I was up very early today. It was still dark. I decided to have a little party for my “helpers” after they finished today. These boys have really worked hard. The whole project is looking very good. My mountain is almost 7 feet high with a waterfall coming down into the pond. The pond itself is nearly 12 feet at the widest end narrowing down to about 5 feet where the little foot bridge crosses it. I had the electrician come in, to put in the external lights, and we are going to have the switch on after they finish up work this evening. Although my party was only intended for the “helpers”, it has grown to extend to neighbors and the boys parents as well. Everyone feels involved.

So today I am on the run yet again.
I still have a few websites I want to share with you about taking yourselves mobile.
The next one has some big names using their products. Basically, if you are a private person you can use it free, but if you are using it for a business be it on the web or elsewhere you are required to sign up for a paid account. This is called Wirenode. You create your mobile website using their software and then publish it through their engine. It does the whole scene from the dashboard through to editing and then previewing.

WordPress
WPTap to be exactly, Here we have a product that has Mobile themes, especially for WordPress. This is said to make it easier for Smart phones to be able to see without being hindered in any way. The lower end of the scale of phones would need to have extra plug-ins installed. It is not all encompassing.

A monthly fee option

Mobisitegalore has a monthly fee option available with a free 14 day trial.
You build your site directly on to theirs. First you choose your design from one of 16. You get a wizard with the framework then go on to choose colors, header and footer. Choose your pages and then move on to preview what you have organized it. You basically use by going into your blog and choosing what you want.

WordPress again

This is a plug-in to your actual WordPress blog. It contains all the necessary
for your site to switch views to a mobile view and includes a mobile panel for the admin. It is recommended that you use PHP 5.

Zinadoo

Zinadoo has a mobile application on the market which is free. This won the Innovation award in 2008 for Mobile internet. Take a look at it here.

Winksite

Winksite is one that is both free and a little confusing. I presume you have to register before they will tell you anything, so I left them to be.

MobilePress

Mobilepress is really good. It’s again a free WordPress plug-in but the down loads came up right on the front page which is always good. It is an open source program which integrates with an ad server called Aduity.

Well, folks that’s all for today. I need to get busy with my party plans.

I need control. How many times have you had that scream in your head? Well let me tell you a secret. Gardens and cats control you. They own you. It’s a simple fact of life. Ever seen a cat walk into a house with its tail in the air and go straight to the kitchen and mew at the fridge? Watch its people come running. It’s the same with a garden. When it rains its fine, but if it hot and the sun scorch’s the ground, you have to water it or it dies. I look out at my garden now and remember the summer days and watch the winter approaching. Judging by the berries, it’s going to be a long cold winter. They are making the branches hang low. The little creatures are very busy collecting right now. I can see them scurrying round the bushes to harvest what they need for winter.

Well we need control in our WordPress too. And to extend that control we are going to be adding a few plug-in to make life easier. I am almost beginning to wonder if WordPress is controlling us.

The first plug-in is called Pods CMS

“Pods” basically helps you by sitting on WordPress and gives you the opportunity of adding you own content types.

Are you in a Flutter?

WordPress has a plug-in which allows you to create panels for using radio buttons and various other items to make life easier. I am all for the easy life.
Take a look at it on WordPress.org

Control your Posts

With the latest ability to take control of your posts and what actually shows on your page WordPress has extended this up to 3.0. Its now your decision.

Give your Pages order

I like the idea that I can decide what order pages should go in. This little plug-in from Joel Starnes gives you that ability.

Decide who see what and who can Post where

Content decisions and access control to certain pages, is given to you with this plug-in from Agapetry.

Do you like forms

I like forms. They give me the ability to all people to leave things like names and email addresses and the like. This plug-in makes them easy. It’s called CForms II and it comes from Delicious Days.

Photo resizing
When you need to crop and adjust your photos to make that right fit you need Scissors. It’s a plug-in that allows all these kinds of adjustments.

