Archive for the 'WordPress' category
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
We've been having quite a few issues with speed and server load, something which we'd never had to worry about in the past. We've been building more and more web apps and fewer and fewer simple websites.
We are also facing mod security restrictions on our webhost (the quite brilliant Cartika). Cartika is strapped down pretty tightly, but that makes sense. They also let us know right away if a website of ours is facing security attacks or if it is being scraped every day.
Apparently not all PHP is created equal and it is time to batten down the hatches.
Once we get to functionality we will have to put a full-fledged optimisation phase in the development cycle: the Code Optimization Phase.
In that phase we will specifically target PHP speed and security (as functionality will already be completely in place).
I will start by asking all Foliovision developers to read the article 40 Tips for optimizing your php Code. The top twenty or so are below.
(PHP Speed and Security: The Code Optimization Phase continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Monday, November 5th, 2007
For this weblog, I am often obliged to escape HTML, i.e. so that you can read my HTML examples like this one:
<h3>WEB AND SEARCH SERVICES</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://google.ca">Canadian Google</a>: http://google.ca</li> <li><a href="http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/">Yahoo siteexplorer</a>: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/</li> <li><a href="http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/">IE Preview</a>: http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/</li> <li><a href="http://dan.hersam.com/tools/escape-html.html">Escape HTML brackets</a></li> </ul>
From here it's just a matter of copy and paste.
It's reall pain to do by hand, but Dan Hersam's escape HTML tool makes it a piece of cake. Normally I do it with BBEdit (actually with a plugin called TextSoap, but the function is easily created in BBEdit itself). But this looks simpler and is a lot more portable. Highly recommended. There for all Foliovision staff as well.
By Alec
WordPress |
Friday, October 19th, 2007
What should you do if you've forgotten or lost your WordPress Admin password?
Step one of course would be to fill in your username and your email into the lost password form.
But what if you don't know one of either your username or your email?
Are you out of luck?
Not if you have admin access to your server.
First things first.
- login to your server admin account (cPanel, Hsphere, Plesk, etc...)
- open up PHP MyAdmin (see your host's help file)
- open up your WordPress weblog database
- don't panic when you see the complicated screen
- click on wp_users in the left hand column
- choose browse from the top menu
- you will see all your users with usernames and passwords
- go back to the login screen
- request a new password
- if necessary modify the email to one which will come to you
If you want to make your life miserable you can replace the hash key instead and login directly. But why bother when you can just go back to using the standard interface.
I'm sure I've saved at least one person a call to his or her server admin with this info.
Enjoy posting in your newly recovered WordPress weblog!
By Alec
WordPress |
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
It's no secret that we are big ecto users at Foliovision. But we've found Ecto for Windows more trouble than its worth. We are not the only ones to think so.
Rather than continue to fight Ecto for Windows which is a bit overkill for what we need to do on our Windows computers we went looking for an alternative, preferably something more portable. The Firefox extension JustBlogIt seemed like just the trick.
Basic, but easy to use and open to multiple accounts - very important to cover our multiple weblogs.
JustBlogIt worked a treat with my legacy Typepad account (if you're asking I don't enjoy Typepad at all - tech support is terrible even on a premium account), but wouldn't work with our WordPress weblog, always returning a PHP fatal error.
I asked Jérémie to investigate and this is what he came up with:
It seems that wordpress development team forgot about this file since the version 2.1 of it because it works on JB which is running under the version 2.0.6 and not on JulieK (2.1.2) FV (2.2) and WTR (2.2.1).
When we are trying to run the file it displays a PHP Fatal Error because one function neede to run the editor is missing. The error is:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function the_quicktags() in /hsphere/local/home/fvmaster/foliovision.com/wp-admin/edit-form.php on line 35
After looking on internet and wordpress website and finding almost nothing newer than WP 1.6 (already in WP 1.6 users got that error) I just decide to fix it myself. I looked on the core for that function, copy and past to bookmarklet.php, the function is present on the file /wp-admin/admin-functions.php. It is:
<?
