During the talk we touched on one important point - its incredibly easy to make a really simple theme for Wordpress. I’ve attached the sample code here for you to browse. Its a really simple theme, with just 2 files, and will output any pages you have inside your blog in a horizontal bar at the top of your site. Feel free to play around with it and use it as the basis for your theme, although I would recommend starting a theme yourself from scratch.

For those who missed the talk, I’ll be speaking again at BarCampBrighton3 and BarCampLondon5. I’ll likely give the WordPress talk (shortened version) at the Brighton BarCamp, and if it goes down well, at London too.

Here are the slides:

I’ll be posting more about this talk shortly.

Here’s a typical situation you might encounter:

• You have 2 - 10 staff
• Everyone has a laptop which they take home each day
• Staff may work away from the office
• You want everyone’s work to be backed up in a reliable way, in case of a crash
• You want backups to be stored away from the laptops, in case of a disaster
• You want a solution that can grow with the company, so more space can be added as staff grow

Possible solutions:

I’ve considered the following in each option:

Backup to external media, carried with the laptop

This solution requires each employee to carry an external hard drive of some kind around alongside the laptop. They can then run a regular backup using a variety of tools, from wherever they are.

• Cost: around £60 per person for an 80GB portable hard drive - one off…1 point
• Protection level: protects against a crash only…0 points
• Backup Speed: fast…1 point
• Central store: none…0 points
• Convenience: inconvenient, the drive must be carried around with the laptop…0 points
• Flexibility: highly flexible - you just buy a new drive when new people arrive…1 point
• Security: protect the media with a strong password, else the data could be taken…0.5 points
• Ease of use: you have to carry an external drive everywhere, and remember it…0 points
• In house management: none…1 point

Score - 4.5/8

Backup to central media

Keep a large hard drive in the office, which can be connected to over the network. This could be a central server. Employees back up to a space on the disk when they are in the office.

• Cost: £1000 to £2000 for a 2TB-3TB external networkable hard drive or computer, one off cost…1 point
• Protection level: protects against a disaster only, and then only if the laptops are out of the office if a disaster occurs in the office (e.g. you go to lunch, someone steals all laptops and the backups)…0 points
• Backup Speed: fast…1 point
• Central store: Yes…1 point
• Convenience: its simple to do run the backups when in the office…1 points
• Flexibility: not overly flexible, if you run out of space you need an additional drive which splits your data, or a new one…0 points
• Security: protect the media with a strong password, else the data could be taken…0.5 points
• In house management: lots…0 points

Score - Cheap, fast, provides a central store but only protects against disaster, inflexible and inconvenient - 4.5/8

Notes -

• You should do an occasional backup onto external media which can be removed from the office using this method, thus protecting against disaster when the laptops are alongside the backup drive

Backup to external media at home, central media in the office

Give everyone their own drive which they keep with them when working from home or in other locations. When they are in the office, they use the central backup. Suggest they run a backup at home at least once a week, even if they are only working from the office that week.

• Cost: £1000 to £2000 for a 2TB-3TB external networkable hard drive or computer, one off cost + around £60 per staff member…1 point
• Protection level: protects against a disaster and a crash, as there is a backup stored in two places, one of which is bound to be away from the laptop…1 point
• Backup Speed: fast…1 point
• Central store: office backup provides the central store…1 point
• Convenience: You have to remember to back up at home, at work it should be simple…0.5 points
• Flexibility: inherits the poor flexibility of the central media, and the good flexibility of the individual media…0.5 points
• Security: protect the media with a strong password, else the data could be taken…0.5 points
• In house management: lots…0 points

Score - 5.5/8

Online backup service

Everyone backs up over the internet using one of a number of remote backup services.

• Cost: £1500 per year for 200GB with up to 100 staff with iBackup…0 points
• Protection level: protects against a disaster, a crash, and the backups are protected and themselves backed up if you pick a reliable provider…1 point
• Backup Speed: slow at first - the initial backup could take many hours - but then not so bad…0.5 points
• Central store: provided…1 point
• Convenience: you have to have internet access to backup…0 points if you aren’t always online, 1 if you are, 0.5 if it varies!
• Flexibility: very flexible, you just add space to your package as you grow…1 point
• Security: you best trust whoever you let have your data, they could lose your data, have it taken from them, or worst still - use your data!…0 points (unless you trust the company - then 1 point)
• In house management: none…1 point

Score - 4.5/8 to 6.5/8 depending on your situation

Summary

If you can find a secure company you can trust, can afford it and are online most of the time, then the online backup service will be the one, its easiest to manage, and provides great protection against a number of cirumstances. Since the initial cost is low, you could trial this.

