Wordpress Plugins

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

February 28, 2009 by Tricia

I need some help fixing my husbands blog – Guitar Licks. Today when he visited the site (while I was still sleeping) the blog had error messages stating that the WP_posts database had crashed.

When you visit his site it loads with the WP theme and sidebars, but there’s error messages at the top and a “post cannot be found” message where current posts should be listed on the index page.

Some of the errors state:

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_title` ( `post_title`)

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_content` ( `post_content`)

So I’m assuming this error has something to do with the Yet another related post plugin that I’m using on most of my blogs. This blog is using the plugin version 2.16 and is using WP 2.62.

In the Yet another related posts plugin admin area there was a message that said:

YARPP’s “consider titles” and “consider bodies” relatedness criteria require your wp_posts table to use the MyISAM storage engine, but the table seems to be using the engine. These two options have been disabled.
To restore these features, please update your wp_posts table by executing the following SQL directive: ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ENGINE = MyISAM; . No data will be erased by altering the table’s engine, although there are performance implications.
If, despite this check, you are sure that wp_posts is using the MyISAM engine, press this magic button:

I clicked on the “magic button” as the plugin seems to be working just fine in all of my other blogs and I ended up with even more errors!

Help!

I’ve looked at the WP database for this blog and the WP_posts table says “in use” and I can’t browse it. I also can’t use the backup plugin in Guitar licks – it’s there and functioning but just hung when I tried to do a back up.

I’ve backed up the whole database using PHPmyAdmin so I have a copy in case something goes terribley wrong. Now I just need to know how to fix it.

Should I just place a check mark on WP_posts and then click the repair function at the bottom of the structure screen in PHPmyAdmin and see if that repairs the problem?

I’m nervous about attempting to fix this as I’ve never had to try to repair a database error before. Any help would be appreciated.

Migrating to Google Feeds

December 4, 2008 by Tricia

It looks like my RSS feeds, the ones that I set up on Feedburner, will be migrating over to Google Feeds sometime tomorrow.

I got an email from Google last week stating that my feeds would migrate to Google Feeds on the 5th. I didn’t request the migration, but I guess that they must be converting all of their Feedburner customers over to Google now.

Now that the day has just about arrived I’m starting to get nervous.

Will my Feedburner Feedsmith WP plugin still work? I use the plugin to convert my normal WordPress post and comment feeds to a Feedburner feed so I can accurate track my subscribers. Will I still be able to do that?

I took a look at the Google Forums and did a search for “Feedburner plugin” and a few other similar keywords, but I really couldn’t find much information as to whether it will still work once my feeds are on Google. A Google search turned up similarly unsatisfying results so I’m going to assume that the Feedburner plugin has continued to work for most people.

If you’ve converted your feeds from Feedburner to Google feeds and you use or used the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin would you be so kind as to let me know if it still works for you?

I have 30 Feedburner Feeds so I hope the migration goes well!

If everything goes well I’ll be able to monetize my feeds with Adsense. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that or not. I know that some of the big bloggers who are using Adsense for Feeds have stated that they are making money on their feeds, but I also know that people read RSS feeds not only for the convenience of being able to read their favorite feeds in one place, but also because the feeds are often ad free.

Have you added Adsense to your feeds? Are you making any money? How did your readers respond?

Now here’s a question for my RSS readers – how would you feel if I added an Adsense banner or two to my feeds? Would it bother you or would you be fine with it?

If I do decide to try Adsense for feeds I’d put the ad below the post. I HATE visiting a website and seeing big ads above a post. I mean, we visit websites or read feeds for the content and it’s just irritating to have to scroll down past an ad before you can read the content you came for, isn’t it?

BTW if you mainly read my sites by RSS feed or via an email subscription, if you suddenly stop being able to get my feed or if it looks like there’s no new posts (I generally post at least once a day) please let me know as there might be a problem with the feed thanks to the feed migration from Feedburner to Google Feeds.

How do you handle comment spam?

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

I’m so sick of spam! I swear, most days, every second comment I get on all of my blogs is either spam or someone just commenting to get a dofollow link and using a SEO user name.

I have the spam bots pretty much under control between the Akismet, Bad Behavior and WP-Spamfree plugins I use, but comment spam from real people is a constant problem.

I’m seriously considering closing comments on my old posts. I don’t really want to do that because I get real comments on older posts all the time, but I also get comment spam on them too.

