DUers, any WordPress Gurus out there? I am trying to "complete" another designer's theme

[roseBudd]

Long story short, I have no doubt I could handle this as a new project, but I am walking into an abandoned site design by another designer, hosted by an ISP

I have successfully installed XAMPP, configured PHP MySQL, installed WordPress and configured Dreamweaver 5 as a localhost development server, installed WordPress and FTPed all the sites files to my local machine, in the existing WordPress install, overwriting the files.

The owner of the site (not the designer that bailed) told me she has not done the WordPress upgrade because she is afraid she could lose her files

The upgrade message is that Version 3.1.3 is available. Obviously my local development WordPress install is Version 3.1.3, and I did get this error "Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_network_admin" which means an upgrade failed and a manual upgrade is the solution.

I am tempted to just go ahead & accept the upgrade in the WordPress dashboard, but I read I should backup the database files first. This site has not yet gone live BTW, so the database files could be minimal I suppose

Since I have DLed via FTP every file on the host associated with this domain, does that count as a database backup?

I am really lost. I have been doing HTML, CSS, & XHTML for some time and can usually figure out a lot of things on my own. I really want to do this. Any advice appreciated. My question on the WordPress forum had sunk with no comments or views within an hour.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. I have no idea but, I can give this thread a kick --

:kick:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. While this may not be an option for you...

...stepping into someone else's shoes, especially Web Design and / or WordPress development, is never a recipe for success.

That said, and fully understanding that you may have no choice in the matter, and that you've taken on the responsibility, here are some thoughts.

Q: "Since I have DLed via FTP every file on the host associated with this domain, does that count as a database backup?"/B]

A: No.

"I am walking into an abandoned site design by another designer, hosted by an ISP"

There is a major difference between a "Website" and a WordPress blog tinkered with by your predecessor.

If you do a little Googling you will see a number of excellent tutorials on what makes up a WordPress site..

You have a base installation, including the database (this is what needs to be updated), plus any plug-ins, hacks, design tweaks, etc, plus any content your client added.

Hosted by an ISP? Why? There are Web Hosts who charge $5 a month, and for that you can have WordPress as a "one click install" that you can set to automatically update itself every time there is a new release. Unless you enjoy doing this work, you'd be much better off moving to a host that offers that.

"The owner of the site (not the designer that bailed) told me she has not done the WordPress upgrade because she is afraid she could lose her files"

What files? If it's the base installation, so what? Install it again! If it's a custom skin, it's in the "Themes" folder...save that folder and install it again.

"My question on the WordPress forum had sunk with no comments or views within an hour."

That's probably because the people in that forum aren't your personal help desk, because WordPress is a skill that takes time to master, and that anyone who has that skill and is qualified to answer your question is expecting you to go out and do your homework, just like they did, rather than answer you "within an hour."

Trust me...people in this business sometimes have a thin skin and the easiest way to guarantee no one will get back to you is to post a message saying "I posted this and no one got back to me."

Best of luck to you.

[roseBudd]

4. Thanks!

And answers to your questions

I realize what forums are like, and more often than not end up answering my own question. Just with this particular route, of someone else's files, I am literally just guessing how I need to deviate from a new project. Just mentioned the post on the wordpress forum because DU isn't wordpress, but DUers come from all walks of life with a wealth of knowledge :yourock:

It is a WordPress blog with a custom theme. The issues are in the Superfish navbar style menu and a jQuery slider.

The owner of the site went with a local business for hosting. Very small.

Sounds like I should install the version of WordPress that the hosted files are. At least until I run a couple troubleshooting experiments with the Superfish menu

Looks like this is the version this blog is running on

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0.4

To develop in Dreamweaver using localhost do I call the existing MySQL files from the IP? Or localhost in wp-config


The IP is an absolute path to those files. But until I changed IP to localhost, I could not run the WP install.php

[MrScorpio]

3. Wordpress confuses me

And I use it for one of my shows

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. I did a custom theme for a client a couple of years ago...

...and came to two conclusions:

1). I didn't charge enough

2). I'll never do it again...if the opportunity comes up I'll have my programmers do it and I will add on my customary project management fee.

Some of the stuff is relatively straighforward...other times, you have to go on a real Easter egg hunt to answer what seems...on the surface...to be a simple cut-and-dry, black-and-white kind of thing.

[roseBudd]

6. I was planning on suggesting Plan Bing both the FUBAR issues...

The jQuery slider and the Superfish horizontal dropdown

I have a feeling it worked out of the box, and then the owner asked that the menu items drop down into the horizontal dropdown

I want to abandon the existing slider which flashes through all the images, when the page first loads, for a Flash xml driven one that the owner will be able to update herself. She is already doing all the image sizing and saving in PhotoShop.

[applegrove]

7. Good luck to you. I would be temped to start from scratch. You never know

if someone elses site is following all the rules. I used to put up a website for a friend. She asked me to switch the home page around and I was able to but it messed up the order and I never felt enthusiastic about the site again. Why don't you ask them if you could start from scratch?

[roseBudd]

8. I am actually planning on dumping the Superfish navigation and the jQuery slder...

Since both are the major FUBAR issues.

I just needed to get up to speed on how to set up my localhost environment for a site with an existing theme, that has already been uploaded to a Linux server

I have a feeling the Superfish nav is FUBAR because the owner asked for something it was never intended to do

The top level categories drop down into the dropdown menu. Just one of them wraps to a 2nd line, yet there are no differences in the list item syntax for that category

For the jQuery slideshow, I plan to dump it for a Flash XML slideshow & use Kimli Flash embed plugin for WordPress