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WordPress: The Dreaded “Error Establishing Database Connection” message

My site has just been down for more than 24 hours due to a wordpress update, that in its wisdom the plugin developer assumed that the version of MySQL would be an older version, and corrupted the WordPress database that the site uses.

I’ve recovered the site from last nights backup, and thankfully there has been no data loss, but its still a timely reminder as to the importance of regular backups of both files and the database of even a small WordPress site.

Needless to say, panic averted, and automatic plugin updates are now turned off!

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WordPress – Pinning posts to the home page

I was just asked by a local school how to make a post always appear on the home page – the answer is surprisingly simple, but if you don’t know where to look its rather difficult to find!

screen-shot-2016-11-14-at-10-42-20

On the publish box to the right of the wordpress post in the editor, click on the Edit link next to Visibility: Public and then tick the Stick this post to the front page box.

screen-shot-2016-11-14-at-10-43-46

Done! The post now stays at the top of the front/home page. All you have to remember to do is to un-stick it in the future!

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Setting up WordPress on EC2 in 10 minutes

This tutorial does a complete walk-through on the basis of you using Mac Os to set up a new EC2 WordPress site. Once you get practiced, you can do this in minutes!

Log in to your EC2 Management Console (https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/)

Select a new  instance of Amazon Linux AMI (Free tier eligible)

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 13.35.35

Just leave everything un-changed on the next screen and press on the Next: Configure Instance Details button (NOT the Review and launch button)

Leave everything on the next screen un-changed too, and press Next: Add Storage

Again, don’t change anything and press Next Tag Instance

Give your new Server a name (name of the wordpress site/company?) then press Next: Configure Security Group

Add two new rules to allow http and https through the firewall

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 13.38.50

Click on the blue Review and Launch button

Press on Launch

Create a new key pair and give it a name (something easy to type)

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 13.40.19

download the Key Pair File file (from this point onwards referred to as nameOfKeyPair.pem)

remove the .txt extension

Open terminal and navigate to downloads folder (usually cd /users/yourYourName/Downloads/ )

chmod 600 nameOfKeyPair.pem

ssh-keygen -f nameOfKeyPair.pem -e -m per > nameOfKeyPair.pub

chmod 400 nameOfKeyPair.pem

ssh -i name.pem [email protected]

You will be connected to the new instance

Type the following, pressing Enter after every line

sudo yum update

sudo su

yum install httpd

service httpd start

yum install php php-mysql

yum install mysql-server

service mysqld start

mysqladmin -uroot create myblog

mysql_secure_installation

Press Enter (no existing password)
Enter new password (keep a note of this, you need to enter it into the wordpress config in a couple of steps time)
y
y
y
y

cd /var/www/html

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

mv wordpress myblog

cd myblog

mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

vi wp-config.php

—press i for insert—

Make the following changes to the wordpress config file

Database: myblog
user: root
password: what you set it as during the security setup previously

press Esc

press wq to exit editor and save the changes

service https restart

browse to the new site and start configuring by typing http://yourinstanceipaddress/myblog