Back in July I switched webhosts, from Hostpapa to Linode. For the most part I’d say the transition was for the best, though I am now paying more money, I’m also granted almost total control over the host environment, which is a two-edged sword.
The biggest downside to the transition was that a number of things partially broke. The aforementioned sub-menus from the earlier post were one of the first things I noticed. Another would be that the images, and for the most part all of gallery2, didn’t transfer properly. Kind of screws up a site that’s largest draw is it’s presentation of images, right? To make matters worse, I’m still dealing with illness that’s been distracting me from more focus on the website (hence why I still haven’t gotten around to putting out the next WP-Slimbox2 release).
The good news is that I’m ever so slowly starting to find some time, again, to resolve the issues with the site. As it turns out, the sub-menus, along with ads, links, and a few other widgets were all “custom” widgets I’d plugged into the “My Custom Widgets” plugin. Somehow, even though the widgets still showed on the “My Custom Widgets” page, they’d disappeared from the actual widgets page. Luckily, when I chose to “Save All” they showed back up and I was able to re-add them to my sidebar.
Unfortunately, it looks like resolving the issues with gallery2 might be a bit more complicated. I’m pretty sure I pulled down a copy of all the physical files, I just haven’t figured out where to put them on the new server. Once I do, hopefully all I’ll need to do is tweak a few config file settings and well be back in action. Another question that I have, though, is if I really need to use gallery2 anymore. When I started to use it, I don’t believe I’d initially intended to tie it directly into WordPress, but as I got more into WordPress, it seemed natural to incorporate the gallery that I already had. I like the fact that it could automatically generate multiple size images for me, as well as incorporate a watermark, but for what I do I can’t say I really need any of those features.
If anyone has any thoughts on that, please share!
Anyway, I’m hoping I’ll finally have enough energy to finally put out the next WP-Slimbox2 release soon! This release is an extensive rewrite that I hope will improve overall performance as well as resolve a number of smaller issues and annoyances with the code. In addition, I’ve gotten two new translations to incorporate (Italian and Lithuanian, I believe). I’ll likely put out the main release, and then several minor releases so the translators can incorporate text for the latest changes.
Stay tuned!