Ever activate a WordPress plugin and it “breaks” your website where you are unable to login to deactivate it.  Or activated a theme and get that “white screen“. Yeah sooner or later it is going to happen.  Fortunately the fix is pretty simple for the technical user; just open the database and reset a few settings. Well on page.ly, clients do not have access to the database (for their own good) and we were getting support requests of the occasional white-screen problem so we built a little self service system to fix it.

(Announcer Voice) Announcing the The White Screen Eliminator….

This is how it works. Page.ly customers must first verify their account and may choose from the 3 reset options.

1. Reset the site blog/home domain.
   Ever done this? You go under Settings > General and change the blog home url thinking it would just modify the url structure and instead you bork the site? Yep. That setting is confusing.. what you are actually trying to do is related to permalinks or reading subpanel.  This selection just resets these two fields back to proper defaults.
   
2. Deactivate all plugins.
   Sometimes upgrading a plugin (or not upgrading it when you upgrade the core) break things. Just how it goes. This is the most common reason for “white screens”.  This selection just deactivates all the plugins, so you can re-activate them 1 by 1, skipping the suspected broken one.
   
3. Reset to default theme.
   Again sometimes a theme creates the white screen scenario where you are unable to login.  This selection just sets your theme back to the default kubrick theme so you can login again and choose another custom theme.

That’s it. Choose 1,2, or all 3 selections to reset a few defaults on your site so you can get back to work. Note: Rest easy, This will not affect your posts or content, or any other settings..

The White Screen Eliminator can be found on the right side of the Support page

Jane Wells of the WordPress development team posted an update of the pending WordPress 3.0 release. While all of the 3.0 features are exciting, one of particular interest to us here at page.ly is the MU merge. It has a potential impact on our current and future page.ly customers.

WordPress MU is the multiuser version of WordPress that allows for 1 install to serve many blogs. (Like WordPress.com or Lockergnome.net). In 3.0, the MU version and the normal WP version are merged into a single product and will be able to run in multi-user mode or single mode from the same codebase.

So this begs the question- Will Page.ly support/allow multi-user mode found in the WP 3.0 release?

At this point in time Page.ly provides a very specific and unique solution. We do the technical setup and configuration of a complete hosted WordPress solution and provide core upgrade, backup, and other managed hosting services to our customers. Our customers tell us we are really good the best ever at doing this.

One of our core values here at Page.ly is to give our customers as many of the +’s  (theme choice, plugin choice, easy to use) with as few of the -’s (technical setup, upgrade headache, maze of up-sell’s during purchase) of hosting your own WordPress website.  With the addition of multi-user/multi-site to WordPress it adds a potential positive to this equation, yet also potential negatives.  There has to be a net benefit to all of our customers when deciding what to include and what to limit. An example here is database access on page.ly; you will never see it with our service, because you should never need to see it, especially if you don’t know what you are doing. With MU, while it may be a benefit to a small number of our clients, at this point in time we think the added management, post and comment moderation, spblog suppression, and configuration required of a site owner to run an MU service is not a positive benefit to the majority of current customers and those whom we have identified as prospective future customers.

Of course there are also real business and infrastructure considerations to be made from a service provider side as to the viability of providing a MU solution on a large scale. So the short answer is no. Page.ly will not “allow” multi-site mode on Page.ly installs and will amend the Terms of Service to reflect that. Whether or not we take other actions to limit (at a software or server level) multi-site mode is yet to be decided.

So to sum up the “official position” : Page.ly will not support/allow activation of multi-site mode in the WP 3.0 release at this time.

However this position is certainly subject to change should our current and future customers express a demand for a multi-site hosted solution.

My (Joshua Strebel) personal position on it is this: I will do whatever my customers ask of me that is within reason, falls within “our” core capabilities, is ultimately good for business, and does not in any way negatively impact the peaceful enjoyment of our service by current and future customers. If you folks really want multi-site mode I’ll make it happen. But I will have to ask for your patience as we test, develop, and plan for it, and it will not happen any sooner than our datacenter move (mid-late 2010). This could all be much ado about nothing, but I felt it important to clarify where we stand as customers and resellers alike were asking.

Happy to hear your thoughts, protests, or comments below.

WordPress released 2.9.2 today to address a few security concerns.

Page.ly customers rest easy.. hundreds of WordPress sites running on page.ly were updated to 2.9.2 today, about 10 minutes after the release annoucement.

This is what we mean when we say we got your back. No hassle updates.. and Automatic nightly backups come standard with all page.ly accounts.

Not a customer yet? Sign-up today, only 14.98/mo

When we launched Page.ly in September, we made a very conscience effort to survey the WordPress community and identify likely partners that would be a good fit for our service and offer value to our customers. Premium WordPress themes are a true value add on top of a WordPress install, providing enhanced design and configuration options for beginners and experts alike.

After a bit of discussion, we came to an agreement with the fine team at StudioPress to offer their entire line of Premium WordPress Themes as an optional PowerUp to Page.ly customers. This early arrangement made Page.ly the first Authorized Partner of StudioPress themes and today we are happy to announce that the StudioPress Themepack on Page.ly now comes with Pro-Plus Level Support from StudioPress included.

That’s right! Page.ly WordPress Hosting service + All StudioPress Themes + StudioPress Pro-Plus Level Theme Support for $29.98/month.

Here’s how it works. Purchase WordPress hosting from Page.ly and the StudioPress themepack PowerUp option, which includes all StudioPress Themes (Genesis will be added this afternoon) and a Pro-Plus Level Support account will be created for you on the StudioPress support forum. Now in addition to Page.ly’s support for all things hosting and WordPress, you get theme specific support from StudioPress.

Creating a great looking and functional WordPress website or blog has never been easier or faster than it is now with Page.ly and StudioPress.com.

We have a bit more news to announce in the next few days.. Stay tuned.

The folks at StudioPress one of our theme partners wrote a good post on the dangers of “unauthorized” download sources for WordPress themes and Plugins. If you use WordPress which of course all page.ly customers do… you should read it.