Why do I need a WordPress.com account?

Very valid question if you are using WordPress on a web host other than WordPress.com.

One line answer is if you are using or want to use Gravatar, Akismet, JetPack, WooCommerce, VaultPress, Poll Daddy (all of these or any one of these) you would need a WordPress.com account.

A detailed answer would need an explanation of the features/ benefits of all the above. However, that would make this post too long, so we’ll stick to a brief intro of few (taken from their respective websites) of these.

Gravatar: Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Are you sure that any of the above-mentioned tools are not useful for your WordPress site? If yes, then we would agree that you don’t need a WordPress.com account.

Akismet: Used by millions of websites, Akismet filters out hundreds of millions of spam comments from the Web every day.

JetPack (Affiliate Link): Jetpack augments WordPress core by providing the tools everyone needs to build, manage and secure their websites. JetPack users don’t have to find, evaluate, install, activate, learn, and configure dozens of plugins when Jetpack is included with their WordPress. They also don’t have to worry about security, updates, and other ongoing maintenance tasks.

WooCommerce (Affiliate Link): The most customizable eCommerce platform for building your online business. With hundreds of free and paid WooCommerce extensions, spanning all your logistical & technical requirements, you can rest assured there’s an extension for your specific needs.

Are you sure that any of the above-mentioned tools are not useful for your WordPress site? If yes, then we would agree that you don’t need a WordPress.com account.

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NextGEN Scroll Gallery on WordPress – Error on page: Warning: Division by zero

Few days back my hosting company send me a warning that disk space consumption on my server has hit 80%. I was shocked because no new client came on board. I became worried thinking if my server has been compromised or any account on the box has been hacked! I instantly logged into the server and tried to figure out the domain consuming disk space more than the allocated quota. Once I was able to figure out the domain, I instantly started analyzing it’s disk consumption folder wise. All this lead me to a error_log file which grew up to 18 GB in last 15 days time. This site has average 1500 visitors per day. I inspected the error_log to see which page is generating so many errors and to my surprise it was a page with NextGen Scroll Gallery. This gallery page was created two years ago and didn’t had an iota of any error till last 15 days. Now, the page was full of several lines showing following error:

Warning: Division by zero in nggScrollGallery.php on line 296

Of course, it had folder name etc. prepended  to the script name (which I have omitted here due to same security reason). In order to try and solve this error, I created a new gallery page but it worked fine. I compared both the gallery page (the one which was generating errors and the newly created one). Everything was same except the gallery id. I created another page with same gallery id. This time the error showed up. So, the problem was with gallery.

I went to manage gallery option and re-generated the thumbnails but this didn’t solve the problem. Then I imported meta data for all the images in gallery. The next moment the gallery was working fine. Seems, somehow the meta data information for images in the gallery got corrupted or deleted. Re-importing this information solved the issue. After that I deleted the error_log and my disk consumption status also went back to normal.

New exciting changes in upcoming wordpress 3.9

WordPress 3.9 is due for release in mid-April. While the RC 1 was released last week, we take a look at some improved / new exciting features of WordPress 3.9:

• Updated TinyMCE – The software powering the visual editor has been updated to 4.0 (latest version).
• Added widget management to live previews –  You can now test editing, adding, and rearranging widgets.
• Ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview.
• Drag-and-drop images – Now, you can drag drop images directly onto the editor to upload them.
• Improved image editing capabilities – Making changes to an image after inserting it into a post is lot easier now.
• New audio/video playlists feature – More details are awaited on this.

If you are the adventoures type soul, download and use WordPress Beta Tester plugin or you can download the release candidate (Zip version) and test it on a test site. Beware it’s not final version so using it on a production site may be dangerous.

Install health check plugin to see if you are ready for WordPress 3.2

In a recent announcement WordPress team has announced that version 3.2 of WordPress will not support PHP 4 and MySQL 4. WordPress 3.1, which is due in late 2010, will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4.

WordPress 3.2, due in the first half of 2011, the minimum required PHP version will be raised to 5.2. The new required MySQL version for WordPress 3.2 will be 5.0.15.

Since the vast majority of WordPress users are using PHP 5.2 and it offers substantial improvements over earlier PHP 5 releases. It is also the minimum PHP version that the Drupal and Joomla projects will be supporting in their next versions, both due out this year.

WordPress users will not be able to upgrade to WordPress 3.2 if their hosting environment does not meet these requirements. The built-in updater will prevent the upgrade process in case it find PHP or MySQL to be below the required version.

To determine which versions your host provides WordPress team has created the Health Check plugin. Right now, Health Check will only tell you if you’re ready for WordPress 3.2. In a future release it will provide all sorts of useful information about your server and your WordPress install, so hang on to it!

In summary: WordPress 3.1, due in late 2010, will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4 and MySQL 4. WordPress 3.2, due in the first half of 2011, will require PHP 5.2 or higher, and MySQL 5.0.15 or higher. Install the Health Check plugin to see if you’re ready!

“Thelonious” (WordPress 3.0) released

WordPress 3.0, codenamed “Thelonious”, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download. Major new features in this release include a new sexy default theme called Twenty Ten (2010). Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. Twenty Ten theme shows all of that off for ease of use. Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation. As a user, you will love the new lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click, and blah blah blah just watch the video.(In HD, if you can, so you can catch the Easter eggs.)

http://v.wordpress.com/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.21

For more details go to WordPress Blog announcement.

Upgrade to WordPress 2.8 Now!

The latest version of WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker” (named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker), has been released on Wednesday, 10 June, 2009 as scheduled. It has several improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed along with over 790 bugs fixed.

Visually 2.8 doesn’t look much different from 2.7, however once you start digging dip, you’ll notice and begin to appreciate the changes.

WordPress.com upgardes Free Space to Three Gigabytes

Today, wordpress.com made an announcement to upgrade free upload space by 6o times from 50mb to 3000mb for all wordpress blogs hosted on it. This upgrade will give its’ users freedom to blog rich media withour having to worry about storage space left in their wordpress account. To remind you 1GB paid space at a normal web hosting company costs approx. $300 per year.