Ryan Maffit » Web Development

WordPress Shell Update Script

Ryan Maffit — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:21:17 +0000

Hello everyone, today I am going to share with you a shell script I have been using to easily update my WordPress blog installation (and can easily be expanded to upgrade multiple blogs as well). The script I wrote automatically downloads the latest version of WordPress, extracts it, and updates your blog files. In order to run this script you will need SSH access and the ability to run shell scripts. This script was written to work with my host which runs on cPanel, but it can easily be altered to work on other systems as well by modify the directories. Below are instructions on how you can go about using this shell script to easily upgrade your blog.

Login to SSH with your cPanel username and password
Create a directory called upgrade_blog/ in your home directory (mkdir ~/upgrade_blog)
Navigate to the upgrade_blog directory (cd ~/upgrade_blog)
Create a new file called “run.sh” using your text editor of choice (I use nano)

Paste the following code into the run.sh file:

rm -rdf ~/upgrade_blog/latest.zip ~/upgrade_blog/wordpress/
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
cp -r ~/upgrade_blog/wordpress/* ~/public_html/blog/

Save the file
To update your blog just simply navigate to the upgrade_blog/ directory in SSH and execute the run.sh file (sh run.sh)
The script automatically downloads the latest version of WordPress and updates your blog accordingly.
Once the script has finished executing open up your blog and go to your admin. WordPress will ask you to upgrade your database if it is needed.
If you want to upgrade multiple blogs just copy the last line from the script and change the directory it copies the WordPress files to.
Note: This script is based off of of the assumption that your blog is located in public_html/blog if your blog is located elsewhere change it.

And that’s all there is to it. Enjoy.

Purely CSS-Based Dropdown Menu

Ryan Maffit — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:19:45 +0000

Here is a purely CSS-based dropdown menu that I threw together real quick for my blog. It doesn’t use any javascript and works in all major latest browsers (Not you IE6 – You need to die already )

If you have any issues or questions leave them in a comment below.

Please Note: This is just a simple example for you to base your own menus off of. It does not take into account browser screen width or height (to prevent opening menus off-screen) because that would require Javascript, maybe in the future I will create another post about how to make a JavaScript based dropdown menu that uses Javascript to make sure the menus don’t appear off-screen.

Download – Demo

PHP Random Image Script

Ryan Maffit — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:48:36 +0000

This script takes a list of images with links and randomly outputs one of them.

<img src="\" alt="\&quot;&quot;.$img[1].&quot;\&quot;" />";
?&gt;

Dynamic PHP Font Generator

Ryan Maffit — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:40:00 +0000

This is a little script I expanded upon that I found from one of my previous clients. The original script was created by Stewart Rosenberger. The WP Now website uses this script to dynamically generate testimonial signatures.

Dynamic PHP Font Generator Version 1.0

WP Now Launched & New Theme

Ryan Maffit — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:23:32 +0000

Hello everyone,

Today, with two colleagues of mine, we have launched a brand new premium wordpress themes website. Check it out at http://www.wpnow.com/.
I have also uploaded one of the WP Now themes I coded (Elements) to this blog because I really liked it , any comments feel free to post below!

Ryan

Welcome to my blog

Ryan Maffit — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:46:31 +0000

Hello everyone and welcome to my personal blog. For those of you wondering what has happened to all of my websites (including rm249.com, rm249.net and maffit.me), my server’s hard drive experienced a hard drive crash early saturday morning and everything was lost. Rather than re-creating different accounts for all of my individual websites, I have now combined them all into one. I will be using this temporary design and website until I can get around to designing and coding a new one.

I always planned on making myself a new blog for posting web development related stuff but I never imagined it would happen like this.

If anyone has any questions or concerns please feel free to comment to this post and I will respond ASAP.

Ryan