So there I was with a Word Doc and an immediate need to make a pdf. From my new vista notebook in the coffee shop I clicked into Microsoft “add-ins” and started to pull down a pdf converter. Then I hit an authentication screen. All I know is I paid good money for my software. I don’t know how to answer all those authentication queries right this minute.

So I go to Open Office, download the complete suite, install, open Open Office Writer, import the Word file and click convert to pdf. My must-do pdf is uploaded, and my coffee is still warm.

This is the sort of thing that holds me back from the compelling charms of the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition. Goodness, it’s a glorious little tool. But what else will Microsoft compel me to do once I start down that road? Many years ago, I opted out of the Front Page platform for these reasons. The new platform seems a bit more accommodating to the user’s access to background code. And the windows backend has made impressive gains against Apache as a popular choice for web work.

Still, my interests in web publishing lean much more toward content development. The hours per day that I can dedicate to tech skills are limited. I am not a professional hacker or developer. When I rely upon the foundations laid by genuine hackers, there is something appealing about the “open source” ethos.

Wordpress is also very popular. And that’s part of the reason why I choose it, because popularity does help to guarantee ongoing development in base code, themes, and plugins. But the tipping point has more to do with philosophy, ethos, and the kind of road that we’re rolling into the future.

This is a dev blog for me to play with two things (1) subversion as a wordpress installation platform and (2) various themes.

As for play purpose (1), I am delighted to say that this blog was installed using subversion, following the instructions posted at WordPress:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing/Updating_WordPress_with_Subversion

Followed by the famous 5-minute install:

http://wordpress.org/docs/installation/5-minute/

It turned out to be just that simple. With subversion, it really is a five-minute install, because the method of placing the wp files on your server is sooooo much faster than the usual ftp.

Of course, first, I had to set up the subversion repository, which was a snap, too, using my webhost’s wiki:

http://wiki.a2hosting.com/index.php/SVN

If you are really brand new to the process, there are a few other things that you’ll need to have ready:

You’ll need to know how to set up your database.

And very likely you’ll need an ssh or scp client like Putty or WinSCP plus a tiny bit of command line skill.

The one bug I encountered looked like this:

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at XXX/wp/wp-config.php:57) in XXX/wp/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 694

But this turned out to be a very simple de-bug. When I looked at line 57 of my config file, I found that it was a blank line after the closing php tag. It’s what you call a white space error, which is a danger of using Dreamweaver to do php files. Easy to fix, however. Just delete all the white space after the closing tag, save, and reload!

Next thing to do is start playing with themes. See you soon!