Comments on: How To Sleep Better After an Upgrade – Blog Unit Testing

By: Lara Kulpa

Lara Kulpa — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:41:59 +0000

Lee – You’re not in Thesis hell, you’ve managed to get yourself worked deeply into WordPress hell… it’s where people who are new to WordPress go.

The good news, is that it’s pretty easy to get out of.
The bad news, is that Thesis and Chris have nothing to do with it.

Go to the WordPress.org documentation and forums… read the stuff, seriously. You seem to have missed some pretty crucial steps, and it looks like by doing so you’ve only served to frustrate yourself further, you know?

Take your time, slow down, and don’t skim instructions.

Yes, I do this all day long, every day, so for me it’s literally 3 minutes and I have WP installed and a new theme up and rarin’ to go – however MY first time took no more than 30 mins because I followed directions CAREFULLY. It’s the only solution – and the only place you can find guaranteed help is at the wordpress.org site. (There are even really nice folks that will help you with the install for nothing if you ask nicely!) :)

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:03:34 +0000

I am basically in thesis hell. And granted, I am a writer not a computer tech person. I bought it and am having no luck getting it uploaded.
Here’s what happened:
I was working with a wordpress.com blog.
I bought thesis.
I tried to upload which didn’t work as I was told that I needed a real host. (And know that I have no idea what that even means.)
Bought a host from Go Daddy.
Bought the wrong version of the host.
Was told I bought the wrong version of the host, and then bought the right version which was compatible. I was told.
Now I go to try to install Thesis zip which has been sitting on my desk top for weeks mocking me while everyone tells me how fabulous my website will be when I start using that it, and no luck. The zip appears in my file manager, but it will not open.
I am nearly ready to call am ex, cancel it and give up for good but ultimately I really wanted to try it out.
Please advise.
Thank you.
Lee
How did you get in touch with Chris?

By: Wise Finish

Wise Finish — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:09:56 +0000

I second the suggestion to use Selenium IDE to test your site. This is a great tool that can automate everything described above. Automating your tests will allow you to run them more frequently, and therefore make your blog / website even better.

By: Neil Matthews

Neil Matthews — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:13:38 +0000

I’m glad that more main stream “big” computer system processes are moving into the blogging arena

By: commediait.com

commediait.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:36:50 +0000

Really nice and informative points regarding blog Unit Testing………
Thanx
http://www.commediait.com

By: Cheap mp3 Players

Cheap mp3 Players — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:50:56 +0000

Thank you for this, it’s perfect, I needed it as I upgraded one blog recently and it messed stuff up and I was scrambling to figure out what was not working, now I am going to upgrade two other blogs and this will help a lot.

By: Timon weller

Timon weller — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:11:04 +0000

Good points on upgrading, other issues can be where when your own server upgrades as well and can effect part of the script.. In the end it is all about running blogs or scripts online.. :)

By: Arshad

Arshad — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:01:55 +0000

thanks a lot.The article was splendid.Although iam not a wordpress user i will have this bookmarked so that it might be of use in future .

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:26:15 +0000

@Evelyn

The issues did not affect everyone – some people upgraded just fine. I do not know the root cause, but it does not appear to be Chris’ fault – it appears to affect a minority of users (and unluckily, I was one of them ;) ).

Chris fixed the problems promptly, I am running 1.4.2 and it looks great =)

By: Evelyn Lim

Evelyn Lim — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:17:12 +0000

Oh my goodness!! Version 1.4 has some minor issues?? I have just installed the thesis theme to my site. Luckily, I installed the old version as I did not realize the new one is out. I prefer to wait for a while in that case for all fixes to be done first.

By: Chris | HealthyGaming

Chris | HealthyGaming — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:29:50 +0000

Nice post Sid, very logical and programmer-like!

It would be nice if a Wordpress plugin could do these tests for you, and send you an email if something is wrong.

By: Justin Wright

Justin Wright — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:26:02 +0000

That’s definitely a complete list. I don’t think I did 80% of that stuff when I did the upgrade. I just fired up the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin and went at it. Double checked everything to make sure it was working and I was good to go.

Then again I don’t use Thesis and never have. Seems pretty difficult for a theme upgrade.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:59:10 +0000

Way over my head.

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:56:38 +0000

@Binny There are scripts to upgrade Wordpress, and you can automatically upgrade plugins as well – themes typically you have to FTP the new version still.

If you mean to automate the testing process, you may want to check out Selenium IDE. That tool can be used to test your website, but based on how often we update sections of our blog, it may be difficult to automate the tests.

By: Binny V A

Binny V A — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:44:14 +0000

I am sure there are scripts to automate the whole process. Anyone know where I can find it?

By: Laura-Whateverebay

Laura-Whateverebay — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:21:53 +0000

My headaches are less now. when I made the change I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I am still working on some issues, as many I have had to discover as I need them. I will print this list out. Some of your tips can certainly help me. :)

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:10:13 +0000

@Eric Thanks! Yeah better watch out for that Sean Platt guy, he’s a menace. I hear he also has a mean snarl on his face when he does video blogs. ;)

By: Eric Hamm

Eric Hamm — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:06:40 +0000

Very useful stuff, Sid! I’ve had my share of issues trying to help others (*cough* Sean Platt *cough*) upgrade their Thesis installation. Great reference post, Eric.

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:58:37 +0000

@Bill Hi Bill, it’s true my unit tests are all automated with Cruise Control, JUnit, EMMA, etc.

I agree with your point though: in *practice*, software development unit testing *is* automated and this process is closer to quality assurance than it is to software testing.

I wanted to emphasize the need to unit test individual components, as opposed to functionally testing a whole page etc. This manual approach can be called unit testing, provided each test is looking at the output of a single function (the way I have broken it up – Title Tag, etc)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing#Techniques

By: Roman

Roman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:57:08 +0000

Something you might consider is to add a little comment on the blog letting the visitors know you just made a major upgrade. And to ask them to let you know if they spot anything wrong.