Laura Gentry

Can’t log in to your WordPress subdomain blogs?

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:55:36 +0000

I recently tried my hand, once again, at installing another WordPress multisite/network on a Windows machine, but this time using subdomains instead of directories for blogs. The process was identical to my first time around, but a common problem arose once I got the network successfully set up – I couldn’t login to any of the subdomain blogs. It was a never ending looping of redirects that made it impossible to access the admin pages of any of the newly created blogs.

Despite it being a common problem, none of the common solutions seemed to work (clear cookies, change siteurl, etc). But adding this bit of code to wp-config.php did the trick:

define('ADMIN_COOKIE_PATH', '/');
define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '');
define('COOKIEPATH', '');
define('SITECOOKIEPATH', '');

Hope this helps somebody else. Thanks to the folks on this thread on the WordPress forums.

Problems downloading Excel files with an xlsx extension in WordPress

admin — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 23:47:24 +0000

The skinny: WordPress is appending xls to xlsx causing annoying error messages when a user tries to view those files. I’ve got a fix after the jump. And, unfortunately – for now, at least – it calls for a change to the core code.

My company finally upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007 last year and, as a result, have been changing a lot of document file extensions. As a result, I have had lots of problems uploading those files to WordPress. After upload, when a user tries to view/download an xlsx document from Internet Explorer or Firefox, they were given this warning:

The file you are trying to open .xlsx is in a different format than specified by the file extension. verify the file is not corrupted and is from trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?

There’s a lot of information on the web about changing the registry on user computers to stop the message from popping up. It’s a mostly harmless, but annoying, message that still allows the user to open the file. However, it’s the type of error that alarms a user and makes them send me emails, and changing everybody’s registry is not a viable option.

Further, it seemed the problem was more likely with WordPress than it was with Excel or my browser or the server because, when attempting to download, I noticed WordPress appended the old “xls” extension to the end of the filename. As in, it read filename.xlsx.xls, which is why Excel thought it was a bogus extension.

I found the cause of the trouble to be in the wp-includes/functions.php file around the 2515 line, so unfortunately it took some core code hacking that I’m not happy about. You’ll notice xslx is listed twice in the allowed mime-type uploads, but the second mention of xlsx is an incorrect mime-type and it’s overriding the first correct mention of it. Remove xlsx from the list of mime-types labeled application/vnd.ms-excel and make sure it’s listed under the mime-type of application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml. If you’re having this problem, you should see the problem clear up right away without having to re-upload anything.

There’s a thread about this on the WordPress support forums and a bug report on trac, but I’m not sure the change has been committed yet.

WordPress plugin: XML-ify WordPress – Multiple Posts

admin — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 03:12:41 +0000

This plugin generates an XML file using content from multiple blog posts. You decide how many of the latest posts you want included in the XML file.

You can use the generated XML files to populate photo gallery software, iPhone applications, etc. Using the options page, you can decide how many posts to display, what content you want to include, what to name the surrounding XML tags, and whether or not you want to pull from only one category or all categories.

Here’s what a sample XML file looks like from my site via Firefox:

After installing and activating the plugin, the XML file is generated simply by visiting your site’s front page. The file generates each time someone visits your site’s front page. This shouldn’t be an issue with server overload, unless you get a LOT of traffic. If you notice slowness due to this plugin, let me know.

The XML generated will be located in a folder called ‘xmlfiles’ within your wp-content folder. The file will be named multipost.xml.

== Installation ==
1. Unzip and upload files to your plugins directory.
2. Activate. You can tell the plugin is working by visiting your site, then visiting http://www.yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-content/xmlfiles/multipost.xml.
3. Choose your settings in the “XML-ify WordPress Multiple Posts” options page in the WordPress admin area.

Download the plugin here: XML-ify WordPress Multiple Posts

WordPress 404 error pages not displaying in IE 8

admin — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:43:37 +0000

Chalk this up to yet another reason to hate on Internet Explorer. IE 8 has at least three points of failure for your custom error pages. It will display its own error pages instead of yours if:

Your error page is under 512 bytes
The user has “friendly HTTP error messages turned off.” Some claim this is the default setting, it wasn’t in my installation.
Internet Explorer just doesn’t feel like showing it. No, seriously. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t with the exact same setup.

