Tag Archives: wordpress

Fixing WordPress Image Sizes missing issue on Ubuntu 16.04

While I was trying to upload some new photos onto my blog, I realized that all my photo sizes are gone. I use different sizes in blog posts and final tiles gallery as my portfolio so they are pretty important for me.

Uninstalling Simple Image Sizes and WP Smush did not help. Updating WordPress and all plugins to the latest did not help as well. So it had to be my Upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 for WordPress that messed it up. Continue reading

Upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 for WordPress

So today I decided to take on an adventure of updating my WordPress from an ancient 4.x to 5.x.

I did my due diligence of backing up and take a snapshot from DigitalOcean (my VPS service provider) and then started the risky process. The WordPress upgrade itself was relatively smooth with no issues. Little did I know that I was jumping into something more serious… Continue reading

letsencrypt Apache vhost

letsencrypt Apache vhost config on Ubuntu

Solving letsencrypt Apache vhost config issues

Setting up letsencrypt can be tricky with different variations of apache vhost configs. Here is how to set up letsencrypt Apache vhost config correctly:

(Note: letsencrypt is now certbot. The environment I am using is apache2 by DigitalOcean for Ubuntu/Wordpress VPS, single domain name)
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Moved to self-hosted blog on DigitalOcean

Today is a big day for this blog as it moves from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress site on DigitalOcean.

The process of transfer was easier than I expected. Moving content was easy, just export and import.

DNS and domain were the main issues. I had to point my name servers to digital ocean instead of the default wordpress ones. Then I need to create DNS records in DigitalOcean. Finally I need to configure the WordPress settings (which is just Apache settings for host name).

After finishing all these, I realized that my domain still points to the old WordPress.com site. It turned out that NUS cached the site (via swiftcache2-pgp.network.nus.edu.sg) and did not refresh it after I changed the name servers and the domain mapping. So I had to use VPN to verify that my site is working properly for everyone else (indeed it is!).

Moving to self-hosted site means a lot of changes. Some are what I have expected, like the freedom to use plugins and customize anything I want. Some plugins look really cool, like Editorial Assistant by Zemanta, which suggest links, images and tags automatically when writing new posts.

However, there are some downsides that I did not expect. Stats page was gone. I was under the impression that it should be a built-in function but apparently it is not. So I went to search the plugins and found a good replacement – WP Statistics. Later on, I realized that I could get back some WordPress.com functionality with Jetpack.

Overall, I think it would make a good decision as this blog has become more independent. I have control over more things than I used to. Although there are price to pay, literally for renting servers.