Want a button on your toolbar?
With this neat little addition to your arsenal you can do just that. Called Tiny MCE advanced it will advance you.

Move around on different floors

Being on the bottom rung when you need to be on the top doesn’t have to mean running up stairs. PixoPoint has a hand little item which enables Multilevel Navigation.

When you aren’t using WordPress as a blog anymore

You really need this from WordPress. “Dashboard Pages”

I think I have given you enough homework for one day so I will go and feed my field mouse. See you soon.

It’s one day closer to Megan and her mother visiting. I am like a child anticipating Christmas. I have so much to get ready. Everything is getting that extra spit and polish, Navy style. I am baking, which is something I haven’t done since Megan’s mother got married. The first batch flopped and not even Tom, the dog, would eat them, and he’s usually my little dustbin. They were hard a rock.
I realized I had left out that essential, baking powder. I am being a little more careful now. Choc chip cookies are the order for today.  Megan has given me a list of all her favorites. You can see the way that wind blows. However, before I go and get busy in the kitchen let us look at a few more plug-ins I consider important if not vital to you on WordPress.

1. Navigate Navy Style

We all need to be able to navigate to the place we want to go with easy and not taking all sorts of detours. I declare some websites make it so hard for you to find your way around I would think they do it on purpose. Instead I am told its just bad design. I do doubt that, I think they just don’t want complaints. However, we don’t want to be like that do we? So head on over and download this little plug-in, which will help your page navigation.

2.  Do You Auto Update?

WordPress has a plug-in which will auto update your WordPress to the latest version. It gets told when a new version comes out, and it downloads it automatically. It makes a backup of both your pages and your database. That’s in case anything goes wrong. If this sounds like a good idea to you, then head on over and download Auto Update.

3. Are Broken Links Annoying To You?

Don’t you hate it when you find something you really want to look at later and when you do get a chance to go back you find that page has disappeared because someone changed something and the link you have is now broken. Do they have a search on their website? No they don’t. Well remember to check for broken links before posting the pages to the web. It can be boring to do it by hand. Believe me; I sat for 5 days checking links on one of my early efforts. There were over 5000 pages. And they all linked. I didn’t have this nifty little plug-in in those days. The link checker is available as a plug-in.

 4. Your own Hosting

You need to have your own hosting to use this plug-in from Google. It won’t work on WordPress itself.  If you want feed from your site and to get subscribers to it, you can install this Burner Feed plug-in. Remember it does set limits of 512k.

5. Do You Want Forms?

If you want to use forms for any purpose on your website you need this plug-in. It allows you to create and use forms all over your website for a variety of reasons. It’s available from Delicious Days.

Well, I am off to the kitchen to try my hand at choc chip cookies (with baking powder). Speak to you soon with some more ideas.

Top of the morning to you all, isn’t it a excellent day? I got an email yesterday to give me great news. My daughter and grand daughter are coming for a visit! Not a long one unfortunately. It’s only for a week. However, I really enjoy their visits. That little minx’s Megan can twist me around her little finger. Don’t tell her I said that, or I will have no peace. Her mother says I spoil her. Well maybe I do. However, she really is a light in my life. Not that I don’t love my daughter mind, and she knows it. However, that little charmer really can do no wrong in my eyes. We will see the mischief she can get up to in these few days. She always does. So I am really plugged into what she will be going to do. On that subject let us discuss if you have got the plug-ins that are really essential to your well being on WordPress.

1. Do you have the All in One?

WordPress has a very good SEO Plug-in which I recommend that you download and start using right away. This makes you ready for those little spiders that come along from the search engines. You want to be found don’t you? You need both found but to climb the rankings as fast as possible to make you appear on the front page when some places a search for the subject you were looking for. Statistics show that the first ranked site gets most of the clicks. And if you don’t appear on the first page instead of getting many visits you might get one to three million. I know there are millions of searches a day, but you want your pearls of wisdom to appear on someone’s screen.

