Need Wordpress Advice

[gyitsakalakis]

I'd also get familiar with securing a wordpress install: codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

[bmalvin]

Youve gotten some good, sound advice. Consider yoursef lucky to have a full blown Wordpress site to learn from. It's a great way to learn.

[ozdogan]

Absolutely great advice above! Broad question gets you a broad answer. Specific questions will get you the best advice and they are worth more than their weight in gold.

The number one priority is BACKUP! If possible do a backup from within Wordpress itself and as well as a CPANEL backup if cpanel is what you're hosting on.

Second thing I would do is learn Wordpress before you go about deleting anything. Youtube is your best mate to find how things work in finding visual lessons on Wordpress.

Wordpress may be easy to install and lots of clicking here and there within the administration but I assure you if you're not well versed with it then you will end up asking a lot of questions about how to go back and fix the problem. To a professional who has lived off on Wordpress it is a walk in the park. Simple things like updating a plugin or deleting the wrong one can make your site inaccessible.

As someone above has made a point of duplicating the site on your local computer would be an ideal way to learn and get yourself up to date. Highly recommended you do this right after your backup. Ofcourse, you will need to know how to install a local webserver (apache ,php and mysql - a good source for this is wamp, xamp and others) and wordpress (get it from wordpress.com/org) on your computer.

Good luck!

[claybutler]

And the best premium plugin for backing up, restoring, and moving a WP site is Backup Buddy.

I can move a site from a dev server to a live server, from start to finish, in under 20 minutes now.

Well worth the money.

[slimwoman]

Is anyone having trouble with activating wordpress simple shopping cart plugins since WP released version 3.4? I have removed old shopping cart plugins and reinstalled via a zip file upload but every time I try to activate the plugin in my Plugins section of the WP dashboard, I get redirected back to my .com site without the plugin being activated.

I am not having this problem on my other websites that I didn't try to update the WP ultra simple paypal shopping cart that said plugin update is compatible with WP version 3.4. So it could be that the updated plugin version is flawed.

Thanks,

[ronniethedodger]

Before you do anything, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions ... is the original developer still available and what was this site originally developed for?

If developed for a version of WordPress prior to 2.8, then you are in a world of hurt, and may explain the 60+ plugins. A lot of these plugins can be thrown out the door, they are no longer needed and later versions of WordPress will have their functionality.

Yes. I would backup the entire database and theme. I would also do an export of data also, this will capture the essence of your posts, pages, users, etc. (the base data).

Some of the plugins, which you need to identify, may have added tables to the WordPress database ... you will need to make note of those and what tables/data they capture. Identify plugins that are no longer needed also.

Next, as mentioned before, is to do a local install and import the base data (from the export), recreate your theme (or a new one), and then methodically work through all of the deprecated plugins that are no longer needed. This should reduce that 60+ plugins considerably.

Then work on the other plugins with databases attached. This is going to be tough, because some of them may be old pre-cursors to custom post types. Now the fun will really begin, you need to set up those custom types and work the old table data into them. It is not going to be easy.

You just gotta work the files, data, and code in logical chunks until you get there.

[WPHelpClub]

I agree with claybutler , look at backup buddy. Not only you can automate your backups in case of problems, but you can move a site pretty quickly. Depending on the size of your site, you can even move your site under 5min.

[Okenyon]

60 plugins sounds crazy, your load must be high...make back ups and sort through it!