If the online backup isn’t for you, then the hard drive at home/central store in the office should be your next choice. It provides a similar level of protection, but if you find yourself working from home for a long time you won’t be protected against disaster and might want to try an ad-hoc online solution such as saving some of the data on a private file server or opening up the networked hard drive to external connections.

In no particular order the areas I’m going to look at are:

• Shared files
• Version control for code
• Regular secure backups
• An online documentation system
• An inventory of equipment and software

In more detail:

Share files centrally

If there is more than one employee, having access to a central location allowing you to store files such as text docs and spreadsheets to be accessed by one or more people is essential. It saves you emailing back and forth, and allows you to work on files together - if you choose carefully.

There are a number of ways you could achieve a shared file system:

• Google docs - this allows you to work online, work on documents together, and keep local copies using google gears, ideal if you work away from the office often and takes care of backups, not so good if you’re unahappy about google having control of your documents
• Another online document alternative, there are a quite few out there although I haven’t used them so can’t advise
• A server you connect your PC’s or Mac’s to, you could use a Mac for this (they allow up to 10 people to connect and save and retrieve files from), or a PC with sharing enabled, or set up a Linux box.

If you decide to go down the google route, consider using google apps - this will take care of your email, shared docs and calendar, and lets you use your company site address to log in and as your email address.

Version control for code

Ensure you are coding with version control. This provides you with a place to store your code, allows more than one person to work on the same piece of code, and lets you save the code in a central location, enabling backup (offsite if you use another provider).

Options include Subversion, CVS (now rather outdated) and Git (new kid on the block). I use tried and tested Subversion.

Hosting options include:

• Setting up a repository (the place the code is stored) on a machine in the office - this requires installation and doesn’t automatically mean offsite backup, plus you probably need to be in the office to use the system
• Using a hosted alternative, allowing access from anywhere and ensuring off site backup - I use webfaction who provide SVN hosting at a low price

Regular secure backups

Everyone in the office needs to ensure their work is being backed up properly. I recommend as a minimum a daily backup of all files, this can be kept onsite, and a weekly backup which is kept off site. Addtionally its a good idea to make a monthly copy of your entire hard disk to allow a quick restore including all settings and software.

There is plenty of software available to help you achieve this, all you need is some external storage. I’ll go into more detail on available options and provide some recommendations over the coming weeks.

Ensure the following:

• Your backups are secure - this means if someone finds them, they can’t access the files
• Your backups are not next to your computer - they should be in another location entirely, so that in case of a fire, the files are not lost. As mentioned I keep a weekly backup away from my office.
• You have a good restore plan, and have tested it, i.e. how will you get the files back once they have gone.

An online documentation system

As you or your staff code, you will make discoveries, learn new stuff and come up with best practices and methods of doing things. It is key that you write these down, and store them somewhere everyone else in the office can access. This way, if you or someone else leaves the company, everyone still has access to that knowledge.

Stuff to put in your system includes:

• Code snippets
• Best practices for coding (naming conventions, bracing guidelines and other general stuff)
• Tutorials and how-to’s that members of the team write as they learn something new
• Documentation for the actual software the team creates (optional - you might want or need to keep this seperately)

Options for setting up such a system:

• Use a CMS tool such as Wordpress (its come a long way from being just a blogging platform), using plugins to ensure the code snippets play nice
• A wiki (can be better for team editing, but also sometimes harder to set up and get working as you want it)
• Lots of documents, such as google docs - this will be hard to navigate though, but quicker to set up

Again, I’ll go into more detail on this over the next few weeks.

An inventory

When purchasing new equipment and software its important to record model details, serial numbers, copies of the software and all the info you will need to claim on insurance or reinstall software in case something goes wrong. These details must be very secure, and probably not kept online.

You might also keep usernames and passwords here - although I would recommend passwords be kept in the head to be totally secure. When signing up for accounts such as google analytics, amazon etc that everyone should have access to its useful to either use a clearly defined username or record the name you picked.

Conclusions

Although this article has been rather rushed, I hope you can get a good idea of how to ensure your company is stable and secure from a software perspective. I’m going to think about each of these in more detail over the coming weeks and hope to provide more advice.

Timeboxing is where you set yourself a time limit on a specific activity. For example, you decide to spend an hour on adding twitter to your blog using an API, when the hour is up you must stop and do something else. If you didn’t finish the task it might be because it will take much longer, and you need to reconsider wether its worth doing or allocate more time to the task. You might have been close to finishing, thats fine - allocate more time at a later date.

Timeboxing is especially useful when applied to programming, where you can end up wasting an hour or two trying so solve a problem that would be better off left for a few hours. It forces you to focus on the most important stuff first, and ensures you get ’something’ done in that period.

