[lug] web site advice needed

[karl horlen]

thanks for the info gary.  same to sean and george as well who also replied





>________________________________
> From: Gary A. Romero <garomero at thegeek.nu>
>To: karl horlen <horlenkarl at yahoo.com>; Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List <lug at lug.boulder.co.us> 
>Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 12:44 PM
>Subject: Re: [lug] web site advice needed
> 
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>
>1) can you *easily* make backups directly from the wordpress admin panel vs having to go out to the cmd line (assuming a non linux user is going to administer the site)? and then easily restore them from the admin panel if something goes awry vs having a non-technical user work mysql / cmdline foo? 
>
>-Yes you can, though if I remember correctly, these backups are not complete. Things like your plugins, templates and media files are not included and I highly recommend backing them up before you do any core updates.
>
>2) in my original post, i mentioned two different things a) backup the db and then b) backing up the wordpress directory. you commented i think mostly on the db backup. i imagine that wordpress update is going to unpack some set of files on top of the existing directory. 
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>a) so do you dup your working directory and then run the upgrade on top of that? or do you just let it rip from the control panel in wordpress? 
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>- The output from the admin panel back up can be imported into a localhost from the admin panel. You can then run the update against the local assuming the localhost is the same version.
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>if you do the former, i imagine that's something that an avg user isn't going to be able to do without some cmdline foo? 
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>- No command line foo is required. You can easily backup the specific items mentioned in the answer to question 1 with a cron job or via FTP.
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>b) obviously if you change CORE wordpress code, it could be overwritten on an update. but what about if you roll your own templates and or plugins. is wordpress smart enough to not touch or overwrite those? 
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>- Templates are usually updated separately from the core WP updates so it's not usually an issue though it could open up security risks is you don't pay attention to the patch notes.
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>3) does wordpress allow simple update and upgrade of plugins from the admin panel? if a plugin author screws up for whatever reason, will reinstalling the previous version fix db issues that may have been applied via the plugin update or do you need a db backup for that? my guess is that answer depends on the author and or the plugin. just wondering if the plugins have guidelines that prevent this sort of mishap from happening by requiring plugins to take care of db maintenance when upgrading and falling back. 
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>- Yes, the admin panel makes the updates fairly simple. 'Most' of the plugins do not modify the DB. If you do get one that breaks things when it updates, you can unistall the updated one and reinstall the previous version assuming you back up the original plugin zip.
>
>----------------------------
>Gary (Garheade) Romero
>
>"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing." Dick Brandon
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