Whew.
by V.E. on February 13th, 2008
filed under meta
Holy Jeebus, that was nerve-wracking.
Since moving to my own domain, I’ve been slowly and painstakingly removing all my imported entries from the “uncategorized” category and putting them into the categories in which they respectively should be. I finally got fed up and went searching for a bulk editor. I found one, Batch Categories, but realized that if I wanted to download the latest version of it, I would have to update my entire WordPress engine.
I searched on the internet for the name of this phenomenon—and I know it has a name—but I wasn’t able to find anything near to what I remember. I thought it was Murphy’s Law, but I was wrong, so I’m naming this “new” law after my father… and after me, too, I guess. Therefore, I present to you Duncan’s Law.
DUNCAN’S LAW
Every action has a pre-action. Anything that must be done has at least one requirement that must be done first.
Or, if you want to do something, you’re going to have to do something else first to make the first thing possible to do at all.
So, in my case, I had to update my WordPress engine (current version is 2.3.3) before I could install the latest version of Batch Categories. But, before I could update WordPress, I had to make copies of all my then-current WordPress stuff in case I totally screwed everything up. But, before I could do that I had to remember/figure out what the password was/is for my domain account. And… it went on and on. Sheesh.
I JUST WANT(ED) TO CATEGORIZE IN BULK. Is that too much to ask?? Apparently so…
Luckily, I managed to get through all that with only minor scrapes and burns and now have: [1] knowledge of my domain’s password, [2] copies of my old WordPress files, [3] a working version of the latest WordPress release, and [4] the latest version (1.3.1) of Batch Categories.
I’m somewhat mentally scarred, however, because I don’t know much about WordPress and very little about running a domain, so for a while I was on pins and needles trying not to lose every entry I’ve ever written in this journal.
