Then, when I tried to automatically upgrade WordPress (which I hadn’t done in a long time) I got a load of errors. First, I couldn’t get WordPress to connect to my hosting account. I added the code below to wp-config.php and that problem was fixed (which I found here).

define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
define('FTP_BASE', '/public/');
define('FTP_CONTENT_DIR', '/public/wp-content/');
define('FTP_PLUGIN_DIR ', '/public/wp-content/plugins/');
define('FTP_USER', 'your-username');
define('FTP_HOST', 'ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net:22');
define('FTP_PASS', 'your-password');

Once I got that out of the way I hit another snag. I was getting a couple temporary file permissions errors. Evidently it’s a side-effect of NFS’s hosting setup (PHP safe_mode, etc). A few web searches later and I had an answer.

1. SSH into the server
2. chgrp -R web ./public
3. find ./public -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
4. find ./public -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;

After making those changes it was smooth sailing. And as expected, the site is loading much faster now.

--- sparks.php	2008-02-16 14:14:22.000000000 -0500
+++ sparks.php.mine	2008-02-16 14:14:58.000000000 -0500
@@ -63,13 +63,13 @@
 			// Clean up control form submission options
 			$newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['Sparks-title']));
 			$newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['Sparks-text']));
-		}

-		// If original widget options do not match control form
-		// submission options, update them.
-		if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
-			$options = $newoptions;
-			update_option('widget_Sparks', $options);
+			// If original widget options do not match control form
+			// submission options, update them.
+			if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
+				$options = $newoptions;
+				update_option('widget_Sparks', $options);
+			}
 		}

 		// Format options as valid HTML. Hey, why not.

Download the patch: SparkStats Widget Patch

In the past I tried to come up with a suitable (and less expensive) alternative, but failed. Nothing could come close to seanmurphy.com. Well, let me take that back. There was one seanmurphy.ie that I would have been happy with, which I bought—and then was rejected registration. Apparently I’m required to have a “real and substantial connection with Ireland” in order to register an .ie domain. So I waited. And waited. Seanmurphy.com still cost $3,500. I still don’t have $3,500 to guiltlessly spend on a domain.

Alas!, I found an alternative I can live with: iamseanmurphy.com (and .net, and .org!). I have no idea why I didn’t think of it before. Maybe I did, but was dissatisfied with it. Maybe I didn’t, but no matter, that’s not the point. What is of note is that I have a fresh new domain with my name in it!.