unexpected t_string in plugins/exec-php/includes/runtime.php

Ahh the old unexpected T_STRING error message.I’m familiar with causing this error, not fixing it.So I headed over to the Exec PHP plugin home page to sniff out some way of making it go away.
Keeping in mind that in one Page where I’d used the plugin to display a list of pages it worked just fine I read the terse explanation of why I might be getting this error:

If you experience a PHP error message like ‘Some error in /home/minime/htdocs/blog/wp-content
/plugins/exec-php/runtime.php(41) : eval()’d code on line 4′ then it’s time to repair your PHP code. If you are unsure where your code breaks, first run it in a separate file to punch out all bugs and afterwards copy the code into your article or widget. To reduce the noise in the comments section of the plugin homepage I will delete all entries refering to this topic.

Yikes.It’s totally my fault,then.So what did I do to cause the error? I used an apostrophe
in an array or string or whatever the kids like to call it.
I was using the wp list pages template tag I got from the WP Codex
[php]<ul>
<?php
wp_list_pages(‘include=5,9,23&title_li=<h2>’ . __(‘Poetry’) . ‘</h2>’ ); ?>
</ul>
[/php]
Except instead of (‘Poetry’) I’d written (‘Mens’) and the punctuation mark was what caused the error.

I re-worded the title and the error message went away and the code executed.
Oftentimes I’ve gotten errors for something as easy to fix as my last mistake.
The first assumption one might make is that it’s the plugin causing this error.But since it worked elsewhere I knew it couldn’t be the plugin’s fault.
So I deduced that it was code I’d altered (see above) — the other code I used I hadn’t altered.
I hope this helps someone else who gets the same error and hopefully it is as simple to mend.

I finally found a photogallery I like

lzenogo.png.
And someone created a plugin for it for WordPress so now all I have to do is load them up and sort my photos. If I like it and it doesn’t wreck my theme too much I will be very pleased.I’ve been looking and looking and hadn’t found anything I could tolerate.
It had to have an easy to integrate theme in css, not tables.
It had to be easy to use.
I didn’t want to use any flash or ajax or have to assign rel tags to every photo.
I was very demanding and lazy.
I wanted something right out of the box.
I am really tired of redoing tables based layouts in css and xhtml.
The reason I never bothered with Zen Photo before is that I associated it with Zen Cart.
Because ofthe name Zen.Isn’t that silly? As far as I can tell they aren’t related.
And while Zen Cart doesn’t take a genius to make look presentable it is beyond my patience to labor over something that large and unweildy just to have a gallery.I’d do it for a client but hell no, not for my own site.

Yahoo Shortcuts Plugin

I just saw a demo of how the Yahoo Shortcuts Plugin could super enhance WP blog posts.I may not use it myself because I personally hate tooltips,which was a big feature.However I do like the option to convert a link to a badge that would insert a map into the text,making it look like a page a newspaper or magazine which is a look I p[ersonally really go for.Then at the bottom of the write post editing field is the flickr option.You select the pictures set you want to show and voila all your flickr photos relating to that post are in nice neat thumbs at the bottom of your post.
Pretty sweet.

Bring the pain, the plugin pain.

I have a sweetie pie of a client who is very nice and everything but every little design change they ask for (and they ask for very many) and which I then implement has to be tweaked about 30,000 times before they are happy.

Completely understandable. It is their site. I just keep chanting this mantra in my head, keeps me from shooting myself in a vital organ.

Most of the time. Today the requested color was too bright.
I went in and began to do stuff. Ok we all know changing the color of the background of a div is not supposed to make a plugin disappear. I checked for missing ; or } nothing. No unclosed div no unclosed anything. Further messing led me to sidebar.php and back to the plugin page for help. I repeated installation steps 1 2 3. Still not there. I deactivated. I reactivated. Still not there. I cleared my cache. Still not there. I deleted the plugin and reuploaded it. I followed the steps all over again. Still not there.
This is the kind of thing that makes me unhappy.
Because whatdidIdo?! Back up your themes before you mess with them,sob.
And while I was re-validating the code I got a message saying that it had no less then 42 errors!
Continue reading Bring the pain, the plugin pain.