Tag Archives: Blogging

WP Super Cache Preload issues

I’ve been working on one of my other blogs trying to get the preload function working in WP Super Cache.  It seems pretty straight forward, but for some reason there are a couple of issues.

First, the timed preload of cache files does not seem to work reliably.  I had set it to 30 minutes with email notifications, and it would only go once, or twice at the most.  Beyond that it would just not do anything at all.  Once, I even turned off the scheduled preload and it did it anyway!

Secondly, even when doing a manual preload of the cache, the preloaded files get removed from the cache even though the description clearly indicates that supercache files from the preload will not be removed by the garbage collection.  I even went so far as to disable the GC with the same result.

I’ve created a forum post with the hopes of getting some help.  I’ll keep this updated as things hopefully progress…

Error 500 – Internal Server Error

So for a large part of today my blog has been down.   I have been trying to troubleshoot for a while on my own and have found several suggestions on the web.  Amongst them was ensuring that php5 was being called in my .htaccess file and also by including a php.ini file to set the memory limit. I found a couple of posts on some WordPress forums as well all relating to the same things.  I also found some posts suggesting I disable all my plug-ins which I did by removing their folders from my plug-ins directory.  Still no luck.

I ended up getting frustrated and called my hosting company 1and1.com.  After a few minutes on hold I got through to a rep and she started to run me through everything I had already tried.  She then went looking in my .htaccess files to verify that I had indeed done what I said.  She came back and then asked to put me on hold.  After a few minutes she came back on and told me that it was all working again as expected.

I asked her what had changed and she told me that when I connect via sftp (ssh) I need to ensure that I explicitly close my connection.  She said that if a connection gets hung up and not properly closed that this error/behavior can happen.  I found that to be a bit strange, but my sites are indeed working again, so I will have to watch to see if it happens again.

Tracking Outbound Clicks – Part Two

Back in May I was looking for a way to track outbound clicks from my blog using Google Analytics Asynchronous code.  At the time there weren’t any WordPress plug-ins that were able to do this.  Last week I was setting up a new blog and found that there now is a plug-in that has this ability.

The plug-in is simply named Asynchronous Google Analytics for WordPress. It has few options and is really quite easy to setup.  It can be as simple as entering your Google Analytics ID, or you can modify advanced options if you wish.  Some of the options I found useful were turning off tracking for blog admins or segmenting logged in users.  I found it interesting that using the Asynchronous code was not turned on by default (since that is the name of the plug-in).

I’ve been using it for a couple of days and it seems to be working quite well.  Go check it out!

WordPress 3 Upgrade

I’ve been struggling with getting the new version of WordPress to auto-install.  I have been getting a stalled upgrade with no error or feedback.  The process would just fail at ‘Unpacking Files’ and nothing else would happen.

After a bit of searching I found a tip that finally worked.  It seems to be due to php4 and php5 being enabled at the same time like my hosting company 1and1.com has.  After updating the .htaccess file at the root of my WordPress installation with the following code the upgrade worked seamlessly!

Add

# Ensure PHP5 being used
# For WordPress auto upgrade
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

To your .htaccess file and you’ll be in business!

UPDATE: 8-3-2010 1:40pm

Either the upgrade to v3, or my hosting company (I suspect the hosting company)_ wiped out my .htaccess file.  This prevented me from upgrading to v3.0.1.  Once the settings were *back* in place I was able to upgrade as expected.

Tracking outbound clicks

Today I was looking at my Google Analytics statistics and found it interesting how people come to find my site.  The referral links from other sites are a decent traffic generator.  This got me wondering about how many people follow links on my pages out into the wild.

Naturally I started by searching the WordPress plug-in directory for something that sets this up for me.  I found many alternatives, but a few caught my eye right off.  Some plug-ins can track the outbound clicks via the Google Analytics infrastructure already in place. Continue reading Tracking outbound clicks