Keywords: WordPress, HostPapa, managed hosting, image upload, fix, migration

I recently moved a friend’s blog to a managed (virtual) hosting solution (hostPapa in this case) and it all worked fine apart from the fact they couldn’t upload images via the wordpress UI.

In the WP-Admin site, if went to edit a page, then tried to upload an image, you got (for example);

“Unable to create directory /public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/06. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”

After chasing around the houses, and annoying HostPapa  – who claimed that they have a slightly different ruleset around chmod (for example, they don’t allow 777 even though you can set it in their UI).

I found the fix to this issue was to edit a field in the WordPress database as follows

Table: “wp_options”
Entry: “upload_path”

change from
“/public_html/wp-content/uploads”
to
“/home/<username>/public_html/wp-content/uploads”

Things wrong with Companies House Crown Copyright data disclosure (which allows free copying)

Get the DVD rom of the data

£30 for a copy of the data – WIN

£1200 if you want to actually save the data – FAIL

Crown Copyright Data is in a closed format -  FAIL (although in a hackable form)

DVD self-destructs after 6 months – WTF!
(not stated at the point of sale, or on the phone when I called them)

Then it gets worse;

Windows *only* (not stated anywhere apart from the booklet inside the DVD (e.g. not on the website, phone or on the outside of the DVD)

Uses ActiveX wrapped into an executable – so I had to reset my default browser to IE…

Requires the DVD to be in the drive (“please insert DVD number XXX”) – so also tied to that specific DVD

Has an “Award for excellence” badge on the back of the DVD.

My verdict: 1/10.  Not excellent. Not even good. I couldn’t do what I needed to with this open, Crown Copyright data. They have an XML API, but that is traffic-restricted.

FOI request sent.