In January of 2008 I wrote the post: Restore your WordPress Database From Mysql 4 to Mysql 5 Recently I had the need to update a blog for a friend trying to come out of the dark ages and update his WP blog from 2.6 to 2.9.2.  He ran the autoupgrade which progressed along removing his old files till at the end it went to update the database.  He still had MYSQL 4.0 .  WP 2.9.2 won’t run on MYSQL 4.0.  The process hung right there.  No way to go back, no way to go forward.

Note to WP, you probably should check the database version first, BEFORE updating all the WP files.

I got the call for “HELP”.  I had a copy of 2.6 and was able to get his blog back up and running.  It was time to upgrade his MYSQL.  He was on Godaddy hosting. I decided to try a simple upgrade approach knowing I could do it the old way from the previous post sited above.

The simple way worked perfectly.

1. Login to your Hosting account and make a new 5.0 MYSQL database
2. While that is being setup go to your existing database and click on the pencil to edit (Select Backup)  THe backup will be in your db-backup folder which you can access from FTP if you need to.
3. Once the backup is complete click the edit pencil on the New 5.0 database (Select Restore)  Use the file you just backed-up from the 4.0 database.

The final step is to change your wp-config.php file to point to your new 5.0 database.  That’s all there is to it.

If you have a different hosting company the routine might have a different way of backing up and restoring, but the process should work.

Once this was done, it was a simple auto-upgrade.  Yes, the jump from 2.6 to 2.9.2 went off without a hitch.  But don’t assume it will for you.  It all depends on your theme and plugins.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Migrating WordPress Content from MYSQL 4.0 to 5.0

Here is a really nice piece of code that I ran into on a theme I’ve been modifying. If you are logged into the blog and you are an Admin you click on the description and it takes you directly to the admin panel. If you are anyone else it takes you “home”.

You put this in the header.php file where the description is currently called.

I know you can add the Admin widget to the sidebar to quickly get there, but I think it looks unkempt. I don’t like seeing those login sections out in the open for the general public to see. It simply doesn’t compliment the presentation of your blog or the content. But this little gem makes it easy to get to the admin screen.

<a href=”<?php
if (current_user_can(‘level_10′))
echo get_settings(‘home’).’/wp-admin/”>’;
else
echo get_settings(‘home’).’/”>’;
bloginfo(‘description’); ?>
</a>

Not much to it, but a really nice way to navigate back and forth.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Take Me to The Dashboard

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Have a Little Fun With CSS

Manage still exists but Options is gone. The Options have been scattered about various places on the Dashboard. Settings, Plugins, Users are now top right. They aren’t on a tab just sitting there to themselves.

Tags, are “Managed” but I’m not sure how or to what purpose. When I click on the tags tab I get pages of nothing. Just blank lines one after another. I should probably read about this somewhere. NO! reading manuals and FAQs are for old farts. Today it is supposed to be click, click, click. Oh, I got it. I destroyed my blog and my content will never be found on the search engines, but then again, I’m just writing about my dream of the giant pimple on my A$$ last night, so no great loss.  However, if you have to contribute than information on your dreams or giant pimples you might want to be a little cautious using the click click click method.

Editing Comments

The edit comments option is no longer visible as an option. Once again we are left to click, click, click to see if the ability to edit comments as been removed. We can approve, unapprove delete, but there is no longer an edit option. However, if you click on the name of the commenter the edit window opens. Another bright idea.

Remove Max Width Plugin

This little plugin is a godsend to anyone that doesn’t want there wordpress admin panel slammed up against the left margin with lots of screen real estate being unused. If you are like me you will want Remove Max Width Plugin.

Plugins Upgrade Automatically

Now I’ve found something about 2.5 I absolutely have fallen in love with beyond any doubt. 2.5 not only lets you know when there are new versions of existing plugins available it give you the option to: Do it the old way by yourself or Upgrade Automatically.

I tested half a dozen Automatic Upgrades Everyone executed the process flawlessly. I have one more to upgrade and I’m hesitant to do so because of all the setup parameters which I have to record before upgrading to make sure the upgrade doesn’t think it knows better than my settings and help change things I don’t want changed.

