TimeDesk – Responsive Knowledge Base Theme

In WordPress, there is more than one way to set your password. In normal circumstances, you can do it through the WordPress interface. If you forget your password, WordPress has a built in recovery mechanism that uses email.

But on some hosts, especially when email isn’t working right, sometimes you have to take different steps to reset your password.

Here’s a list of different ways to reset a password. Any one of them will work, and you only need one to succeed. Which method you will use depends on what type of access you still have to your website.

Yes. You’re essentially buying the file on your client’s behalf. Whether a regular or extended license is needed will depend on your client’s use of the end product. With both the regular and extended license you are allowed to charge your client for creating the End Product. Once you transfer the end product to the client (eg giving them source files for the item), be sure to link your client to our licenses and delete the item itself from your computer.

Royalty free means you just need to pay for the item once per end product. You don’t need to continue to pay based on the number of people who see or use it. Please note that there are limits on the number of times you can use an item under our PhotoDune licenses (see PhotoDune FAQs for more information).

Example: If you license a brochure template and create a printed brochure given out for free, you don’t need to pay based on the number of copies of the brochure you make. If you use a 3d model in a game under an extended license, you don’t need pay based on the number of times the game is sold.

What is phpMyAdmin?

An administrator’s tool of sorts, phpMyAdmin is a PHP script meant for giving users the ability to interact with their MySQL databases. WordPress stores all of its information in the MySQL database and interacts with the database to generate information within your WordPress site. A “raw” view of the data, tables and fields stored in the MySQL database is accessible through phpMyAdmin.

What is it good for?

The phpMyAdmin program is handy for performing mantainance operations on tables, backing up information, and editing things directly in the event that WordPress is not working. Occasionally, in the Support Forums, someone will post a SQL query of some benefit or other that can be run using phpMyAdmin. Although many of the same tasks can be performed on the MySQL command line, doing so is not an option for many people.

Where can I get it?

Often host control panels, such as cPanel and Plesk, have phpMyAdmin pre-installed, so there is nothing special you have to do to use it. It is usually linked from the database page. Ask your host if this is available.

You can download phpMyAdmin yourself and install it from the main phpMyAdmin project page.

Warning

With great power comes great responsibility. phpMyAdmin allows you to interact with the database directly: it also lets you mess up the database directly. There is no “undo” or “undelete” in your database. Always exercise caution when working with the database.

To upload (or delete) files and folders to your web host, you will need an FTP application. One of many free options that are at your disposal is FileZilla. Though written using screenshots from a Windows XP machine, using FileZilla, the following instructions carry over to just about every FTP client with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). You may want to read how to Set up FileZilla for your server, before you read the following.

To install WordPress double-click the one that is web-root directory for webpages on your server. This is usually named htdocs, public_html, mainwebsite_html, www, web, or something very similar. The other folders are not of consequence in installing WordPress.

You should now see listing of files and folders that are contained inside your server’s root folder. Just how many there are depends on what and how much you have on your website.

The point of this exercise is to upload WordPress, so let us continue down that road:

NOTE: The name you choose will be where your WordPress weblog will appear, and although it can be changed later, it’s much better to avoid that by choosing what you want now. For example, if your website has the URL http://example.com and you want your weblog to be located at http://example.com/blog, then name the new folder blog.

Permission Scheme for WordPress

Permissions will be different from host to host, so this guide only details general principles. It cannot cover all cases. This guide applies to servers running a standard setup (note, for shared hosting using “suexec” methods, see below).

Typically, all files should be owned by your user (ftp) account on your web server, and should be writable by that account. On shared hosts, files should never be owned by the webserver process itself (sometimes this is www, or apache, or nobody user).

Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be owned or group-owned by the user account used by the WordPress (which may be different than the server account). For example, you may have a user account that lets you FTP files back and forth to your server, but your server itself may run using a separate user, in a separate usergroup, such as dhapache or nobody. If WordPress is running as the FTP account, that account needs to have write access, i.e., be the owner of the files, or belong to a group that has write access. In the latter case, that would mean permissions are set more permissively than default (for example, 775 rather than 755 for folders, and 664 instead of 644).