/*Hacked By Foliovision - this function is present on the file /wp-admin/admin-functions.php
Somehow edit-form.php should call it but it is never integrated on its file. I just copy it here:
*/
function the_quicktags() {
// Browser detection sucks, but until Safari supports the JS needed for this to work people just assume it's a bug in WP
if (!strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Safari'))
echo '
<div id="quicktags">
<script src="../wp-includes/js/quicktags.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">if ( typeof tinyMCE == "undefined" || tinyMCE.configs.length < 1 ) edToolbar();</script>
</div>
';
else echo '
<script type="text/javascript">
function edInsertContent(myField, myValue) {
//IE support
if (document.selection) {
myField.focus();
sel = document.selection.createRange();
sel.text = myValue;
myField.focus();
}
//MOZILLA/NETSCAPE support
else if (myField.selectionStart || myField.selectionStart == "0") {
var startPos = myField.selectionStart;
var endPos = myField.selectionEnd;
myField.value = myField.value.substring(0, startPos)
+ myValue
+ myField.value.substring(endPos, myField.value.length);
myField.focus();
myField.selectionStart = startPos + myValue.length;
myField.selectionEnd = startPos + myValue.length;
} else {
myField.value += myValue;
myField.focus();
}
}
</script>
';
}
?>
I've also attached the full fixed file bookmarklet.php to this post. Just download and replace your existing bookmarklet file in ftp://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/bookmarklet.php
And enjoy one click citation in WordPress with JustBlogIt.
By Alec
WordPress |
Monday, August 27th, 2007
Which help desk to Use to automatically build a knowledge base up over time as you answer customers incoming requests?
This is another question I've answered lately privately.
A lot of smart people are using Kayako for help desks. One of my hosting providers started to use Kayako about a year ago and Kayako made my help requests (all too frequent so I'm not recommending them here) there a whole lot easier.
Kayako have a free month long trial and after that you can pay monthly ($40 for the full package) for a hosted version or buy outright at $500 (you probably have to pay for upgrades after awhile so I'm not sure the cost of ownership is any less).
Details of Kayako pricing.
Another help desk I've looked at which is much less expensive is Will Barden's Three Pillars Help Desk. There is a version at $47 and $77. If you join Will Barden's email lists he sometimes even makes a special offer of Pro for Basic cost to his list.
What's great about Three Pillars is that it is a one time fee with source code and hosted on your own servers. So if you have inhouse programmers, you can customise Three Pillars Help Desk as you go.
What we are using right now for support at Foliovision is Basecamp - as we are already deep in there and our clients all know how to use it - and have experimented with the help desk in Freshbooks which we are using for accounting. Basecamp is not public facing (you need to be a registered use to log in) nor does it allow redistribution of tickets to team members which is why we are still looking at other solutions.
If you are using WordPress on your main site, there is a very simple solution (as we build bigger and bigger sites, simple solutions have more and more appeal), it's WordPress plugin called Ask Me. Ask Me lets you get questions and answers up on your site in a hurry (latest Ask Me news). A larger Ask Me database would benefit from a simple category system. There is nothing to prevent Sara (the creator of Ask Me) or your programmer from adding that feature.
My advice - pick any one system get to know it well and use it to the maximum. We and our clients get huge value out of WordPress as we know WordPress so well. There are better tools for many of the things we do with WordPress. But the time we would lose getting to know each of them would be far more costly than the time we spend writing plugins and adapting WordPress to our purposes.
By Alec
Internet Marketing, WordPress |
Friday, August 24th, 2007
I'm on a professional WordPress mailing list and this interesting question came up:
I'm using Wordpress 2.2 as a CMS to create a site for a client with a small business. My client wants a portfolio page (not necessrily a WP Page) with a list of thumbnails that will each link to its own "gallery" page which will include multiple photographs with some descriptions. My client is a non-programmer who will need to update and add to the portfolio page on her own.
I've been looking at WPG2 and wondering if this will accomplish my needs. I've seen you can put photos in posts, but can you link those post photos to a WP Page that contains more photos from that category in a gallery style (such as the embedded WPG2)? I will also need descriptions about those photos on that Page. I've looked at other sites that have WPG2 embedded within Pages, but their Pages don't contain photo descriptions beyond the photo title.
Does WPG2 seem a good fit? Or is there another plugin that works better? Or will this not be possible?
Alas, Tracy, all of the galleries in WordPress stink. Both Gallery 1 and 2 are way too top heavy on their own. Mixing Gallery with WordPress would be a fatal PHP cocktail, capable of choking the most powerful server and confusing the most adroit programmer.
We've spent whole days at Foliovision playing around with what's out there in terms of WordPress image plugins and there's nothing I would recommend.