2. Dynamic or Static?

You really need to turn your web pages static rather than letting them stay dynamic. So many more people will be able to real them and load them faster. For this you will need WordPress Super Cache plug-in.

3. Google Your Website

With the percentage of people who use Google as their search engine, (It was 83% overall when I last looked.) Google has taken control of the web. It would be foolish to dismiss this and not make your website Google happy. Give them a sitemap. They use this to search through your blog to pick up topics of interest and place them on the web. It is very important for your visibility on the internet to have those spiders crawl through, and you want the free access to lead from one page to the other and back again with easy. They also need to know when a new comment is made so they can return and check this for fresh content.

4. Are Your Comments, Spam?

You do not want to appear to be making comments that are spam. No sensible person would. This plug-in check to see if the comments you make to see if they appear as if they are spam. This will check through your comments and tell you the result.

5. Do You Keep A Copy?

Keeping a backup of your work is extremely important if you want to retain all your hard labour. Image if one morning you came along and discovered the site had been hacked, and all your hard labour was gone? It would take you hours to replace it if not days. It all disappeared with some mean person just to play games with you. We don’t want that, so we need to make backups.

Well, folks the garden is calling, so I will leave you to get busy downloading and setting those up, if you haven’t already. I will be back…..

Sun is shining again although there was heavy dew overnight. I guess winter is on its way, and the grass will give me a rest for a few months. Of course I will have to tidy things up and rake the leaves and get ready to winter everything. I often wonder why I have a garden. Maybe I should just leave it to go wild. I guess I was born to be orderly. For me, it has to be everything in its place and a place for everything. At least that way I can find most things most of the time. I think that must be why I like Plug-ins so much. I can organize them to find things how I like them. Well, it’s our second day on this, but it’s worth extending it to a few more plugs-ins.

1.   Highlight your syntax         

Available in several languages you are able to highlight the code that you require from various snippets, and it keeps it in it format. A useful tool that is available from WP-Syntax. It does work with 3.01.

2.  I Want Color 

This plug in works with WP Syntax and enables you to set your colors as you want them. It appears to be a sort of addition to the previous plug-in as it is called WP-Syntax Colorizer.  It was written by Arash Keshmirian, who has been among those developing things for the Iphone.

3.   Take Control of Your Text          

Don’t you love the way certain people come up with little plug-ins that give you more control over what you actually want to see? I certainly do. This is one of those. It allows you to make a choice of what kind of encoding options you want as well as numerous formatting syntaxes. It’s a WordPress plug-in called Text Control.

4.   I Don’t want Auto Format 

When your PC takes control of you and starts Auto Formatting, don’t you love it when someone comes along and gives you back control. The control gets returned to you with this plug in. It is called PS Disable Auto Formatting That little section in WordPress that means to help and is called “wpautop”, is now held at bay.

5. Fonts of My Own  

When you want to replace fonts with your own ones, try using this little plug-in called Dynamic Font Replacement. It makes life easy and it doesn’t override the original source code so spiders will still be able to read it. All your tags are automatically transferred, and you won’t need to worry about the CSS files. All it does is use the ttf or otf fonts that you want to.
Simple isn’t it. I love it when things happen the way I want them. I never cease to be amazed how so many people write this code just to make my life easier. I must say thank you to all those clever folks out there that make this so enjoyable.

That’s all for today folks. I am off to sit under a tree and watch the leaves fall.

Hope your grass is all mowed and ready for winter, summer spring or fall. I have a smug smile on my face today. I found someone to mow mine for me.
He’s happy, because he’s earning dollars and I am happy because my back isn’t creaking. I need to use some of that lubricating oil on my back some mornings. All jokes aside folks, I hope your blog and WordPress is coming on a pace. I gave you a few of the plug-ins I can recommend before and now I am going to add to them. Some of the plug-ins are vital to your success as a blogger. Some are just fun to have but at the end of the day we all need fun in our lives. There is a huge variety of plug-ins available but this is just a small sample of some I consider of great use to you

Let’s do a run down of some I consider essential to you.