The file and folder permissions of WordPress should be the same for most users, depending on the type of installation you performed and the umask settings of your system environment at the time of install.

Typically, all core WordPress files should be writable only by your user account (or the httpd account, if different). (Sometimes though, multiple ftp accounts are used to manage an install, and if all ftp users are known and trusted, i.e., not a shared host, then assigning group writable may be appropriate. Ask your server admin for more info.) However, if you utilize mod_rewrite Permalinks or other .htaccess features you should make sure that WordPress can also write to your /.htaccess file.

If you want to use the built-in theme editor, all files need to be group writable. Try using it before modifying file permissions, it should work. (This may be true if different users uploaded the WordPress package and the Plugin or Theme. This wouldn’t be a problem for Plugin and Themes installed via the admin. When uploading files with different ftp users group writable is needed. On shared hosting, make sure the group is exclusive to users you trust… the apache user shouldn’t be in the group and shouldn’t own files.)

Some plugins require the /wp-content/ folder be made writeable, but in such cases they will let you know during installation. In some cases, this may require assigning 755 permissions. The same is true for /wp-content/cache/ and maybe /wp-content/uploads/ (if you’re using MultiSite you may also need to do this for /wp-content/blogs.dir/)

Back up WordPress

Before you get started, it’s a good idea to back up your website. This means if there are any issues you can easily restore your website. Complete instructions to make a backup can be found in the WordPress Backups section of the Codex.

Ready to Update

Now that you’ve checked that you’re ready to update, you’ve turned off your plugins and you’ve got your backup, it’s time to get started.

There are two methods for updating – the easiest is the Automatic Update, which will work for most people. If it doesn’t work, or you just prefer to be more hands-on, you can follow the manual update process.

Automatic Update

Current versions of WordPress (2.7+) feature an Automatic Update. You can launch the automatic Update by clicking the link in the new version banner (if it’s there) or by going to the Tools -> Upgrade (or Update for version 3) menu. Once you are on the “Update WordPress” page, click the button “Update Automatically” to start the process off. You shouldn’t need to do anything else and, once it’s finished, you will be up-to-date.

For Automatic Update to work, at least two criteria must be satisfied:

(a) file ownership: all of your WordPress files must be owned by the user under which your web server executes. In other words, the owner of your WordPress files must match the user under which your web server executes. The web server user (named “apache”, “web”, “www”, “nobody”, or some such) is not necessarily the owner of your WordPress files. Typically, WordPress files are owned by the ftp user which uploaded the original files. If there is no match between the owner of your WordPress files and the user under which your web server executes, you will receive a dialog box asking for “connection information”, and you will find that no matter what you enter in that dialog box, you won’t be able to update automatically.

(b) file permissions: all of your WordPress files must be either owner writable by, or group writable by, the user under which your Apache server executes.

On shared hosts, WordPress files should specifically NOT be owned by the web server. If more then one user owns different files in the install (because of edits made by deleting and re-uploading of files via different accounts, for example), the file permissions need to be group writable (for example, 775 and 664 rather then the default 755 and 644). File permissions (in general) should be adjusted as appropriate for the server environment (the shared host RackSpace CloudSites for example recommends 700 and 600 for a single ftp user, or 770 and 660 for multiple ftp users). See the file permission section for more (some files and folders require stricter permissions).

If you have customized a standard theme (Twenty Twelve, etc.), you should not use the automatic upgrade, as it will overwrite your changes – you should use a manual update instead.

If you see a “failed update” nag message, delete the file .maintenance from your WordPress directory using FTP. This will remove the “failed update” nag message.

If the automatic upgrade doesn’t work for you, don’t panic! Just try a manual update.

Manual Update

These are the short instructions, if you want more check out the extended upgrade instructions. If you experience problems with the Three Step Update, you may want to review the more detailed upgrade instructions

For these instructions, it is assumed that your blog’s URL is http://example.com/wordpress/.