Wordpress 2.5.1 is out

Seems I took so long writing this post the next version is out.  If you already have 2.5 installed you should install 2.5.1 There are some security issues and the upgrade is easy.  I’ll confess I didn’t disable the plugins.  I just replaced the files and when I logged in it said I had to upgrade the database, which was 1 second long.  So far so good.  Suppose I better post this before version 3.0 is released.

I’m not getting crotchety am I?  Don’t Answer That!

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 2.5 More Observations

Follow the Logic Brick Road

I’ve never been the kind of person to use a knife for a screwdriver, well maybe a couple of times.  But that’s not the point.

While the ladies of the house might go to the mall to “Shop”  they wonder why I don’t want to come along.  You know, walking from store to store watching them try on an assortment of clothes. 

Why I’ve even got a seat in American Eagle Outfitters with my name on it.  I watched my first ever music video in American Eagle.  I saw some guy injecting a carrot with his DNA and the Carrot began to look and sing like him.  That was my last music video as well.

Then when the day is done, they haven’t bought a single thing.  Or if they do, I can almost be 90% certain they will take it back before the week is over.  For some reason they look different at home than they do in the store.  Go figure.

Ok, I digress,  I would love to take the girls for an afternoon at Ace Hardware and Home Depot.  I’ve had them there on a couple of occasions to pick up things for the house and they get the same look on their faces I get when we are at the mall.  Can you imagine a whole afternoon going from the tool section, to the screw isle, then the plumbing pipe area, you can make a lot of cool stuff out of PVC pipe and fittings.

Yes, I know, what has this got to do with the Printer.  I’m almost there.

 Scan To Email

Last year our office got a new copy machine, I don’t mean our home office I mean the one we visit once a week to water the plant on our desk.  The copier had a new function.  We could scan a contract, enter our email address and a PDF of the contract would be sent to our email.  Agents fell in love with this feature almost immediately.

However, you have to use a pencil eraser to enter the email address since the onscreen keyboard is so small only ladies with pointed fingernails can enter an email address.  We “Big Fingered Guys”(BFG’s) have to use the eraser.

Several times over the past year I’ve made the trip down to the office, scanned the document, entered my email address, drove back to the house, and found it wasn’t here.  So I get to go back to the office and do it again.

Everytime I have made that trip I’d say to myself, I’m going to be able to do this at home very soon.

We have an all in one HP machine someone threw away because it quit printing.  I dug it out of the garbage, found drivers for it on line, and have used it for our scanner.  It works fine for one or two page documents.

Like:

• Estimates
• BINSR’s
• Addendum’s
• Counter Offers

But for Contracts or The Seller Property Disclosure Statement, it is down to the office.

I found a printer driver called PrimoPFD, it lets me save scanned documents as PDF’s by selecting PrimoPDF as the printer.  (It’s free)  you’re beginning to see a theme here aren’t you.

I Hate Ink Jets

Yeah, now you know something personal. 

I hate them because:

• They clog up
• They leak
• They are messy
• They run on the page when wet
  (yes we do get some rain in Tucson)
• They run out at the worst time
• They require a lot of maintenance
  clean the head, clean the head, clean the head

I’ve had all kinds, my favorite is the Epson 880 sitting in the other room, but even that one I hate.  I’ve had Canon, HP, Brother, Oki, pretty much you name it at some time I’ve had one of their ink jets.

I’m a laser kind of guy.  I have three of them,

• 2 Oki C5200 Color Lasers 
• 1 Brother HL-2040 for pure black and white.

The Hunt for the Scanner

For months I’ve looked for a scanner that would auto document feed up to 35 pages and save as a PDF.  All I found were flatbeds, with Document feeders you could buy as an accessory.  All of them were way more than $100.

Last week Office Max ran in their Sunday add the Brother MFC-5460CN all in one wonder machine marked down from $140 to $99.  I didn’t need a fax.  I didn’t need another ink jet printer.  I didn’t need an ink jet copier.  I did need a scanner with a 35 page document feeder built in.

Some would think it is crazy to buy a four in one and only use the one, but I figure if it cost more to buy just a scanner, then DUH!!

I brought it home and you should have seen the look on the girls faces when I walked in with it.  They looked at me, then at each other and the “What the heck is he up to” look appeared on their faces.  They think I’m a gadget freak, or at least a printer, camera fetish kind of guy, sorry I digress again.