The closest thing to what you want are (listed in order of least amount of work to get something passable):
- NextGEN Gallery
- ZenPhoto
- PictPress - Vermeer demo gallery
- WPPA
- Duh Gallery
All have huge problems with URLs and reliability. ZenPhoto is by far the best in terms of simplicity and clean URLs, but it's not well integrated into WordPress just yet.
If you can make any of the above work, without clunkiness and/or very ugly URLs, please comment below. If you find something better, let us know.
At Foliovision, we are currently doing some work on an images plugin but it won't be for larger galleries but for embedding images directly into posts in a simplified workflow. As soon as FV Images is ready, we'll be posting it here.
For the moment, if you want something clean, I'd have to recommend doing it by hand (uploading all the images in both full size and thumbnail and linking and embedding them).
Ecto (available for Windows and Mac) can also be a great help when you have a lot of images to include in a post. The quality of the thumbnailing is poor on Typepad (I have one weblog over there still) but could be handtweaked on WordPress. It can be tricky to get Ecto to play nicely with WordPress built-in XML-RPC.
By Alec
WordPress |
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
There are lots of ways to build incoming links.
For a small window of time (about six months until April of this year) sponsoring WordPress themes was a great way to get varied links from lots of different independent websites.
Of course these links wouldn't be going on top PR sites generally (custom themes) and you don't have control of the theme of the site.
On the other hand, you do have control over the anchor text, which is already not bad.
And previously it was quite inexpensive - you would pay about $40 or $50/link on a two sponsored link theme and around $70 to $100 for a single sponsored link theme.
Things have changed - most theme developers are pushing three sponsored links and are trying to get $100 or more per link.
With the inflation and feeding frenzy, a lot more lousy developers have thrown their hats into the ring, so there is an oversaturation of themes.
The developers all talk a good game of how they promote the theme on sites such as:
Unfortunately on all or most of these high PR authority sites, your sponsored link will be nowhere to seen. Just a link to download the theme and some jpegs of the theme.
The developers will also try to shout and scream about 450 downloads, 1037 downloads for past themes. But for link building number of downloads accomplishes nothing for you.
What you are interested in is the number of sites which use the theme and include the sponsored links. For the purposes of sponsored links, a single is much better as the end user is less likely to rip out the links. By the same token it would also be better if the links were discreetly nested and not in electric green (where they are likely to attract the attention of the site owner and his visitors and finally get ripped out). An exception could be made if your site is likely to go viral and has a very wide appeal. In that case, clicks from sponsored links might actually contribute to your business. For my regional websites, we are not looking for random clicks. It will never generate any business for my clients and the more discreet the sponsored links the better.
(
How to Sponsor a WordPress Theme Successfully | How to audit a theme sponsorship continued...)
By Alec
SEO, WordPress |
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Like everybody in search we are having to get more involved in Social Bookmarking than we used to be.
Like most people in search, normally we don't have a lot of time for social bookmarking. It's a pretty busy year.
On this weblog, we've implemented Denis de Bernardy Bookmark Me plugin which gives direct access to 25 services (del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Ask, BlinkList, blogmarks, Blogg-Buzz, Google, Ma.gnolia, muti, Netscape, ppnow, Rojo, Shadows, Simpy, Socializer, Spurl, StumbleUpon, Tailrank, Technorati, Windows Live, Wists, Yahoo!).
We've selected del.icio.us, Digg, Ma.gnolia, StumbleUpon and Technorati for now. I would really hate to see more than five icons at the bottom of my posts. Even that's a bit of a stretch. The PR drain would be terrible but Denis de Bernardy very sensibly allows us to automatically put no-follow tags on all bookmarking services with a single checkbox.
Boomarkme-Icon
(
Social Bookmarking Plugins for WordPress: Bookmark Me, AddThis.com, AddToAny.com and Share This continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Just put up an extended post on how to create and hide identifiers in WordPress template files.
This way you can see what PHP files generate the page you are looking at on the front end. It's a big help when you have a large design editing project - you can see right away which PHP file you are working on.
That post is in the pages section, as I am working on putting together a guide for WordPress users who are not PHP coders on how to hack a WordPress template.
By Alec
WordPress |
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Philip Dow's Journler
Philip Dow is the developer of the very well received Mac PIM (personal information manager) Journler about donationware. His application Journler had an open donation policy for personal use. Contribute whatever you like. A single commercial use license was/is $25.
