1. Backed up all my wordpress files currently saved on my windows hosting account. To do this I just FTP'd the entire root folder that included all of the wp-content themes and plugins as well as any image and resource files that I linked to.

2. Backed up the database stored on my windows server. To do this I followed the Wordpress Codex doc on Backing up your database. Really easy to follow. I downloaded the .sql file to my hard disc.

3. Switched my website hosting from Windows (IIS) server to Apache (Website) from within the control panel that links to both my Windows and Linux hosting packages. The switch took about 5 minutes. This left with with a blank webspace on my linux server.

4. Uploaded the latest version of Wordpress (2.9.2) to my linux web space.

5. Set up a new database on the linux server.

6. Edited wp-config.php in the root of my Wordpress installation to point to the new database settings and also uploaded a .htaccess file to the root of my wordpress installation.

7. Used the Famous 5 minute install from Wordpress to install Wordpress on my Linux webspace. I then had a blank installation of Wordpress with the default Kubrick theme.

8. I uploaded all the wp-content files (themes, plugins etc.) from step one into the new installation.

9. I then imported the original database that I downloaded in step 2 using the restoring your database guide from Wordpress Codex. I was slightly confused as to how this would work before I done it as I did not keep the same name and settings for the new database on the linux server. This didn't cause any problems though and it simply imports data into the new database from the old one.

That was it. Simple and a hundred times more painless than I thought. As far as I can see everything is working perfectly. I don't know if it will have any effect on rankings in Google but I wouldn't think so. All in all I would say the site was only down for about 10 to 15 minutes so I'd be a lot more confident about doing this next time. Hopefully I won't have to do it again though as my reason for switching is that my Windows hosting solution is due shortly and I am not going to renew it as it's easier to have everything stored on Linux.

That's all for now...

Update : 6th of April 2010 : I had said that the switch was seemless but I did notice a problem with the sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files associated with the all in one Seo plugin for Wordpress. Any new posts such as this one were not being written to the sitemap files. I corrected this by CHMODing the files to make them writeable.

photo credit: nocas

One of the things on the agenda was to make a list of things that I wanted to change on the appearance of this blog, here goes:
1. There's a colour mismatch in the div at the top of my page, I need to changed the page background image to match this or vice versa.

2. New Logo: I want to restyle the logo so that it's more readable, my domain name is pretty long but I like it and I'm sticking with it. Based on feedback, I might run it over two lines and may do something with the colours also.
3. Give myself a bit of a makeover. I look like Al Pacino in Scarface and want to just fix up the dark line running down the side of my cheek bone. Yes, I agree this is vain.
4. I'm still using the post title and text styles that come with the custom wordpress theme,. I'd like to have a look at some other styles to put my own spin on the look of my posts. This isn't that important, but I just want to move towards a completely customised look and feel for my site.
5. Need to rework the current ad for RudeVid.com. I threw this together in 2 minutes and I want to update it and create a uniform style for all future ads for site I'm involved with from now on. RudeVid.com was another thing on the agenda and I've been making some solid progress on this too!
6. I generally want to restyle the entire sidebar and give it a look that integrates better with the design of the rest of the site. In addition to this, I'd like to add a few more plugins to increase the functionality of the site. I could just go ahead and install every plugin available but it's important for me to do a bit of research into this area and make sure I select plugins that fit in with this site and increase the usability.

7. Restyle the bullet points used for listed items. I've started using lists on my posts recently as I feel it makes things easier to read for certain topics. Again I want to add my own look and feel to this area and will design my own images for this.
8. I added the SocioFluid Plugin a while back and I may look at other options for this. I want to cut down the number of social bookmarking links I'm using on this site and will either reduce the ones currently listed with the SocioFluid plugin or may look at another plugin altogether.
9. Again, more restyling on the links back to previous/next posts, what I have is ok but again I just want to customise the look and feel my own taste.
10. Last but not least, I 'might' rework the graphics styling on the footer or left align the footer text.
11. - Update: Move this blog across to a linux server, I purchased a linux hosting package a while back to eliminate the index php from my permalink structure. I also think linux is better for open source software such as WordPress.