Thanks to WPCanada, I was able to force the browser to recognize my custom 404 page by adding this code to the very top of 404.php:

ob_start(); ?>
header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"); ?>

Applying one theme to multiple blogs in a WordPress Multisite network

Laura Gentry — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:59:01 +0000

Here’s a good bit of code I found in the WordPress MU forums and slightly altered for my own purposes – conditional tag based on blog ID. This will work for WordPress 3.0:

$current_blog_id = $GLOBALS['blog_id'];
if ($current_blog_id == 1) {

} elseif ($current_blog_id == 2) {

} else {

} ?>

How to create a WordPress 3.0 Multisite Network on a Windows server using sub-directories

Laura Gentry — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:28:48 +0000

Updated: If you’ve used this tutorial to create subdomain blogs and are having trouble logging into those blogs, here’s a fix I found that worked.
—–
I recently spent many hours — most of it Googling and staring at error pages — trying to get the new WordPress Multisite functionality working on a Windows server. I thought I would share how I finally ended up succeeding.

This tutorial is primarily for people who have control over the Windows server they are working on OR a flexible sysadmin who can make a few changes to the server should you run into problems. I’m assuming you’ve already successfully installed WordPress 3.0 and the basic functionality is working. That’s another tutorial for another time and another blogger.

STEP 1
Add this line to your wp-config.php file and save the file:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

You should now see a “Network” link under Tools.

STEP 2

Temporarily disable all of your plugins. Click the Network link under Tools.

Choose “Sub-directories” for your Network type, enter a Network Title and an admin e-mail address.

If you see this error…

“Because your install is not new, the sites in your WordPress network must use sub-domains. The main site in a sub-directory install will need to use a modified permalink structure, potentially breaking existing links.”

… it’s because you’ve had WordPress 3.0 installed for more than 30 days. They’re trying to stop you from creating directories that may conflict with content you’ve already created. If this is not a concern for you, go ahead and install your network anyway ignoring that message. You’ll just need to edit this line after you’ve completed Step 3:

define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );

… to say …

define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );

If you’re WordPress install is relatively new with relatively little content, overriding this setting shouldn’t be a problem. If you have a lot of content already in your WordPress installation, you may want to reconsider using sub-directories. Either use sub-domains or create a fresh install of WordPress to avoid problems. If you decide to risk it anyway, make sure you backup your database in case anything goes haywire.

STEP 3

From here, follow the instructions WordPress gives you. Add the first two blocks of text to your wp-config.php file. The third bit of code probably won’t apply to you if it looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

That’s for an .htacess file. WordPress is assuming you’re on a server running Apache, which you’re probably not. Since you’re on a Windows server, you’re probably running IIS. If your server IS running apache, then use the .htaccess file instead of the web.config file.

Add the following code to your web.config file located at the root of your site.

version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>
>
>
>
name="WordPress Rule 1" stopProcessing="true">
url="^index\.php$" ignoreCase="false" />
type="None" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 2" stopProcessing="true">
url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+)" ignoreCase="false" />
type="Rewrite" url="wp-includes/ms-files.php?file={R:2}" appendQueryString="false" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 3" stopProcessing="true">
url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$" ignoreCase="false" />
type="Redirect" url="{R:1}wp-admin/" redirectType="Permanent" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 4" stopProcessing="true">
url="^" ignoreCase="false" />
logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" ignoreCase="false" />
input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" ignoreCase="false" />
>
type="None" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 5" stopProcessing="true">
url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-(content|admin|includes).*)" ignoreCase="false" />
type="Rewrite" url="{R:2}" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 6" stopProcessing="true">
url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$" ignoreCase="false" />
type="Rewrite" url="{R:2}" />
>
name="WordPress Rule 7" stopProcessing="true">
url="." ignoreCase="false" />
type="Rewrite" url="index.php" />
>
>
>
>
>

If you don’t have a web.config file located at the root of your site, create one in Notepad. If you already have a web.config file setup, just add everything between the tags, making sure they’re nested within the tags of your existing file. Save the file.

STEP 4

Go back to your Network page in WordPress and click the “Log In” link at the bottom. You’ll log in again and voila, your ability to create a Network is now available under the “Super Admin” area. This actually may just be the beginnings of your problems, but hopefully it’s the end.

If, when you tried to log in you started getting a 500 Internal Server Error, something has gone awry with your web.config file. For me, it turned out that the URL Rewrite module had not been installed on my server. You can test that by removing the tags and everything in between. If the site functions when that’s removed, then your server doesn’t have the URL Rewrite module. You can grab that here and install it:

http://www.iis.net/download/urlrewrite

If you don’t have the ability to install modules on your server, you’ll need to ask your sysadmin to do that for you. It’s a requirement for a sub-directory network, so you can’t skirt this issue.

