"Murphy was an optimist!"
WordPress 2.9 has arrived December 19, 2009 8:46 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Announcements, Blog, Of Interest, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , add a commentWordPress 2.9 includes built-in image editing and now videos can be embedded simply by putting the url of the video on its own line in the post with Oembed support and more. Update your WordPress blog soon.
[Source]
add a commentWibiya Toolbar Not Showing on Wordpress Blog November 20, 2009 11:47 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , 1 comment so farIf you are trying to use the Wibiya Toolbar on your Wordpress blog, but it will not appear, try editing the Wibiya plugin and changing the code from:
add_action(‘get_footer’, ‘filter_footer’);
to:
add_action(‘wp_footer’, ‘filter_footer’);
Cannot log into Wordpress from Google Chrome November 12, 2009 9:27 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Software, Technology, WordPress , 1 comment so farIf you go to your Wordpress blog’s login page in the Google Chrome browser, type your username and password, and get kicked back to the login screen without an error message, try opening a new tab and logging in from that tab. Seemed to work for me. I also cleared my cache but that did not seem to have an impact. The new tab fixed the problem for me.
1 comment so farWordPress 2.8.3 broken! Upgrade to 2.8.4 immediately! August 13, 2009 7:11 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Publishing, Security, Software, Technology, WordPress , add a commentIn case you missed it, WordPress 2.8.3 has a programming error which allows anyone to reset your administrative password and takeover your WordPress blog. With administrative access, the hacker could destroy your content, lock you out, and repurpose your website for wrong doing, spamming, pornography, slander, or whatever they want. Upgrade to WordPress 2.8.4 immediately! Learn more at darknet.org.uk.
This vulnerability could be prevented by securing the /wp-admin directory.
BlogSecurity has recommended before that the /wp-admin/* directory should be password protected or restricted to IP address. This would mitigate this problem. See our advisory here for details. [Source, BlogSecurity, WordPress <= 2.8.3 Reset Admin Password Vulnerability]
See details of the exploit at milw0rm.
add a commentWordPress 2.8.3 upgrade bizarreness August 11, 2009 8:14 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Software, Technology, WordPress , 2commentsI decided to take some time to make sure that all of our blogs and websites relying on WordPress were brought up to version 2.8.3. Everything seemed to be going well until we started testing Cathy’s blog Domestic Psychology. She can post but cannot add tags. Categories work find but clicking in the "Add new tag" tag box acts like it is disabled. She can type words in the box but the Add button does not function. Tags do not get saved to the post.
So I jump over to Reality Me to see if it exhibits the same behavior. On Reality Me, I can create a post with tags with no problem. But on the dashboard under Incoming Links, Plugins, and WordPress Development Blog, I get a fatal error:
Fatal error: Please call SimplePie_Cache::create() instead of the constructor in /home/www/htdocs/realityme_net/wp-includes/class-feed.php on line 13
I have not tested the other blogs and sites yet. For both Reality Me and Domestic Psychology, I went back and deleted almost all files with the exception of the wp-content directory, the robots.txt, and the .htaccess. I rebuilt the WordPress installation and yes cache directories were removed. WP-Cache is not used. I also repaired and optimized all database tables. Active plugins on Reality Me: Audio Player, Seesmic, ShareThis, SimpleLife, Spam Karma 2, Subscribe to Comments, WordPress.com Stats, and WordPress XHTML Validator. Active plugins on Domestic Psychology: Audio player, Get Recent Comments, Lifestream, ShareThis, Spam Karma 2, Subscribe to Comments, and WordPress.com Stats.
In typing this, I realize that the SimpleLife plugin uses SimplePie and is likely to be the root cause for the Reality Me problem.
Update: Deactivating SimpleLife fixed the Reality Me problem.
Update: Disabling all plugins on Domestic Psychology did not change the fact that Post Tags could not be added to to the post.
Update: I’ve narrowed it down to Cathy’s theme. None of the active plugins on Domesticp Psychology are causing the problem. She is using a Woo theme called irresistible. Disabling this theme fixes lets her use tags with posts again. Time to see if Woo Themes has posted a fix. Yes. irrestible 2.0.0 fixes the post tag problem.
2commentsShareThis WordPress Plugin Broken – Easy Fix! April 6, 2009 1:15 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of Interest, Philosophy, Politics, Programming, Software, Technology, WordPress , 1 comment so farI recently added a ShareThis link 
to each of my posts. I chose ShareThis.com because it seems to be very robust while leaving a relatively small footprint on the blog and appears relatively unintrusiveness and benign. Of course, some folks will be quick to point out that the tracking features and having the icon linked back to sharethis.com is very intrusive and anything but benign. In this instance, I don’t see it as that big a deal. One of the attractions to ShareThis.com was its WordPress plugin making setup as easy as going to the website to generate the widget code, then inserting that code in the settings box on the admin screen in your WordPress blog. But it didn’t work.
