe how inefficient and unorganized my system has become. Truly, it is a mess.