As you can see, these are mainly all cosmetic css or design fixes, but they are important for me as for each one that I style myself it's me putting my own personal touch on my site. The great thing about WordPress and indeed css is the adaptability. The stuff on my site doesn't look the way I want it to right now but when I make these changes in the right places the whole site gets an overhaul and everything looks the way I want it to and not just the stuff I add after making the changes. I'm hoping to roll out these changes before the end of the Summer. I've taken the first step now anyway and I'm a lot better organised for getting this done with minimal effort. It's only a matter of pulling up this post as a reference and getting stuck into Photoshop and the backend of this site for a few hours to make these changes happen.

I haven't rejected the other stuff on the list, I'll be following up later in the week with another post on my progress

photo credit: Great Beyond

The spec. for a the site was a really clean and simple look that he could use to showcase his photography work. He wanted the first page to show a single shot which linked in to a list of galleries. In my previous post, I had a look at some of the gallery plugins available for WordPress and decided to go with kPicasa that links in to Picasa. I'm really happy with how simply this plugin works.

Anyway, getting back to how powerful WordPress is, I was looking for a really simple theme and came across the sliding door theme. I thought, it would be nice to use customised images in the sliding header to personalise the site for Ciaran, strip away the sidebar and just run with a nice plain black site. I had this up and running on the site yesterday, but we had a talk about it and agreed that it wasn't right. I went theme hunting in the WordPress Theme Directory and within 5 minutes came back with the Capricorn Theme by Shaibani. It's really really simple, have a look at a demo of the original theme here and now look at CallumPhotography.com (or below) to see what I've done with it.

The site isn't finished yet but I'm happy enough to let you have a look. I'll be tweaking it over the next week to finish it off to Ciaran's liking and hopefully fix a few layout issues that I'm not happy with. What I like about it so far is that I was able to get this far in one day with WordPress using a very simple theme and a few plugins. That shows the power of WordPress. If I was trying to design a site like this from scratch, I'd be there for weeks, if not months doing it. Even for someone who's familiar with WordPress, it would be hard to spot that this is a WordPress site if I stripped away the links in the footer at the bottom. So with a few hours working on the site and a couple of talks with Ciaran and we're nearly there already. It might not be the best site in the world but he say's it's 'exactly' what he was after so that's good enough for me.

Another great thing about using WordPress for this site (although it's not a typical blog) is that Ciaran can login in to the WordPress control panel and take ownership of the site. This is way better than me asking him for his photos, uploading a bunch of files on to a server and thinking that's the job done. That might work for some people, but for me that's not what it's about. It's Ciaran's site and I'll be helping him get to grips with WordPress and gain a better understanding of how he can edit the site himself to put his own spin on it and keep the site alive! If I handed over a static website that wasn't easily configured he'd get bored with it in a week, but if I give him something to play about with the site becomes his and he's gonna be more interested in growing it. The longer any I site I create remains active and online is only a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I've also done my first bit of custom coding for WordPress for this one. If you have a look at the homepage on callumphotography.com, you'll see that it displays a random image depending on the time that you load the page. Test this out by reloading the page after about ten seconds and you should see a new photograph up there (it's running 6 different images at the minute). It's nothing spectacular but I'm thinking of customising the code a bit more so that it's easily adaptable for Ciaran to change what images are loaded up at specific times. I'm even thinking of having a go at creating my first WordPress plugin from it. There will be a bit of work involved in this, if I go ahead, but it would be a great experience for me to make my own plugin freely available to the public and to myself for use on other sites.

So this site demonstrates exactly what you can achieve with WordPress in a few days. The look and feel of a custom built site with functionality exactly as per the client requirements. I still have a few issues to iron out on this one and Ciaran needs to sort out his galleries to get some content up there and complete the site but it's not looking to bad at the minute. I also changed the front page on the WordPress site to a static page and included a blog space for him so he has the option of writing about his photographs. We will also look at integrating a way of selling his work from the site further down the line. I've enjoyed working on this one so far and you should expect a few updates on it over the Summer months!