Here is a good post describing what’s to come in WordPress 3.0.

Please review our policy on WordPress 3.0 Multisite feature

Holy WordPress Batman!

We are pretty stoked to head out to SF this weekend for the 2010 WordCamp in San Francisco. Our folks on the inside tell us this is the WordCamp of the year.  Page.ly is proud to be a sponsor of what is shaping up to be a pretty awesome event. Our hosts for the event, Automattic are of course the folks behind the great WordPress.com service and their leader Matt, kinda invented the WordPress software we use here on page.ly.

We picked up a few extra tickets for the event and ran a little contest to give them away, so congratulate the winners if you meet them.  We look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Please please please make an effort to come meet us. We really want to get to know our customers and fans, and yes even our frenemies.

See you there!

PS: We will have a very (I mean very) limited number of the ultra soft and rare page.ly T’shirts on hand, come say ‘Hi’ and hit us up for one.

WordPress 3.0 will be released very soon as the core team is working on the final details.

Page.ly will auto-upgrade all customer accounts shortly after. Likely 1-2 weeks after the official release. We wait to push big upgrades like this for 2 reasons:

1. To allow more time for plugin developers to update their plugins which limits breakage
2. The pattern of past releases shows there is typically a .1 (like 3.1) release shortly after a major release to address any last minute issues.

We would like to allow some time until the .1 release to further ensure a smooth upgrade for all customers.  If no .1 release is forthcoming after a week or two we will go ahead and push the 3.0.

Customers may update their own site at any time by using the built in WordPress updater.

Our Upgrade Procedure:

All customers will be notified by email, and this blog before an upgrade. The upgrade should be transparent to customers as were all the past upgrades. We will push the upgrade late at night and then test the sites to make sure everything seems to be working. When you login next you will see a “WordPress Database Update” screen where you simply need to confirm yes on.

If for any reason there is a problem that we do not detect first (likely caused by an outdated plugin) you may use our Whitescreen Eliminator to disable all plugins or request a roll back of your site to a previous backup. We maintain 7 days worth of live backups we can restore immediately, and older backups we will access if needed.

A reminder:

Page.ly will not support the MultiSite option in 3.0 on our base ($14.98/mo) service. If you require MU/MultiSite please look into our Enterprise plans.

Specific notes about 3.0 and the page.ly MultiSite policy can be found here.

First let us say that we are very happy and proud to be a sponsor of WordcampSF(2010) which will surely be one for the books. We are very thankful to the WordPress community and to all our WordPress Hosting customers for helping our young company grow.

What is a WordCamp you ask?

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

As of today, 348 people have registered to attend. I’m not sure what the cap is but I am sure it will sell out soon. Well… we have a few extra tickets just for you.

Announcing The *AMAZING! Page.ly digital essay contest!

Tell us why you love WP -> win stuff.

We love WordPress, she loves WordPress, he does too, and that guy, and her over there, even the kids love WordPress, but we want to know how much and why you love WordPress.

How do I participate?

Tweet, blog, youtube, tumblr, facebook, write a message in bottle, or etch into stone why you love WordPress and how it makes your job easier, makes your life cooler, made you grow hair on your chest (sorry if you are a girl), pwns the competition or whatever other reason you think the world needs to know why WordPress is the best.

We’re going to have to locate your manifesto’s somehow. So to make it easy just tweet the link to your entry with a short message if you like and include the official hashtag. The Officially official hashtag: #pagelywordcampsf

Examples of win worthy entries may include but not limited to:

• a heart felt and passionate blog post about how WordPress saved your job
• a youtube video of your best Matt Mullenwag impression
• a tweet haiku regarding hooks and plugins
• a WordPress logo treatment in obey-propaganda style
• a comic with WordPress as the super hero

You can start now!

What do I win?

3 winners will be chosen by our panel of judges using the official rules from the boy scout handbook 2nd edition (not really) and will be awarded:

• 1 ticket to WordCamp San Fransisco (just get yourself there and find a floor to sleep on if need be)
• 1 FREE-4-Life WordPress hosting account at Page.ly + 1yr domain reg
• 1 super comfy ultra fashion forward Page.ly T-shirt in your size
• Some sweet page.ly stickers
• An adult beverage on us at the after party (our lawyers say we can only buy you 1 cause if you pass out on the trolley tracks & get rice a roni’d we’ll be in trouble) or all the tap water you can drink.

When does the contest end and winners announced?

Contest ends Sunday April 18th at midnight.
Winners announced Tuesday April 20th. (Still time to get yo butt to San Fransisco)

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and tell the world why you love WordPress!  Just remember to tweet the link to your media with the hashtag #pagelywordcampsf.

Legal Stuff:

• Must be 21 to take advantage of adult beverage
• Does not include travel, food, airfare or earthquake insurance
• If a current page.ly customer, your account will be comped-4-eva for 1 domain
• Whatever else comes up we have to put here

Thanks and we look forward to seeing you at WordCamp.

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