Sharing

Are you someone who likes to share your photos, your maps, your videos? This little plug-in is going to make your life so much easier. What is basically does is once you have posted on your blog it shares your photos on Flickr, Your videos on your Youtube and your information on Wikepedia as well as on Google Maps. In fact it spreads the word in seconds rather than you having to post to all the different places individually. If you like the idea of this you can download the plug in here.

Interacting with the World

Ever been frustrated by all the people who can’t understand what you are saying? Well there is a plug-in from WordPress which allows what you say to be translated into 14 different languages. Now you can install this plug-in which you can get here and be understood by that many more people around the world. Cool isn’t it?

All about You

This is a little Widget that tells all about you. Its basically a copy and paste item that is easy to install and will make your interface easier and more useful. It’s a download available here.

Want an Easier Way to show your Pictures

This is your way to show your photos with ease. It has a slideshow which can offer you multiple galleries if you so wish. Simple to use and well designed. It also has an admin section for ease of use. All the instructions are on the download page. Download it here.

Are you a Music Fan?

If the answer is yes, this one is for you. You can connect here with your account on LastFM and have your Music albums displayed and play live on your blog site. The plug-in for this is available for download here. Something to consider though, find a way to turn the music off for your visitors or you might well chase them away. I know I for one don’t want loud music blaring in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning.

That’s all for now folks. Hope you found something you liked.

Great sunshine day here today and I am watching the grass grow. Shall I just pave over it? That might be an idea. No more mowing. That grass is the bane of my life. Either it needs watering or turns brown or when I water, I have to mow. Maybe I should move to a place where they do it for you, except, I don’t like to be crowded by a lot of other people. I guess I will just hire a garden service or call the kid again. Well, my lawn problems aside I have some interesting extensions for you by way of plug-ins for WordPress. We all know that the basic principle of WordPress is great straight from the box but by using a few little additions in the form of Plug-ins we can turn it into a whole new world. Let’s take a look at five of them here.

1. Making Great Titles

You know the way the titles in WordPress are not all that inspiring? You also don’t quite know what the people on the other side are going to be seeing. Well there’s an interesting plug-in called TTFTitles. They have a clever way of getting round the business of font changes by allowing you to use images instead. Do not, however, forget to give the images full tags or the spiders will not read your headings. You get images of the fonts you want and use those in place of your titles. There is an admin Interface where you can find and change things according to what you want to see with different styles and fonts. Color of course comes into the section on styles. It’s well worth investigating this one.

2.  Arrange Your Type Simply

The next plug-in has a big word for its title, but it simply means it arranges your type simply and gives you all the point sizes, line spacing, etc. that you require to make it look good. It is called wp-Typography The feed back for any issues with this plug-in seem to be good so if you do have any problems you will get help.

3. Fancy Caps

This next plug-in gives you the ability to make fancy capital letters for the start of your sentences. You can do things like shadows on your capitals, etc. It just gives you a bit of difference to the standard text you see all over. I was impressed with the rendering of the shadow and how much difference it made overall to the text. It really does make the difference to a blog. I might even look professional in the end. You can download it from Drop Caps Plugin. It has a large variety of available texts you can use. The one thing I really like about the plug-in download is that they are basically instant.

4. If you Quote

If you are someone who likes to quote others this little plug in is for you. It enables you to insert quotes easily and at the click of a button. Available from Simple Pull Quotes. You might like to try it out.

5. Google syntax or is that sin tax?

This little plug –in helps you with your Google syntax, which is always useful. You know those little code bits that you need well this highlights them giving them to you in screenshots. Might be worth your while to take a look and see if it is useful to you.

I will be back:  Shades of Zoro. I am about to go look and watch the grass grow.

Today folks, I am going to let you into a little secret. It’s rather an open secret, but if you are new to WordPress, you might not know. WordPress works far better if you use some of the plug-ins. In fact some are essential to its working. Now one would have thought they would all just automatically be included certainly in any upgrades they made but no that isn’t the case. Of course they are giving you personal preference but most of these just make perfect sense. Let’s take a look at 5 choices today.