At ShareThis.com, a publisher generates a script that looks like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345&type=wordpress&embeds=true&post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!"></script>
After updating, the code will have a 2nd publisher id appended to the end. With two publisher ids, ShareThis will not register your site nor collect statistics.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345&type=wordpress&embeds=true&post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!&publisher=a1b2c3d4-ijkl-mnop-qrst-u4w2y10a2r4d"></script>
After reviewing the plugin code, I realized the way ShareThis generates the script must have changed overtime. Crowd Favorite wrote a great plug-in but it expects the publisher=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx to be at very end and if it does not find a publisher id at the end, it puts one there which is why you will end up with two publisher ids. To fix this, simply move the publisher id to the end of the script before pasting the code into the ShareThis settings box in the WordPress admin:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#type=wordpress&embeds=true&post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!&publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345"></script>
Note: In the settings box, the & will be converted to just & but the code correctly uses & with the post. Your code will still be xhtml compliant.
1 comment so farSpam Karma open source or die die die July 23, 2008 10:06 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Programming, Software, Technology, WordPress , add a commentIn case you missed the announcement, Dave who developed Spam Karma is no longer going to make changes or update the code. Instead he has released it as GPL v.2 and created a Google Code repository in hopes that some talented people will pickup where we he leaving off. I wonder if we Spam Karma users had actually donated money toward his efforts if he would have continued.
Spam Karma puts Akismet and other spam fighting tools to shame. I think in all the time I have been using Spam Karma, I have had only one false positive. I get false negatives on trackbacks but that is because it was only recently that I realized I could change the settings for how Spam Karma handles trackbacks so I’m still making adjustments.
I also found Dave’s comments on a WordPress replacement very interesting. Specifically he notes, "If you look at it, blog systems are over 10 year old now. Their UI have barely evolved since the first versions. … There is a bad need for a groundbreaking platform that would get rid of ten years of accumulated UI habits."
add a commentCutting a plugin loose – Goodbye WP-Project June 23, 2008 10:24 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Programming, Software, Technology, WordPress , 2commentsI liked the concept of WP-Project. It’s a Wordpress plugin which adds a tab in your dashboard for project management. It was inspired by Basecamp (collaboration piece for project management) and Harvest(er) (a timetracker). Conceptually we like to spend a lot of time in our dashboards so why not do our project management there too? I just didn’t find the plugin robust enough for my needs. And if it was robust enough, I’d be concerned that my database, which already has issues with Spam Karma eating its space, would fillup too quickly. (n.b. The database has a 100MB allocation.) For now, I’m going to try out Zoho’s project management.
2commentsWordPress Support on IRC is on Freenode June 23, 2008 4:44 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Communications, Programming, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , add a commentFor those looking, Wordpress.com support on IRC is on the Freenode servers at #wordpress.com while Wordpress.org support is on the Freenode servers at #wordpress. #wordpress.com is primarily Wordpress.com developers/employees and staff of Automattic while #wordpress is the open source community.
add a commentVideo Comments Now Allowed April 27, 2008 12:12 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Communications, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , 4commentsThanks to the power of Seesmic, you can now comment on any Reality Me post by simply using your webcam. Below the regular comment box, you will find a link "add a video comment"
If you have a Seesmic account, you can log in and post a video. I have also opened comments up for anonymous comments which means you don’t have to have a Seesmic account. Try it out! You will be prompted to allow the plug to use your webcam and nothing gets installed on your computer. I have heard that there may be a problem with the video commenting and WordPress 2.5.1 but I am sure that will be addressed rapidly.
Update: If you add Seesmic video comments to your blog, be sure to immediately add yourself to the wiki. It takes only seconds. I could have been within the first 100 but ended up being like 187 because I waited to look at the wiki.
4commentsImport from iWeb to Wordpress April 21, 2008 6:43 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Communications, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , 4commentsI helped Chris the Carpenter and Kari the Herbalist set up YurtTrash and The Lifted Lorax Show recently. They were using iWeb and importing to Wordpress did not look promising. Fortunately, they decided against importing so I ceased seeking out a solution or writing one myself. Melinda has asked about the solution for importing from iWeb to Wordpress. Luckily, Dan of MaciVerse wrote an excellent guide on March 8, 2008 How To: Import your iWeb Blog to Wordpress. Since MaciVerse is down right now, I am reproducing his entire post (minus pictures) for prosperity:
Update: Looks like MaciVerse is back up. I just caught caught it during Maciverse’s face lift.
