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Wordpress updater
What’s with these multiple posts in a day…
Today marks the completion of my Multiple WordPress Updater Script. I’ve already posted a bunch about school stuff, might as well post about work stuff too.
We host over 55 blogs at CHNM. It’s up to me to update them when security patches or new versions come out. Doing them each by hand is a pain. I did a bit of searching but didn’t find anything that would help me update so many sites automatically. So I wrote a bash script that will do it for me. It reads a file that lists all of the wordpress install paths or prompts you for the path to one, prompts for the version to switch to, and a mysql user/pass that has permissions for all databases.
Then the script creates a copy of the database, makes a copy of the wp-content folder, updates the wordpress install using subversion, fixes some permissions, and saves the subversion output to a file in your home directory (which I’ll probably change to somewhere’s else).
I run this via sudo as root for easy updating. What I’m really pleased with is that I figured out how to get the script to pull the database name from the wp-config.php file, and grab the owner and group for later fixing of the permissions.
I hope it can be useful to someone. If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know.
Latest Version: 1.2.3 - 04/29/08
Download file
UPDATE 24.4.08: Wordpress Updater has been updated. I also updated this post, took out the code in the post, and put up a link to the file for you to download instead.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Gonna get my PhD.
I got accepted to the PhD program at GMU recently. I just need to quit procrastinating and send my acceptance letter. The tough part is knowing I can get a stipend, but realizing I can’t take it because I’m a full time employee. Well the benefits (medical and monetary) out-way the stipend, and I love my job. So I’m content.
Popularity: 5% [?]
A time machine…
Or a set of machines (appliances really) to take one back in time (at least mentally).
This post from William Turkel at Digital History Hacks about the history appliance was just down-right awesome. How cool would it be, even if just in your browser or on your computer, to have everything (all types of media) display a certain time period or year.
What I thought was most interesting is the immersion effect this would have for historians. It would be a great way to see what was available at that time, what was not, what was popular, what was in the news… Pretty cool.
Popularity: 7% [?]
I’m alive… really, I am…
Not that anyone reads this with any regularity (made impossible by my irregular postings)….
I stumbled upon this cool video explaining “Web 2.0″ from http://www.metagrrrl.com/ (I hate buzz words, and Web 2.0 is a huge bloated, overused, ugly buzz word. Oh well..)
Anyhow, it’s really cool…
(If it doesn’t show up, here’s the link.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
Popularity: 5% [?]
Paradigms of Humanities and Medicators
Dan Cohen has a description of a recent conference about the humanities and their use of modern technology. In the post he shows that the whole aspect of scholars in the humanities requires a paradigm shift, but also mentions another paradigm shift that happened in the field of medicine. This was the efforts of Dr. John Snow in London during the cholera outbreak in the mid nineteenth century.
Popularity: 8% [?]