Back when WordPress 2.7 was first released, I was excited about the new autoupgrade feature. Basically it upgrades your site with the click of a button to the latest version of wordpress. However, it always failed when I would try it out, so I’ve been doing it the old fashioned way of either sftp or through terminal. The closest I got was this fix that I found which at least made it so I could upgrade/install plugins with one click.
Today I decided to see if anyone documented how to get this nifty feature working and I finally found it! The fix is way too simple that I should have thought of it on my own. I thought it was most likely a permissions issue. Basically, the wordpress files have to be owned by the user that runs apache. In most cases I believe this would be www-data at least I know it is on Ubuntu. 
So all you need to do is change the owner of the files/directories of your wordpress install. This example would be if you had your wordpress install in the www root in ubuntu.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/
or if you had it in a sub directory called wordpress you would just do
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress/
This changes the owner and group to www-data to all the files and sub folders in the specified directory. After making that change, the upgrade process now works and the plugins install/upgrade too.
WordPress 2.9.1 should be out in the next day or two and I’m looking forward to a one click upgrade.
I had a great Christmas this year and thought I would share some of the great presents I received. To the left is a group shot of most everything. I got a few modern Star Wars figures, a Canon Camera bag to hold my new DSLR camera with plenty of room for flashes and lenses, a Lili Ledy (Mexico) Luke Jedi vintage cardback, Transformers Encore 17 Cassettes, and a Canon 50mm F1.8 Lens for the camera.
Here are some pictures taken from the Takara website that show the cassettes for Soundwave and Blaster. They recently released the 3rd set in Japan and I hope to add those sometime soon to complete the set. One nice little touch is the fact that the marking on the sides were stickers on the originals and on these they are actually painted on. Now there is no chance of them falling off and getting lost.
I also had a very nice surprise this year. Some friends that I have met online grouped together and got me a Secret Santa gift this year. I’ve helped a few international collectors this year by having some items come through me and then mailing them on to them. There are quite a few sellers that will not deal outside of the U.S., so it is a way to help collectors still get what they want. Three collectors went in on this with two being from Australia and the 3rd in Romania. It is a Cardback with the bubble still attached for Luke Jedi from Mexico. The company that brought the figures out in Mexico was called Lili Ledy and all of those items are highly sought after by collectors. I hope to add the actual figure to go with the card some time this year.
The same Romanian friend mentioned above also got me a piece of original artwork. The artist is also a collector and has been doing these character pieces under the name “Attack of the Cute” I’m really impressed with all of the pieces I’ve seen him do and think it makes for a great one of a kind collectible. I can’t wait to get mine framed and up on the wall. You can see more of his art on rebelscum at 
Finally, here are a few pictures that I have taken with the new lens. I’m still learning a few things with it, but am taking the pictures in full manual mode on my camera. It was an excellent Christmas and thanks to everyone for the great gifts.