Phil is going full-time as a developer now and is starting to feel the pain - lots of downloads and good press, but not a lot of revenue rolling in.
Out of 580 registered users, Phil had received an average donation of $17. That makes a total of about $9800. But in the end, Phil feels that some are abusing the donation system.
(Should Software Be Donation Only | Minimum Donation Levels continued...)
By Alec
Business, WordPress |
Saturday, May 19th, 2007
Lost an hour today to trying to debug Ecto posting to this weblog (if you're not using Ecto, you should consider it).
I was constantly getting this error:
XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only
Finally I wrote up a nice little support ticket for Dreamhost with all the details. Surprisingly I got the fix back in relatively short order.
I was wondering what the problem with WordPress was. It turned out to be a PHP 5.2.2 bug. The file xmlrpc.php is broken under PHP 5.2.2. As WordPress is the weblog system in widest use in the entire world, it would be nice if the PHP team would get with the real world and debug their releases before rolling them out.
(
XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only - WordPress Error continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Friday, May 4th, 2007
John and I have often quarreled over the appalling WordPress login visuals.
Every site has to go to the same ugly login page:
Wordpress-Login-Old-V1
The login page gotten somewhat better since version 2.1 but it still just doesn't fit in with the rest of the site. Which site? Any site!
Wordpress-Login-New-V2
I guess this would be a great design if you are running a Star Trek fan club.
John would prefer not to fix the login page issue as it means altering core code. He's got a point. Once you start forking core code, you better be tracking your changes minutely (it's okay to hack into one file in my opinion, or one section, which you replace wholesale - but once you eat the first cookie, it's hard to stop and pretty soon the tin is empty and you have nothing but crummy code...).
(
Redesign the WordPress Login via a Plugin continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Friday, May 4th, 2007
Just discovered a very nice shopping cart for WordPress. Fits in well with the upcoming FolioPress release. We will take WordPress from weblog software to CMS, bypassing bloat.
The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.
WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind. Perfect for
- Bands & Record Labels
- Clothing Companies
- Crafters & Artists
- Books, DVDs & MP3 files
All is not rosy however with WP e-Commerce lite. The URLs for shopping cart pages are atrocious, something like:
yourdomain.com/products-page/?category=11
That takes us back to the bad old Mambo days. At some point John and I should do a rewrite of the plugin to incorporate search engine and people friendly URLs so that the above would read:
yourdomain.com/products/non-latex
or even
yourdomain.com/condoms/non-latex
(
Shopping Cart for WordPress: WP e-Commerce continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
There is a raging debate right now about the sponsored themes at themes.WordPress.org.
Given the garbage currently being submitted with up to five credits including anchor text like web directory (x 3), Make Money Online and bid for links (a real single example), this is no surprise.
Matt Mullenweg has come out hard against all theme sponsorship.
Guidelines (strict ones) are what we need here, not an absolute ban.
(
Sponsored Themes at Wordpress.org continued...)
By Alec
WordPress |
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
WordPress.org has an amazing feature which I hadn't noticed before. It's a New Ideas section which lists any registered user's idea. Registered users simply vote the new ideas up or down (one registered user, one vote). They can also give their feedback if so inclined.
Sometimes inviting user feedback can yield unanticipated or even unwelcome results.
The latest idea is to revamp the default blogroll install in WordPress. Right now it features links to the personal websites of Matt Mullenweg, Michel Valdrighi, Alex King and others. Needless to say, all of the above have enormous Google juice (strong backlinks) to these personal websites. Some of the above are selling text links on their websites (Alex King please stand up).
Wordpress default Blogroll
The issues is that the blogroll has stood still since WordPress 1.0 but WordPress has not. Many people have given enormous hours to the project since. Even more importantly, WordPress resources have expanded. There is a codex, there are hosted WordPress.com weblogs, there are support forums, there plugin guides. These are the links that a fresh install of WordPress needs both in the blogroll and in the dashboard.
Instead of crediting the founders on the blogroll, there should be a single link in the blogroll to a Credits page similar to the existing About page or Copyright page. That page is Google PR 9 so none of the original creators will be short of PR. Those people who have contributed substantially in the last two years could aslo be recognised there.
For the moment, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has come out tersely against this proposal, "Not so inclined". Hopefully in time, he will listen to the users as the voting is 4.7/5 in favor of changing the blogroll.
By Alec
WordPress |
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
By Alec
Uncategorized |
