Once again, I decided to use the ‘Upgrade Automatically’ option, and once again it failed me. This time, it was going to WordPress 3.0. And then updating a theme afterwards.

It looks like everything succeeded (as far as I can tell) except for the last step. I upgraded to 3.0 with no incident, but then I had some goofy theme that I should probably just remove, and it bit me in the backside. It turns out that WordPress now has an automatic ‘maintenance mode’ which is enabled by dropping a file called .maintenance into the WordPress root. With this file, no one can do anything on the site (including get into the admin site).

Thankfully, Google saved the day, but, man . . . what a nuisance. I had to log into the web site file management system, and then delete that .maintenance file.  Not a big deal, I know, but it shouldn’t work like this.  I should be able to do it from the WordPress Dashboard.  And, yes, I should have read the release notes and such. But who does that? Seriously? I do it for a living, and the last thing I need is for my personal software.

I really wish more people read About Face by Alan Cooper.

I’ve converted over to using a Mac full-time for work, and its not been without its challenges.  But one of the most annoying things is when I download something, and then go to open it, I get prompted as to whether I actually want to open.  This smacks of Window’s UAC which is one thing I was glad to leave behind in the conversion.  Thankfully, through a lot of searching, I was able to find this solution.  Create a text file with the following text:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN”
“http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0?>
<dict>
<key>LSRiskCategoryNeutral</key>
<dict>
<key>LSRiskCategoryContentTypes</key>
<array>
<string>public.item</string>
</array>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Now, simply put the file in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist .  This is a user-specific setting, so the ~ indicates the user’s home folder.  Every user will need this file in their preferences if they don’t want this behavior.

Will this make your machine more ‘insecure?’  Absolutely, so be sure to know what you’re doing by choosing this option.  And if you do it, and are not satisfied, its on you – I take no responsibility for you downloading some malware.