Timeboxing in software development also cuts down on the amount of time spent ‘polishing’, this very blog shows that off well - I allocated myself 3 hours to do the template, no time left for any polish, but the blog is live and works. Perhaps I will allocate myself time to polish at a later date.

Timeboxing can also be applied to other areas of your life, its amazing how much tidying and cleaning can get done if you only have 20 mins to do it in.

I’ve only just started timeboxing, so I’ll give an update in a few months once its become one of my core lifehacks.

One of the reasons for the new blog is my new job at Ribot, where I will be their first full time developer. They specialise in mobile, and its a new field for me, so I expect to be very busy over the coming weeks, hence getting some stuff out of the way such as this blog relaunch. Looking forward to lots of hard work and fun with the Ribot guys!

Its called ies4osx and requires OSX tiger or leopard, and an Intel machine. On tiger you need have to installed X11.

Download it here.

I found the download process pretty simple, a few things to do, but nothing too time consuming.

The main reason is I’ve only been freelancing for a short time, and have found myself rather busy, so rest assured its on my todo list.

Some people have suggested I install someone else’s theme - but I think its important to go with the right theme, so that would take time to select. I also think people would expect to see a theme I had developed, so that might well be time wasted.

If you are interested in the kind of thing that can be achieved with Wordpress theming, take a look at handsonphysiotherapy.co.uk - a simple site I built without a blog element, using Wordpress as its back end. In the next few weeks I’ll be putting a portfolio together to show some of the other Wordpress integrations I’ve been working on, and I’ll be giving a talk on how to theme Wordpress to manage a simple site at The Werks on July 24th, so come along and find out more.

• install Wordpress with a single line of code
• update Wordpress with a single line of code, from then on

This could save you hours of work if you manage several wordpress sites and don’t use WordpressMU.

What you will need

If you are installing this on a mac, and you have set up a webserver you are ready to go!

If you are are installing this on windows you will need to install svn on windows first. Seek out the Win32 package. You will also need a webserver - you can follow my post on how to install wordpress on a local machine to figure that one out.

If you are installing this on a remote server, perhaps your webhost, you will need ssh access.

If you understand everything so far, your going to find the next step very easy. If not, you should probably read my post on SVN first. Then read on.

Step 1 - Getting to the place you want to install Wordpress

Firstly you need to get to the position on your server, be it on Windows, Mac or a remote server, where you want to install your Wordpress software. Once you reach that point, its the same wherever you are.

On WIndows

Go to start -> click Run type ‘cmd’ and click OK - this loads up the command line.

Figure out where you want the wordpress installation to go, on my machine I use WAMP so for me its C:\wamp\www

Type the following into the command line window (and press enter after):

cd C:\wamp\www

Where ‘C:\wamp\www’ is the path you want to use.

Type:

mkdir directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you want the Wordpress installation to go into.

Type:

cd directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you just created.

You’re ready for step 2.

On Mac

Open up terminal

Figure out where you want the wordpress installation to go, I use my Sites folder.

Type the following into terminal:

cd Sites

Where ‘Sites’ is the path you want to use.

Type:

mkdir directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you want the Wordpress installation to go into.

Type:

cd directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you just created.

You’re ready for step 2.

On a remote server

You will need the following details:

• Your ssh username
• Your ssh password
• Your IP Address

You may need to ask your host for some of these details, and they may not give them to you either.

Connecting to your host using Windows

First install PuTTY (go for the installation that just says PuTTY) and start the software.

Under Host name or IP address, enter the host name or IP address of your web server.

Once connected, enter your login name.

Then enter the password.

Skip the Mac section and continue.

Connecting to your host using a mac

Log in to your remote server using the command

ssh username@192.168.0.100

Where username is the username you have that allows ssh access, and 192.168.0.100 is the IP address of the server you want to log in to.

Navigating to your folder

ow navigate to the folder you want to install wordpress in.

cd /username/www

Where ‘/username/www’ is the path to the place where your websites are all stored on your remote server.

Type:

mkdir directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you want the Wordpress installation to go into if that doesn’t work you may need to use your hosts control panel to make the folder and then continue.

Type:

cd directoryname

Where directoryname is the name of the folder you just created.

Now move on to step 2.

Step 2 - Install Wordpress

First you need to select your version, I would always go for the latest, but what is that?

Go to this website - http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/ thats the Subversion repository (if you don’t understand what that means don’t worry). Scroll down to find the latest version at the bottom of the page.

Bearing in mind the version you want, enter the following into your command line window:

svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/ .

Where 2.5.1 is the version you want to use.

Set up a database, set up your wp-config as normal and your ready to go!

Step 3 - Update Wordpress using SVN

Updates are much easier now. Updating with SVN will ensure no folders are overwritten and any unused files are removed.

