Matt’s Cuppa

I’ve spent the better part of a week piecing my blog back together. I prefer to use the term “over-tweaking”, but the fact is, I crashed my Wordpress template. It’s been a learning experience for me. I’ve been using Wordpress self-hosted blogs for years now and fell pretty comfortable bouncing around inside the code, but trouble shooting and forensics is not my cup of tea.

In the end, I scrapped my over-tweaked template and started fresh. The new Matt’s Cuppa is still a work in progress, but it’s functional. Even though I learned a fair amount about blog templates, and Wordpress themes specifically, I lost a week of productivity. It seemed like a good idea to put that lost time to good use, so here are five lessons I learned from, er, over-tweaking my blog.

Lesson 1: Backup Your Blog.

Backup, backup, backup! The sole reason that I’m sitting here now and writing this post is because I never got around to setting up a system or routine for backing up my blog. I procrastinated until it was too late. Why? The reason is simple. It was more fun to do other things, like looking for new widgets or over-tweaking my sidebars.

There are a TON of tools out there to help you backup your blog. I prefer to use a plugin that integrates into my Wordpress admin page. I recommend searching sites like the Wordpress.org Plugin Directory . Or you might search for recommendations on expert sites like Lorelle on Wordpress . I am currently using the BackUpWordpress plugin, which I’m quite happy with.

Lesson 2: Keep a Fresh Copy of Your Template.

In lesson 1, I encouraged you to back up your blog database. Doing this means that you are less likely to loose your blog posts because of a crash, system meltdown, global warming, etc. Depending on the tools you use, you may still need to find a way to back up your template or theme. Even if your theme is backed up with your posts, it’s a good idea to save an original, un-tweaked, copy of your blog template. If you need it, you may not always be able to find the original online. (I speak from experience here.) Also, any time that you need to go in and modify your code, copy the original code into a text document so you can easily bring back the original code.

I back up my templates by logging into my server via FTP. I find this to be the quickest and easiest way for me to do what I want to do. Once I’m logged in, I simply create a new folder and place a copy of my template into this folder. I use a naming convention that allows me to quickly locate a backup from a specific date and time. In Wordpress, themes are located in the following folder: / wp-content/themes/yourtheme.

Lesson 3: Keep an Inventory of Your Widgets.

Lesson 3 comes from something I find hugely annoying about Wordpress. Let’s imagine that we find a great widget that let’s you share what sort of tea you are drinking with members of every social network ever invented. And let’s say this widget is not a Wordpress plugin, rather it’s a generic widget that can be used on most blogging platforms. Wordpress accommodates this by letting you create a text widget where you enter the title of the widget and paste the required code. It’s not a bad system. However, when you create a text widget, your admin panel simply calls them Text 1, Text 2, etc. So, if I have nine text widgets that I use at various times. how in the heck am I supposed to remember that Text 2 is my tea-sharing widget?

After my latest tweak-astrophe, I decided that if Wordpress wasn’t going to keep track of my widgets, then I would do it myself. In a rare separation from computing technology, I grabbed a pen and a notebook, listed each of my widgets, their titles, and what function they performed. This moment of brilliance proved to be a huge time-saver for me as I went through the task of deciding which widgets I would keep for my new template. I highly recommend that you do the same.

Lesson 4: The KISS Theory Applies to Blogs, Too.

KISS is an acronym for the phrase, “Keep It Simple, Stupid” and, unless you’re building a MySpace page, applies very much to blogging. If you think about the blogs that you visit most often, chances are good that the reason you go back isn’t the cool little embedded flash games in the sidebar. It’s always tempting to throw some new shiny widget up on your site, (I’ve always been attracted to shiny things…) but I don’t recommend this for a number of reasons:

• Load time : Flashy or complicated widgets can dramatically increase the time it takes visitors to load your blog page.
• Privacy : Most people don’t make widgets for fun. They have an agenda. Many widgets track statistical data about your blog and your visitors that is not made available to you.
• Stability : Your blog is unique. You’ve modified it to suit your style and your needs. Sometimes adding a new widget is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Based on my experience, I’ve found that: a few widgets work great, most mostly work if I overlook some bug or flaw, some work if I tweak my code enough, and a few crash my whole template, make me lose a week of productivity, and provide fodder for articles such as this one.

Lesson 5: Backup Your Blog Again.

Yeah, I said this already. But it’s really really important. There is one more piece that I recommend you add to your backup routine, however. Programmers and developers reading this are probably already familiar with the concept of versioning . What versioning means is that you have a system in place that allows you to roll back your site to a previous state. From a practical standpoint, such a system means that if I blow up my blog today, I can quickly restore it to exactly the way it was before I blew it up. This is especially important for guest or group blogs, where more than one person has access to admin screens or code.

How you decide to implement versioning depends on your needs, your blog, and a lot on how often you make changes. I (now) use the lessons above as my versioning process. This is how it works:

• I use the BackUpWordpress plugin to back up my blog database once a week. I keep the most recent three backups and each week the oldest gets deleted.
• Anytime I make a change to my blog that requires modifying code, anytime I add a plugin or widget, and each time I remove something, I log into my server via FTP and create a backup copy of my Wordpress theme.
• While I am modifying any code within my theme, I keep a text copy any code I modify, so I can quickly bring back the original state.
• I now keep an inventory of different aspects of my blog, including my widget inventory, descriptions of major changes, and possible future developments. Most importantly, I keep track of the purpose or my reasoning behind features and changes.

This post turned out much longer than anticipated, but I know that I wouldn’t be writing this post at all if I had stuck to my routine from the beginning. My biggest pitfall was procrastination. These things aren’t the fun part of being a blogger. To me, the fun part of being a blogger is receiving a thoughtful comment from a visitor telling me that they gained something by reading my blog. If I have to take some extra time and care to ensure that my blog is working and waiting for that visitor to come by, then it’s all worth it to me.

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