I took it out of the box very carefully, after all if this thing doesn’t do what I want it to do, back in the box it goes.

1. I installed the drivers,
2. the software package,
3. plugged it in,
4. plugged in the USB cable.

 Up popped the command center and a reminder that all the ink cartridges were empty. I’m not installing those things, I don’t need ink for a scanner.

BTW, the stupid machine won’t even turn off if I don’t put ink in it.  I hate machines that think they are smarter than I am.  Ha! Stupid machine beep all  you want when I hit the power switch, I can still pull the plug.  It is sitting on the floor right now scrolling the message, “No Cartridge… Open the cover…Install ink Cartridge…”

 The command center pops up and I see Scan and Custom Scan configurations along with other stuff I don’t need, at least I don’t need them right now.

I set it up as you can see with two b/w and two color scan settings. 

Check out this configure panel.

I set the file type to PDF

Destination Folder

Save As Window ON so I can name the document and change the folder if I want.

Set the resolution

Scan  Type to True Gray

I put 10 random pages in the document feeder.

Clicked on “Average Scan BW”

And in less than one minute I had a PDF file named as I wanted it in my folder of choice.

I DIDN’T HAVE TO DRIVE TO THE OFFICE.

You can scan images of course if you want to.  You can even scan to email.  It names the document and saves it as an attachment on a new email message.  But for me all I need is to feed in those Contracts and SPDS and get a beautiful PDF file in my folder of choice.

For those documents that are faxed from inferior machines,  I hate bad fax copy, especially the ones with a line down the page.  I can set the scanner to 300 X 300 or even 1200 X 1200 to get a better copy of the bad fax.

I’m in love with this thing.  OK, maybe I am a hardware freak.  I’ll probably go ahead and feed the baby her ink cartridges before I put her to bed for the night. 

I wonder if it will quit blinking if I only put one cartridge in. . . hum. . .

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Brother MFC-5460CN Much Less Than a Printer

Have you ever done a Google search and when you clicked on a link it went to the homepage of the site and not to the information you were looking for.

Most of us take 1 millionth of a second to see it isn’t there and rather than try and find navigation to the page we click back and move on to the next search result.  I wanted a way to keep them from hitting that back button and moving on.

I like the site search on our blogs and went looking for something to do the same on our web site.  I found Google Site Search.

Google Site Search is a great way to let people enter their search term and this time it will only search your site.  There is a good chance they won’t be so quick to click away once they see this search option. I’ve tested it on our Tucson Real Estate  site and it returns the exact page reference that came up in the original search taking your visitor to the page they wanted in the first place.

Here is the process to put Google SiteSearch on your Homepage:

1. Go to the Google Site Search Page
2. check the agree to terms of service
3. click the get code button
4. Scroll down to the bottom option code window
5. Reread 4.  There are three sets of code, you want the bottom one.
6. Copy it.

Here is the catch, yeah there always seems to be a catch doesn’t there.  This code will produce 35 WC3 Errors on you homepage.

I found this on a routine check of our homepage on the WC3 validator page. It took me a few minutes to clean up the code so it would validate. 

Here is the process:

• Change all CAPS to lower case ex. INPUT to input
• Make all lines of code self closing including <br>  to <br />
• Put all values in quotes ex. input type=”text” NOT input type=text
  A rule of thumb is after = close in quotes
• remove the </form> at the end
  it isn’t needed you’ve made all lines self closing
• change checked to checked=”checked”

Here is the code as it should changed to validate.

  <!-- SiteSearch Google -->
     <form action=”http://www.google.com/search”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”ie” value=”utf-8″/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”oe” value=”utf-8″/>
<table bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”><tr><td>
<a href=”http://www.google.com/“>
<img src=”http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif” border=”0″ alt=”Google”/></a></td><td>
<input type=”text” name=”q” size=”31″ maxlength=”255″ value=”"/>
<input type=”submit” name=”btnG” value=”Google Search”/><input type=”hidden” name=”domains” value=”yourdomain.com”/><br /><input type=”radio” name=”sitesearch” value=”"/> WWW <input type=”radio” name=”sitesearch” value=”yourdomain.com” checked=”checked”/>
 yourdomain.com <br /></td></tr></table>

<!-- SiteSearch Google -->

 You can’t copy this code from the page it won’t work. 