Do a backup first to be on the safe side, and wake sure your database is backed up.

Using the instructions above in step 1, navigate to the folder containing your Wordpress installation.

Once you are inside the folder, enter the following:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.2/ .

Where 2.5.2 is the version you want to update to.

You’re done!

This article is aimed at PC owners. I use both PC and Mac, and this time I had to do this task on my PC. The principles can also be applied to a Mac, and I have already written a group of articles for Mac which will be linked to from this article that achieve the same results.

We’ll be going through the following steps:

• Installing PHP, MySQL and Apache on a PC to form the ‘local host’
• Copying the Wordpress install over from your remote host
• Copying the database

Here we go…

Installing PHP, MySQL and Apache

Mac users

Go to my tutorial on setting up PHP, MySQL and Apache on a Mac.

PC users

There are many packages available that allow a one click installation of PHP, MySQL and Apache on a PC. I looked at a few and settled for WAMP, as its kept up to date, is relatively lightweight and easy to use.

1. Start by downloading WAMP.
2. Run through the installation, accepting the defaults.
3. You should now see a new icon in your taskbar - that’s WAMP! If you don’t see it, just start the software by clicking on the icon, or locating it in your programs.
4. Start your webserver by left clicking on the icon in the taskbar, and selecting Start All Services. Nothing will happen - the services run behind the scenes.
5. Open a browser and go to http://localhost/, if you see the WampServer homepage then you’re ready to start setting up wordpress.

Copying the Wordpress install over from your remote host

Next you are going to download Wordpress from your remote host and set it up as a local site.

1. Using your preferred FTP client (I use the excellent free filezilla) download all the files in and including the folder associated with your Wordpress install. If your Wordpress is in a folder called ‘wordpress’, you need to download the whole folder.
2. Place the downloaded folder into the WAMP folder www. This is where all files to be run on the webserver need to be placed. This can be found by clicking the WAMP icon and selecting the ‘www’ directory option. Its also in C:/wamp/www
3. Once the downloads are complete, go to http://localhost/the_name_of_your_wordpress_folder, you should see a database error. If you do, its all worked! If you see a server error, its likely to be your .htaccess file - try removing it temporarily.

Copying the database

Now you need to get all the tables associated with Wordpress out of the remote server, and onto the local server. You’ll probably need to use PHP MyAdmin, which most hosts include by default. If this isn’t available and your using a version of Wordpress which is later than 2.0.3 you can try the wordpress db backup plugin.

1. Log in to PhpMyAdmin
2. Select the database containing your Wordpress tables, note down its name
3. Select the Export Option
4. Select all the tables related to this Wordpress installation
5. Ensure you download as SQL, check the Data box, so all data is downloaded - complete and extended inserts. Check the box so you save as file and select no compression (it sometimes goes wrong).

Next you need to import this data into phpMyAdmin on your local WAMP server.

1. Start PhpMyAdmin by clicking on the WAMP icon and selecting the option phpMyAdmin
2. On the homepage there is an option called ‘Create New Database’, enter the name of the database from your remote server and click create.
3. Click on your newly created database in the left hand column.
4. Click import and browse to your downloaded file
5. Click ‘go’ and all the data should be imported
6. If you have problems with the size of your datafile, there are other methods - send me a mail, or add a comment and I’ll go into them. At the moment I’m trying to keep this document as simple as I can.

Next you need to set up the same username and password on this local database as is used on your remote database. You will have used these to log in to phpMyAdmin on your remote server, they are also in your wp_config file.

1. Go to the homepage of the local phpMyAdmin and select ‘Privileges’
2. Click the add a new user option
3. Under username enter the username from the remote host, under host select localhost, under password and re-type enter the password from the remote host. Under privileges check all. Click go.

A note on user permissions - I had some issues with the host type - basically, in the wp-config file you need to check the DB_HOST entry. If the host is ‘localhost’ the user in the local mySQL should be set to host - localhost. If the host is ‘127.0.0.1′ the user should be set to host - any.

Finally, you need to change a couple of fields inside the wordpress database to ensure the correct web address is used.

1. Go to the local phpMyAdmin
2. Select the database containing wordpress
3. Select the table wp_options
4. Select browse
5. Locate the option ’siteurl’ and edit it so the option_value becomes http://localhost/local_folder_name
6. Locate the option ‘home’ and edit it so the option_value becomes http://localhost/local_folder_name (this might be on the second page of database fields).

And you should now be done check http://localhost/local_folder_name.

Whats Next

Keep an eye out for many more Wordpress tutorials over the coming weeks. I’m currently freelancing and am working on a bunch of Wordpress sites for various people, as well as working on some open source themes, premium themes and plug-ins. Email me if you need any assistance - kirby [dot] mark [at] gmail [dot] com.