April 2008 – Page 4

Password protected site, WP 2.5, image uploader problems and an .htaccess war.

**updated April 7th.

If you run a private member’s only WordPress powered website, you may not be able to upload images with the newfangled flash uploader…unless you take the time to find the fix.

I ran into this problem after upgrading to 2.5 and promptly had a mini shit fit. The fixes to .htaccess that a lot of folks offered in the many threads in the WP.org forum on this exact subject did not work for me.

Basic troubleshooting,post shit-fit:

other sites, same server but not private could use the uploader & turning off .htaccess magically enabled the uploader which told me it wasn’t WP 2.5’s “fault”.

At fault was the login script which was blocking Flash and fuddling the url, resulting in a 404 and no images uploaded. After upgrading from Cutenews –not nearly cute enough for me– to WordPress 2.3.3 the login script sometimes blocked downloads,too. Not very convenient for the members– although right clicking on the download link did work–which was damned lucky since I would have had to go back to Cutenews if members couldn’t download!
Thankfully this now seems to be fixed,too. I’m not sure if it’s because I got rid of the additional .htaccess or not.

Getting it wrong?

Perhaps I misunderstood the process of moving WP core files to a different directory? The instructions in Codex say to “copy” the index.php and .htaccess from the wordpress/ folder and move them to the root*. My main .htaccess file (in place years before WordPress) was a large file mostly pertaining to the protection of the member’s site.
I now have just one .htaccess file instead of 2. Call me stupid but to me “copy” doesn’t mean delete. It just means copy and so I had 2 .htaccess, one in the member’s site root and one in the WordPress folder.

Additional Woes:

Anyway, the login script used to attach a cookie based prefix to all subsequent urls inside the protected site but once I installed WP this didn’t happen and this absence of the login added prefix blocked downloads from downloading when the download link was clicked on directly and since members were used to this ease of use that was now gone I got a lot of emails that the download links weren’t working. Holy run-on sentence,Batman. I explained that the new site needed right click, save target as most of the members use IE.

Getting it right!

Used the fix outlined by Otto42 in the forum.
Got rid of excess .htaccess.
Can now download a file without having to right click!

*Not the full instructions, visit Codex for them.

WordPress 2.5’s secret weapon is image.php

*Updated due to vagueness!

Image.php is a new file included in the default theme that comes
with WP 2.5 and that you can use to have a light-weight image gallery built right into your theme,no plugin required.

Image.php uses new template tags to display thumbnails of the next and previous images underneath the one main image. This is something I dearly wanted. Look out for the option (inside the code of image.php) to display the attachment image as small medium or large. I picked large but your theme may not have the space,esp. if you are very naughty and don’t resize your images to a fixed-width-theme-friendly size before uploading them.

This isn’t going to replace a cool gallery plugin like nextGen gallery for me. However it does do something that nextGen doesn’t do, which is provide the option for comments on photos, if that is something important to you. And I’m guessing if you want a photoblog it might be. Although Aniga gallery does let you have comments on individual pictures…but in my one usage of that plugin the comment showed up on the picture thumbnail and looked odd.Anything is customizable and that could be taken care of in the plugin scripts or maybe even the css file. But see? Already too much work! And Aniga may not even work with 2.5, anyway. I’ll report if it does when I upgrade the sites that use it.
I got the heads up from this site in the comments section left by Matt Mullenweg himself.

How to use image.php:
Copy image.php from default theme folder to your theme’s folder.
To make image.php match your theme’s html is easy. Just replace the content,post and entry divs’ names with the ones your theme uses. Most themes all use the same set of div names so you might not need to customize it at all.

In short image.php is the key to not needing to use plugins for your images ever again…but it is kind of basic looking. I’m sure the geniuses are already working on revving it up.
An example of a real live website using image.php.

Why your installation of WP-Ecommerce isn’t working.

Despite the moans and cries of countless folks on the internet,I am using the free, stable release of the plugin (3.5.1) on 3 WordPress powered websites,one is updated to 2.5 the other is still 2.3.3(come on it’s only been a few days!) the other is my testing plugins wordpress install.

And since I am not an API level developer/coder my conclusions are as such:

You might have to rework the theme you use.
You may not have set up your PayPal website payments preferences properly.
Your theme may not have wp header();
Or wp_footer(); in the right places.

In the sites I have this plugin I made the themes so I know exactly what’s going on in the header,footer and in the index.php content divs and the sidebar.While this may give me an unfair advantage over users who are using a free theme they installed 2 years ago,I think any properly coded theme can use this plugin.

The activated plugin injects stuff into your footer.php.
Upon activation, view source and you will see loads of strange html in the footer along with all the strange html you put there.

**Note: this is out of date! you don’t have to do this anymore**

You’ve got to FTP into your wp-content/plugins folder and open up the ecommerce plugin file “sharethis.php” go to line 10 and change true to false,i.e:
@define(‘wpsc_akst_ADDTOFOOTER’, false);
// set this to false if you do not want to automatically add the Share This form to the page in your footer

If you don’t have ftp you can use the file manager in the wordpress admin to get to the file but good luck finding the path and if the permissions aren’t at least 755 or even 777,you can’t edit it this way, anyway.Get Filezilla
it’s free and so easy to use…

I hated this injecting html aspect of the plugin and nearly didn’t use it because of it.Luckily you can take it out.
If you are on IIS switch hosts.
Seriously.
I really don’t get why so many folks have so many problems with this plugin!
For trishamcbridedance.com it worked right out of the box,so to speak. There’s nothing that special about the hosting we both use (PowWeb) except the people behind it do seem to care that things are adjustable for their users.Hardly anything is off limits to a PowWeb user,from a direct .htaccess editor to php.ini.
New accounts are out of luck tonight,though as they are doing things to the mySQL servers and all attempts to access these websites tonight are met with an error establishing database connection message.
But since I am an old and gray customer of 2 years I seem to be on the mySQL server not being messed with.And so I can write this lovely and informative post.

I’m very happy with both carts.Trisha’s website is selling something that people want and so she has made sales.The other website is selling books and as we all know it takes a genius to sell a book.I may not be a genius but I make up for what I lack in sheer persistence.You will buy a book from stonestreetpress.com one day.They are very beautiful and unique. If you ever want to know a little about Irish history or food or some of it’s prominent figures in history,these are the books for you.Or if you just want to own something beautiful to look at,too.
And not all the books are about Irish stuff,either.There’s a funny one about snoring and also one about Christmas,1935 in Germany.And we all know what was going on back then,or we ought to know,anyway.
Support a local artist! Support an Irish artist! Support an artist! Support poetry!
Then you may return to watching America’s Next Top Model knowing you have exposed yourself to a little culture,ha ha.

Awright sales pitch over.
I do what I can.