4commentsPerformance Issues? April 9, 2008 6:40 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Software, Technology, WordPress , add a commentIf there is one thing that Reality Me shouldn’t have is performance issues. I was told that today it saw 500 errors. Not as in the quantity five hundred but as in the server was having a problem. Reality Me is on a shared host which means that the one computer servers out web pages for many different people. In other words, the same box might have a very popular website unrelated to any of my websites and the server could have performance issues because of stuff they are doing. Of course, it could be me. I could be demanding too much of the machine with an inefficient WordPress plugin.
In short, I need to do troubleshooting which could take a lot of effort. If you notice problems with Reality Me or Domestic Psychology, please email me or Twitter me and let me know about the issue or error message. I am also going to try out the WP-Cache plugin so I would be interested in hearing about any odd behaviors (or improvements) it created. Thank you!
add a commentWordPress 2.5 post by email broken April 8, 2008 7:04 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , 14commentsYesterday when Comcast was down for scheduled maintenance I tried to blog it by sending an email from my phone to Reality Me via a secret email that WordPress checks once an hour. I actually sent two posts via email and neither were ever seen on the blog. I just found both the posts with a "pending review" status. This seems to be a new behavior in WordPress 2.5 and not a feature that I like. There does not appear to be a setting that allows me to change this behavior. Perhaps it is my turn to write a plugin.
I think having the ability to post by email when I cannot otherwise reach the blog is a powerful feature. Having the post hidden from publication by slapping it into a pending review status makes posting by email a bit useless, at least for my purposes.
14commentsWordPress Convert March 13, 2008 12:14 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Cool Sites, Of Interest, Software, Technology, WordPress , 4commentsKari the Herbalist, of The Lifted Lorax Show fame, has moved from iweb to using WordPress! Head over to YurtTrash and check our her story and a very well designed blog.
As a reminder, my standard offer is that if you get yourself some inexpensive hosting, and want to setup a WordPress site, I will happily help you. If your site is personal, you can also find volunteers to help you install from install4free.
Thinking about hosting your own blog? November 24, 2007 10:01 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Blog, Publishing, Software, Technology, WordPress , 2commentsI am a huge advocate of getting your blog away from 3rd party solutions like blogger.com. If you have blogspot in your blog’s address then you need to consider getting some hosting and using a solution like Wordpress.org (note: wordpress.com is a 3rd party solution just like blogger.com and while I advocate every wordpress user having an account at wordpress.com for statistics and askimet key, you really need to use the open source software found at http://wordpress.org) Wordpress is not the only content management system out there which is great for blogging. You have a ton of choices! If you have trouble setting up a Wordpress blog, just contact me and I will help.
One negative in hosting your own blog is that you have to pay a host for server space. That is akin to renting a building to run your business. In the Internet business, like so many businesses, you get what you pay for. Free hosting will likely have problems but it is available. I have personally found 1&1 hosting to be very reliable with great customer service despite its low cost. I highly recommend 1&1!
The postive of paying for hosting is that you get full control over your content. If Blogger’s robots determined that your blog suddenly appeared like a spam blog, they could take you offline instantly and lock you out of your account. You could find yourself unable to access your posts and drafts. If Blogger suddenly went out of business or just quit, you’d be out of luck. Does this happen? Ask anyone that hosted their photos at Yahoo. Yahoo bought Flickr and did away with their photo hosting. Anyone that failed to move their photos by the deadline lost their pictures. All links to those pictures are now 404 pages. We personally came within minutes of failing to get our pictures moved. By paying for hosting, you get backups of your data, control of your site, and the ability to handle exceptions (like 404s) in a way that can benefit your audience rather than drive them away. Plus with your own domain name, you can virally market your blog by using the address in your emails. You can’t send an email from blogmaster@someblogname.blogspot.com but you can send an email from blogmaster@myowndomain.com and everyone who gets that email has the chance to say, "I wonder what myowndomain.com is?" Each email sent becomes a subtle advertisement for your site.
1&1 has a great deal right now! Since Uncle Danny is testing the limits of my webspace and monthly transfer volume, I thought I should review the limits on my account. When I did, I discovered that 1&1 is offering their Business shared hosting at only $5.82 per month! (normally $9.99) This is for the first year only with a 1 year commitment. It’s worth it! Their standard packages are still month-to-month (no contracts; no commitments) if I am not mistaken. They are $3.99, $4.99, $9.99, and $19.99 for shared hosting with increasing benefit respective to price.
Full disclosure: The 1&1 links in this post are associated with an affiliate id. If you purchase hosting from them by using one of those links I do get a payment but the affiliate link does not influence my decision to recommend 1&1. I genuinely like their service! This is also not pay-to-post. I just did this of my own inspiration.
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