STEP 5

Under Super Admin > Sites, create a new site and try to visit that site. If you’re able to see it, then you’re home free.

Controlling the number of posts in multiple loop calls on a single WordPress page

Laura Gentry — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:57:29 +0000

That’s kind of a mouthful, eh?

With all the talk of organizations using WordPress as their website CMS, it’s pretty surprising some features aren’t yet part of the core code or at least surprising that some hacks aren’t more distributed. A very basic feature I know every news site would want is the ability to post multiple headline stacks on one page and control how many headlines each stack displays.

I’m currently in the process of transforming a very static agency intranet homepage into something more vibrant and news-powered using WordPress and I spent an hour searching for the most fool-proof, direct way to accomplish the display of multiple categories on one page. I thought I’d pass along the best solution I’ve found.

The crux of the problem is that using multiple loops on a single page seems to affect the way each loop displays, and not in a good way. No matter how I tried to reset or rewind a loop, it just caused problems for itself, another loop or the entire page. I used WP Modder’s solution and it worked like a charm.

His usage was slightly different than mine. His setup was:

1) Pull the first few headlines from a particular category and display them in a unique way
2) Then display the rest of the headlines normally without duplicating headlines from the previously displayed category

My setup was:

1) Every post is assigned ONE category
2) Every category will display X number of headlines on the front page and that number will vary depending on the category

To accomplish that, you replace this in every instance of your loop:

while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>

… with this:

$my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=My Badass Category&showposts=3');
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

… obviously replacing the category name and the number of posts to show. Using the same query name multiple times for this purpose may not be kosher, but it works and my page isn’t broken, so I’m sticking with it. Of course, most news sites would assign multiple categories to a post, but, uh, that’s your problem.

How to create a CSS rollover effect for buttons

Laura Gentry — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:46:52 +0000

I’ve decided to start using this space more for keeping track of random things I learn that I want to make a record of. I typically scour the internet for a solution, bookmark a site and then completely forget about bookmarks altogether. I figure if I blog about it, it’s more likely to stick with me and I’m more likely to be able to find it later with my site’s search engine. If someone else learns from it, all the better.

I wanted to figure out a way to do a rollover button effect where it looks like the button is being “pushed” when you hover over it. I figured I could achieve the effect by using a drop shadow in it’s inactive state and remove it in it’s active state, but I wasn’t quite sure of the best method to achieve the switch between active and inactive.

After an exhaustive (5 minute) search on Google, I found a solution that was written a gazillion (6) years ago on a Webmaster World forum.

Here’s the trick. Create a mini-sprite where you have the active and inactive states within the same image:

Then use this code in your stylesheet:

.buttons a {
display: block;
width: 146px;
height: 77px;
background: transparent url(http://www.lauragentry.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/buttons.png) no-repeat;
text-decoration:none;
border:none;
}
.buttons a:hover {
background-position: -153px 0;
}

And this code in your body:

Essentially what you’re doing is limiting a DIV to the width of the first half of your image and when you roll your mouse over that image, you shift the image to the left X amount of pixels to reveal the second half of your image. This allows a flicker-free transition and requires no Javascript.

Yay! That’s easy!

In case you want to know how to create a similar button style, there are a variety of ways to accomplish this, but I used Illustrator. For a quick read on creating buttons in Illustrator, give this short tutorial a try.

WordPress Plugin: Post XML for Simpleviewer Gallery

Laura Gentry — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:20:53 +0000

Update 4/4/2011: This plugin does not currently work with WordPress 3.0+ and, due to time constraints, I may have to deprecate it entirely.

——–

After writing my first WordPress plugin (which creates an XML file of your blog using every post’s title, excerpt, permalink and custom fields), I started getting several requests from people who wanted post-specific XML that pulls out images stored in a post’s gallery to populate a Flash gallery.

Since there are several Flash gallery solutions out there that all require different XML structures, I decided to focus on one at a time. First up: Simpleviewer (free version).

SimpleViewer requires JavaScript and the Flash Player.

The Simpleviewer gallery above is populated by a dynamically generated XML file for this particular post. With my new plugin, Post XML for Simpleviewer, every post on my site has its own associated XML file that lists all of the post’s attachments, as well as captions and thumbnails.