I mark comments that appear to be spam (don’t make sense or that really don’t add to the post “good post!”) as spam and put them in the Akismet bin quite often. Others that look like they’re from someone commenting just for a link and or using a tacky SEO user name are either marked spam or have their links removed. It all depends upon the comment, how many comments or the number of my blogs they hit that day and the mood I happen to be in when I find the comment.

How do you handle human comment spammers on your blog?

I thought I lost my WordPress Database just now! Scary!

September 18, 2008 by Tricia

A few minutes ago as I finished the post below and pressed the Publish button this is what my admin area looked like:

Pretty scary, eh? I just about had a heart attack!

With the mantra “Oh no, oh no, oh no” going through my head, I opened up a new tab in my browser and loaded the site in the hopes that the blog would look normal. You know … that maybe what I saw in the admin area was just a temporary glitch?

No such luck … the front page of the blog looked like this:

Front page of my blog after publishing a post!

After having another heart attack and aging 10 years (gotta get some wrinkle cream now!) I decided to go to my webhost and check C-panel to make sure that my database really hadn’t disappeared.

The database was still there and I could see that it still had comment and post data in it, so i decided to open another new tab in order to load my blog again. I got the same error messages all over the page, so I added wp-admin to the url and I was able to go directly to the admin area.

Much to my relief the admin area looked fine when I got into it. I use a wp-cache for this blog so I went to the settings area and cleared the whole cache for the blog and it looked normal again.

I have no idea what happened, but it sure scared me! This is my oldest and biggest blog. The thought of losing the whole database and possibly the databases for my other blogs really freaked me out.

I just updated this blog to WP 2.6.2 on Saturday. Up until now there’s been no major problems except for the widget area looking strange on occasion. I wrote about that one one of my other blogs if you want to read about the widget problem. You can actually read about how fun it was to update 16 blogs in that post if you’re interested in hearing about my experiment with the WordPress Autoupdate plugin.

At least having just updated my blog I do have recent backups of the database and files.

So I don’t know if this was a problem caused by the new WP 2.6 or if perhaps there was an error on my hosts server when I was publishing my last post. I suppose it could also be a plugin conflict, but I haven’t added any new plugins or updated any since Saturday when I updated WordPress, and I’ve published several posts since then … so that doesn’t make sense as the cause of the problem.

I guess I’ll have to see what happens when I publish this post! Wish me luck!

Has anyone else had a problem like this immediately after publishing a new post? If you have experienced this type or error, did you ever find out what caused it? Any ideas?

Comment Relish- the WP plugin that greets new commentors

August 10, 2008 by Tricia

What would you think if I added a plugin to my site that would keep track of new commenter and send them a personal greeting?

The plugin is Comment Relish and it identifies new commentors and allows the blog owner to automatically send out a pre-defined message to that new visitor.

With so many new blogs being created daily sometimes you need an edge to grab that first time visitor or well in this case commentors attention. They’ve already like what you posted enough to leave a comment. Why not send them a greeting welcoming them to your site and thanking them for their visit? While you’re at it you could also list your RSS feed and email newsletter subscription link or possibly introduce your new visitor/commentor to another similar blog that you write.

I need your opinion

If you were a first time visitor to this site and you received a warm welcome visa email that also promoted the sites RSS feed and newsletter would you appreciate the message or be ticked off that you got yet another unwanted email? Mind you, this would be a one time email.

My other concern with this plugin, or well for that matter any new WP plugin that I add to my site is whether it will be a CPU hog on my hosting account. A plugin that makes too many calls to the MySQL database or behaves poorly in other ways can get your hosting account shut down as fast as a blink of the eye! I’ve had hosting problems in the past (not with current web host – Hostgator – thankfully!) and I don’t want those issues revisited just because I tried to enhance my visitors experience with a new WP plugin.

If you’ve used or if you currently use this plugin I’d love to hear from you.
Have you had any problems with this plugin?
How do your visitors like it?
Is your site fairly busy or do you have a number of other sites on your hosting account (this is where hosting issues come in on shared hosting accounts)?

Please help me decide whether I should use this plugin or if you know of another one that does something similar (but definitely doesn’t cause problems) please let me know which one you use.

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

Migrating to Google Feeds

How do you handle comment spam?

I thought I lost my WordPress Database just now! Scary!

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