My first choice

One thing I truly hate is all the stupid spam mail that gets sent if you are ever foolish enough to put your email address into literally anything on the internet. Even those sites that tell you “you are quite safe here we don’t sell your email,” are guilty. Put any email address into one of those and within two minutes spam will appear. For a start they aren’t on https servers.
So we need the anti spam Plug-in. This plug-in checks the comments on your blog to see if it could be spam or not and catches it before it posts, so you don’t get those annoying adverts for unmentionables being posted.

Analyze It

Everyone wants to know how, where, when or who comes to their website or blog and Google will tell you.  Makes you wonder the way they creep into your computer doesn’t it. Well they help you with this little Plug -in which tells you a lot of those things. Of course you do have to register your account with Google to do it. You need to add it to each page of your website for that page to show up but its quick and easy to do.

Make Money

Well in this day and age all the little bits add up. And it makes sense to many people to add the adverts from both Google and Yahoo to their pages in the hopes that someone might click on them. Personally, having been on both sides of that coin, I seldom ever click on them but there must be millions that do. What Google and Yahoo do is analyze your page and post items on it that are relevant to what the blog is about. This way, the people reading the blog might be tempted into going to see what that particular advert is about. The people who are advertising in turn pay Google or Yahoo for placing their adverts. If you buy from them they earn money, but either way they pay for placement of the advert.

Your own RSS feedd

RSS feed is all the rage. It keeps your topics up to date. And this is done without any real effort from you. This can be done with a plug-in from WordPress. As it works by sending your feed out to people have joined your RSS feed they are kept up to date the minute you post anything on your blog.
WordPress gives you the necessary plug-in to do this and you can download it here.

Last but not Least for the day

The secret to blogging is sharing. And the best bloggers know this. And to share you need this plug-in that shares saves and bookmarks all in one.
You can then book mark any of your sites with your button. Get one here where you download your plug-in and start sharing.
I will have more Plug-in’s to share with you shortly. Look out for them.

Is that a contradiction in terms? To someone who doesn’t love Macs, it might be.  There are those out there that are staunch PC supporters and think of Macs as being in an alien world. Folks, Macs are alive and well and in many things more advanced than PC’s. But to many people, the words simple and Mac shouldn’t be grouped in one sentence. Be that as it may there are some things that if you want to do them on a Mac can be very simple if you take a few precautionary steps to start with. Running WordPress can be one of them. Let’s take a look.

Now WordPress runs with certain things as vital to their performance and those include PHP, MySQL and Apache.  Yes I know that you already have two of them but we are going to do things a little different to prevent inference.

Step 1: Avoid Conflicts

As we don’t want any conflicts while installing we are going to turn off “websharing” You will find that in your System settings in Mac.

Step 2: Being Mac Ready

There is a free download called MAMP. This has the three ingredients you need for WordPress all bundled together. Namely MySQL, Apache, and PHP which are all configured for Mac OS X. You can obtain it free or you can also get a bigger version which is a paid version. It’s pretty simple. Download and just install it into your apps folder.

Step 3: Let’s configure It

Log into your folder and go to MAMP by clicking on the Icon. Check the status lights to see that everything is running. If the lights glow red you need to turn them on by going to “start servers”. Correct the ports for both MYSQL and Apache by heading on over to Preferences and set them to the default ports. This should show up as 80 for Apache and 3306 for MySQL. Now you need to change something in Apache. The documents section in Apache needs to be located so as to be easy to find. Make a folder in root folders and call it something A) you will find easily and B) you will remember.

Step 4: WordPress needs a Database

Go to the MAMP Menu and open it in the Start Page. It’s time to install your phpMyAdmin and create a database. Name it and then follow that with a click on create new database.

Step 5: Place it in a Folder

Remember that folder that you made?: the one you put in Root folders? Well now we need to use it. Go into it and make a folder with the name of the website you are about to create. It’s a good idea to use the same name as you used when you created the database.