I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack when it comes to this code in a post stuff.  Here is the googlesitesearch.pdf file.

• Once it is open
• select the I bar select function
• swipe the code
• copy it.

You can now paste it into your web page, changing the three references to “yourdomain” located near the bottom of the code to . . . . . you got it, your domain.
DO NOT CHANGE names=”domain”

Once you have added and saved you can use the validator page to check for errors on your homepage. 

Assuming you didn’t have any errors before adding this code. 

I really like the functionality of this piece of code. It is just too bad that Google would provide a piece of code that is so obviously out of standard coding practices for today.

And if anyone can tell me how I can start putting code in a post that can simply be copied and applied.  Please let me know.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Google Site Search

 I’ve spent so much time trying to get 2.1 up and running with the Tiga theme and various plugins I haven’t done much in the way of posting.  Now I’m trying to post and the new editor is biting me hard.  Of course I discover this after saying it might be ok to upgrade to 2.1.  

IF YOU ARE USING THE BUILT IN TEXT EDITOR DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DON’T UPGRADE.

I have a lot to write about today because for the past couple of days I’ve been trying to figure out how this new editor works.  The old editor was pretty simple to use.  For example

If I wanted to display an image to the right with text to the left.  I inserted the image. selected the image and selected justify right.  That would put the image inside a div and I was off and running.

However, the new version with the code tab doesn’t work that way, and when I try and put a div statement in by hand it removes it.  And you might even notice that in code view, for the most part it isn’t like the HTML editor of the past  there are no visible paragraph or break tags. 

So instead of writing I’m trying to figure out the editor with no great luck.  I’ve searched on Wordpress on changes to this thing,  I’ve found nothing.

Now I’m trying to find an editor I can use that will allow me to do what I want and hope that someone will fix this stupid editor.  I can’t believe I’m the only person out there that wants to display their images beside text.

Any suggestions on an editor?  The only reason I didn’t try blogjet, no technorati tags.  I really like that feature.  I see there is a new blogjet 2.0 out there.  I’ll do some more reading on it.

Again, any suggestiong.  Trust me I am open,  I just don’t want to give up any of the functionality like tags, technorati tags, images beside text.  Tweaking from a code view when I want to. 

I want a smart editor but not one that thinks it is smarter than me.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Wordpress 2.1 Text Editor Why I hate it

When you place a photo in a blog post do you just live with the text running right up to the edge of your image.  Would you like to have some margin, but you don’t know how to get it.  Here is an easy way to get what you want.

Images can be right, left or centered. Where you want the margin depends on where the photo is going to be located. 

What we want is a quick way to make all your photos have a little white space for the eyes and brain.

There are solutions using CSS style sheets, maybe you don’t know how to do it. Even if you do you will have to add code to your theme style sheet.  If you decide to change themes since the CSS style is associated with each individual theme you will have to go in and make changes each time you decide to change themes.  There’s got to be an easier way.

There are a couple of low tech tools availabe for anyone to use which will make your blog look better and be easier to read.

Image Resizer.  Resize is available if you have a registered version of Windows XP or greater.  You download and install it from Microsoft. 

Right click on the image and select resize. Click on the advanced button, choose the custom setting and reduce the image to a size 10 pixels less each way than you want to display on your blog.  If you want to display a 300 x 200 image then resize to 290 x 190 and save.

1. 1.  Open this image in Paint and select Attributes from the Image menu. 
2. 2.  Change the size to 300 x 200  This will add 10 pixels to the right and bottom of the image. 
3. 3.  If you are placing the image with a left justify this will be all you need to do. 
4. 4.  Save the image. 
5. If you are going to right justify there is one more step.

On the paint tool menu the top left corner, the one on the right is the select tool.  Chose it and draw around your image.  Now move it to the right so the margin is on the left and save.

Your images can have white space to make your blog look more professional.  No matter what theme you chose your margins are preset as a part of the image.

You may have a graphics program to do all this.  My personal favorite is Fireworks.  But if you are on the road or away from your computer and you need to edit an image for your blog this is one way to do it.