After installing and activing the plugin, the XML files are generated simply by visiting a single post in a browser. Basically, the file generates each time someone looks at a specific post (not an index or archive page), so the XML is updating each time a single post is visited. If you get a ton of traffic, this might not be the best solution for you due to potential server overload.

The XML generated for each post will be located in a folder called “SVxmlfiles” within your wp-content folder. Each filename will be galleryXXX.xml where the XXX is your post ID number. For example, the location of the XML for this post is:
http://www.lauragentry.com/wordpress/wp-content/SVxmlfiles/gallery343.xml

You can set your preferences for Simpleviewer parameters by visiting the options page which is located under “Settings” in your dashboard.

I’m making the assumption with this plugin that you’re already familiar with Simpleviewer and are just looking for a way to dynamically generate the content with your WordPress blog.

If you think you’ll want every post to have a Flash gallery, I’d recommend putting the embed code in your template. If not, you can do it within the body of your WordPress post or page.

If you are going to have more than one gallery, you’ll need to give the “flashContent” a unique ID to match your blog post ID. Something like “flashContent343″ would be good for this post. Here’s the embed code I used for the gallery above:

SimpleViewer requires JavaScript and the Flash Player.

THE BASICS

1) Download and install the plugin into your WordPress plugins folder

2) Activate the plugin. You can tell the plugin is working by visiting any of your single posts and then visiting http://www.yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-content/SVxmlfiles/galleryXXX.xml where XXX is the post’s ID.

3) Download and install Simpleviewer (free) somewhere on your site

4) In the Simpleviewer embed code, replace the gallery.xml reference with http://www.yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-content/SVxmlfiles/galleryXXX.xml where XXX is the post’s ID. If you’re placing the embed code in a template rather than a post or page, be sure to have the template dynamically generate that post ID.

THE PROBLEMS

1) There’s no way to exclude a photo from a gallery if it’s one of the post’s attachments. That’s outside the scope of this plugin, as I’m working within the confines of the WordPress gallery feature.

2) It does not currently differentiate between photos and other types of post attachments, so it will attempt to treat documents, videos and images the same. I’ll get that fixed in the near future.

3) As mentioned above, this generates XML on the fly every time someone visits a single post. If you’ve got a lot of images and a lot of traffic, there could be a site performance issue. If anyone experiences this, let me know.

UP NEXT

I plan on tackling Simpleviewer Pro and Autoviewer next. If anybody knows a way to reliably embed Autoviewer into a WordPress post without using iframes, hit me up at its.the.general@gmail.com!

WordPress plugin: Photo Gallery XML Export v1.0.0

Laura Gentry — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:06:37 +0000

This is my first attempt at a WordPress plugin. I implemented it on The News Tribune‘s homepage several months ago and there haven’t been any disasters, so I’m considering it a success.

This plugin takes post data from your WordPress blog and creates an XML feed of that data. I suppose it could have several uses, but it is optimized to feed data to Flash photo galleries with info from the Title and Excerpt fields as well as each post’s permalink.

Download the plugin: Photo Gallery XML Export v1.0.0

I’ve also added the ability to include up to five custom fields (good for thumbnails) and the option of limiting to just one category.

Here’s a screenshot of the options page:

How you might use this in the real world:

If you have a photo blog or a blog that usually includes at least one photo per post, you could use exported XML data from your blog to feed a Flash content rotator that you would use to promote that blog on another page of your site.

Or, if you have a special feature on your blog — say, “Recipe of the Week” — that includes a photo, you could assign that special feature a category (like “recipeoftheweek”) and use exported XML data from just that category to feed a Flash content rotator to promote that special content.

Here’s an example of my blog’s content as XML generated from this plugin:

And here’s a live example of a Flash content rotator that’s pulling data from XML generated by this plugin:

A few suggestions for Flash content rotators:

• Simpleviewer

• JW Image Rotator

• Flash Image Rotator using XML Playlist

Some notes:

1) The XML declaration is hard-coded to be: … I don’t have any plans to change that unless I get requests for other declarations.

2) You can name most XML elements however you see fit, but right now the parent element is hard-coded to “images” and each blog post parent element is hard-coded to “pic.” I’m hoping to make that customizable in the future.

3) If your excerpt isn’t populated, it will pull from your blog post. Not entirely ideal, but that’s how WordPress excerpts work by default.