Step 6: Time to Install

Download and unzip WordPress. Once you are organized put it all into the folder you just created.

Step 7: Time to Configure it

You need to go into the folder and find your file that is called wp-config-sample.php. Once you have found it, you need to go in and change a couple of items. The roots on lines number 4 and number 5 need to be changed in the database user name and also the password. Make sure that your own database shows on Line 3 and hit save. Now rename the file as your wp-config,php file.

Step 8: Try it out
Open up your localhost browser and check if everything is there. If you open the folder you have just made it should open up your new site.

Have fun folks and take time to try it out.
Note:
If you aren’t using it to make a new website you can turn MAMP off by going to its dashboard and turning it off on the widget

I’m a rebel! There I said it. I hate being constricted in any shape or form. When someone tells me I have to do this or that, I immediately look for a way out. It doesn’t suit my nature to be told I have to do things a certain way. It makes no matter who it is or what it is about. I guess that’s why I like the freedom to build a website my own way in my own time. Of course it means I get kicked out of a lot of things. Even as a child, team sports were not for me.  I query too much. I look for the answers and want to do it my way. I guess I was meant to be a leader not a follower. This is one of the things I really like about Expression Engine. It lets me build my way. WordPress tends to make me use their themes or none at all. And although that is fine for a start when you get adventurous and want to put more than they allow in, they don’t like it.

Let’s look at the differences.

There is a difference in how things work on Expression Engine. You get to decide which “channel” is which. It’s not immediately apparent to the user when start. You have to make your way over to the administration section of the website. Unless you do so it’s very similar in format to WordPress. Most users only see the sections called Edit and Publish and what would be plug-ins on WordPress but are called modules here. And here in lies the power of Expression Engine. Right now most of those modules are not yet available for Expression Engine 2 which is why many have not yet upgraded from Expression 1.6. There are a few available at present which make it possible to extend it with multiple files for an entry.

There are sorted types of fields you can use in a Channel which can be a bit confusing as they have similar names to each other like textbox, and textarea.

A section has been made available for groups of people to be able to get together.
Here you can go over the “New Entry” section where you can customize it by title with things like who the leader is and the meeting time. This means that meeting can be easily identified with the content.

My reasons for liking ExpressionEngine.

I can take control of what I want to do. That’s the rebel in me. There are different models available for Commercial Personal and Non Commercial work. This makes it affordable and gives you more modules and more choices. You have the choice to upgrade from a lower version to a higher which makes lives easier as you expand you web presence.

What’s a Kit.

This is similar to what you would find in Drupal. And although WordPress might be heading that way it’s not yet at that point. WordPress is great for anyone who just wants to set up one of there template packages. A rank beginner can do it with ease.

Where is ExpressionEngine Heading?

Unlike WordPress, it’s not easy to change a Theme yet on ExpressionEngine. It does look as if it is head in that direction though. With the functionality that has been added which allows you to HTML and CSS files you are now able to get them recognised and rendered. But where ExpressionEngine starts to really shine is when you enter into the realm of its capabilities in CCK.

New Theme (Changing Themes)
While you can change your look at the drop of a hat on WordPress unfortunately, here you have to do it on installation. This makes it very difficult to change the look here but hopefully they will make this easier in the future

What’s the Difference?

Well for a start WordPress is easier in some respects especially for bloggers and people who just want to try things out. PHP developers like it too.

Real designers however prefer ExpressionEngine because of its flexibility and the fact you can bend things to your will.

It’s all a matter of choice in the end.

Are you ready to get fired up and revving to go? Hope you are! Some folks like the laid-back life and I know I am one of them. If there’s an easy way, I will look for it. If I don’t find it, I will invent it. I love short cuts that save me time. If I know I am going to be doing things a few times I always look for the shortest way. My time is so precious and there aren’t 29 hours in a day yet. Although come to think of it. I have been known to have days where I do try to extend them. I am sure we all do. That being said, I think there must be many of us folks around. If there weren’t, people wouldn’t make things simple to do. For example: an easy click to install WordPress.