Yes, it is a low tech solution.  Most bloggers would rather spend their time blogging and not having to try and figure out how to set the CSS Style for their theme to get the same effect. This is especially true if you don’t know what you are doing under the theme hood.

Elegant from a code stand point it isn’t.  But it sure makes your blog look more elegant without the text smack up against your images.

Now scroll back up and look at the first image and compare it to the one at the bottom. The house looks a lot better down here doesn’t it.   A little margin goes a long way.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Add a little margin to your blog photos

This last year we had a lot more listing than usual.  I was taking a lot of photos of interiors as well as outside shots.  

One of the frustrating things I’ve run into is trying to take interior shots that didn’t make the rooms look small.  I ran across an ad for the Kodak V570 camera.  I wasn’t impressed with the reviews I read about the quality of the output, I was impresed with some sample interior shots of homes.  

It has two lenses the first being a wide angle 28mm.  The quality is more like a 3 megapixel than a 5, but for what we need it for it is fine.  I need photos for MLS, websites/blogs and flyers at the listings.  None of these require large poster shots or high resolution reprints.

There are some very nice features; two I really like are the internal stitch which lets you take up to three photos and the camera stitches them together to form one panorama.

Here is an example two frame pan shot

The other feature I like is the ability to increase the F stop up or down by a factor of 2 with a toggle button on the back of the camera.  This lets me make quick adjustments to fit the lighting situation.

There are a lot more bells and whistles on this camera which are beyond the scope of this post.

Here are a couple of shots that show the difference between a regular shot and the V570.  I didn’t take the time to compose or set the lighting on  these shots.  The intent is to show how much more room the V570 shows than the Sony or any other camera not set with a wide angle adaptor or lense.

	The first shot is taken with my Sony Cyber shot. A good point and shoot camera which takes great movie clips.
Here is the image taken with the V570 from the exact same location. You can see there is quite a difference in the appearance of the same room using a different camera.
	This is a kitchen shot with the Sony. You can see it is rather limited in the width. This next image is taken from the same location with the V570.
Quite a difference isn’t it.This little camera slips in your pocket and it goes with me everywhere.

I never know when I’m going to see something in the course of my day that I want to grab a quick shot of for a future blog post.

Sometimes the idea for a post comes from what I’m seeing with the camera.  Such was the case with the post on the Tucson Real Estate News Blog  “Tucson Christmas Gift Cactus“   I was on the way to the mall a couple of days after Christmas, (no I wasn’t returning anything) when I saw the cactus being moved on the trucks.  I pulled out the camera and a blog post was born.

I love this camera for

• interior shots
• quick startup
• easy to carry in a guy’s pocket
• images taken with wide angle lens

For me it provides great real estate photos for:

• MLS
• Flyers
• Website photos
• Blog photos

Kodak V570.  I’m glad I have it in my Real Estate Technology Bag.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab A Great Real Estate Camera – Kodak V570

I wanted a sitemap on our Tucson Real Estate blog. I went looking on the WordPress plugin section site.  I found Dagon Design sitemap plugin easy to install and configure and it does exactly what I wanted it to do.  You can see it at work on the Sitemap page in the right navigation.

Here are the simple steps to putting a sitemap on your WordPress blog.

Installation

• Download dd-sitemap-gen.txt and rename it to dd-sitemap-gen.php
• Upload the file to the plugins folder of your WordPress installation
• Activate the plugin in your Plugins administration panel
• Configure the plugin in the Options panel (under DDSitemapGen)
• Create a New Page, Title: Sitemap, place the code below on the page using the HTML* window and save:

*Note: For Wordpress 2.0 users who are using the new rich-text editor – be sure to click the ‘html’ button to edit the page source directly. Otherwise Wordpress will wrap code tags around the line which generates the sitemap and it will not work. 

You can actually put that code anywhere and it will generate the sitemap, but if you want to keep it simple and not have to add this code whenever you change a theme this is the way I suggest you do it. 

I would also suggest you set the options for pages to 0 so it will display on a single page.  There are some SEO reasons for this. 

I also turned off the option to display a post only in the first category.  I want people to be able to find a post in any of the categories associated with that post.

You will notice you can’t swipe and copy the code above.  It is a graphic since I don’t know how to display PHP code in a post.

Any help out there on code display in a post would be greatly appreciated.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Sitemap Plugin