Shall we take a look at how to do it? It’s called One Click for a reason.

Step 1: Let’s get started. (Install OneClick Installer)

The first thing you are going to do is download your Theme and unzip it. Now upload it to you WordPress section on the website. Move over to the Word Press Dashboard in the WordPress Admin Panel. You will find a tab in the Admin panel that is labeled One Click Install. It will ask you where you want to install from, either a local file or a remote one.

Step 2: Make sure (Start installing themes and plugins)
You need to ensure that you select the correct option to install from. If you make a mistake you could make life difficult for yourself and have to delete and start over.
If you have to delete, you will do it as in the photo below. Do not do it if you don’t need to. If you do its history and gone for good.

Step 3: Just an Example

Just to show you how easy it is to do from a remote server, we are going to do a little experiment. Find the theme you want on a remote site and highlight the URL in your search bar and copy it. Now take it on over to the Section that says install from a remote URL and just pop in the mouse and put the URL in and then click GO. The theme automatically installs and all you are left to do is activate it. You would do this by going to the Presentation section and click and your congratulations will appear.

Simple wasn’t it?

Like all things when you know how it turns out to be simple. It’s just a case of taking the time and the trouble either to get someone to show you how or take the longer road and experiment until you work it out for yourself. Either way you are left with a sense of achievement once you get it right. When you are in need of help, there are always dozens of forums out there, and if you take the time and trouble to ask, someone will surely have the answer.

Wow the W word. WordPress 3.00 is out. Guess we are going to have a learning curve again. Funny isn’t it how when anything new comes out the program wise they use the public to find the bugs. It seems to happen all over. A program comes out amid great fanfare, and then the bugs start appearing. Customarily it’s simple to fix, and it’s just a case of human error a lot of the time. If you wait for a while before downloading and installing it, there is usually a “please read me” instruction that, if you follow it, will prevent a lot of your problems.
WordPress is no different. If you take a few simple precautions you can prevent many of the problems that might occur.

Plug-ins (Turn Off Your Plug-ins)
A vital step, even before you turn the plug-ins off, is to make a backup of the entire section of your WordPress to your hard drive. The second is one of the main things people forget to do is to turn the plug-ins off before they start. This is a vital step. You don’t want the site corrupted. By turning them off before you start; there won’t be a conflict with the upgrade. Once you have finished upgrading you need to scoot on over to your admin panel and upgrade the plug-ins but before you do make sure you deactivate them.

If you have downloaded without turning off the plug-ins you can have errors springing up. Many times the error will tell you where to find it so you can then deactivate it. Failing, which go to the dashboard and deactivate all the plug-ins until the error disappears. Log in through your FTP backdoor and changes the name of the folder holding the plug-ins and make a new folder.
Now copy the Plugs-ins over to the new folder and activate them again. Test them as you go along to make sure you don’t have problems.

New Default theme (Overly Minimal Themes Have Been Deprecated)

With the advent of the new WordPress, we have a new default theme which is named Twenty Ten. The result of this is as it is completely different to the old theme and has diverse features you will need to the old. So what you now need to do is change away from using the default them and only copy over the needed files.

Known Bugs (Some Reported Bugs)
One bug which has been reported several times is that of being stuck in the maintenance file. The answer to this is fairly simple. Log in to your FTP and turn on the hidden folder then delete the maintenance file which will be in the root folder of your site.
2. Static pages have been giving a problem with user messages as has redirection.
3. Events calendar has also reported fatal errors.

Follow the suggestions for Easy Upgrading. (Steps to Hassle-Free Upgrading)
By following the simple steps suggested you should have a hassle free upgrade.
1. Do your backup.
2. Disable your plug-ins by deactivating them
3. Do your upgrade
4. Make sure it all works
5.Turn the plug-ins on again

And there you have it.