Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with wordpress

How to add certain localization hooks to my WordPress theme?

deern the headlice — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:10:14 -0800

How do I add localization hooks to my WordPress theme when the string contains links? I'm new at localizing themes and so far tagging individual phrases with _e and printf__ has been easy. But in the footer of my theme is this sentence:

"Powered by WordPress and Themetastic"

I realize I could break that up into three different strings, but I'd rather do it all together. This pastebin example is the approximate code I'm shooting for, though obviously the get_link stuff isn't correct.

Any tips would be great!

Wordpress as a CMS?

BoldStepDesign — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:50:41 -0800

Where do I start to use Wordpress as a CMS? Plugins, designing for wordpress, etc...

Dealing with nested floats in CSS?

Wild_Eep — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:08:36 -0800

Care to help a CSS newbie with float-related positioning issues? I'm trying to add a form to my WordPress site via the FormBuilder plugin, but the form jumps below the two floated sidebars rather than directly after the post text. FWIW, I'm using the Cordobo Green Park theme.

I've got FireBug installed and I've been attempting to determine what indeed is going on, but this problem exceeds my meager CSS skills.

I'm pretty sure that the 'clear:both' property is in here when it shouldn't be, but the form elements are floated-left, and I haven't found the proper combination

When I emailed the author of the FormBuilder plugin, I received this response:

"I've been looking at your site, and it seems to be related to a lot of quirkiness with your template system. The clear tags seem to be interfering with the display of the sidebars and affecting the content.

I tried messing around a bit with the CSS in firebug but wasn't able to get it to look quite right.

I suspect it might work better if you were able to put the comments div inside the entry div. Not sure though, just a thought."

Please help me redirect visitors to my blog, from a subdomain to a subdirectory...

Scramblejam — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:48:57 -0800

I have a blog, which I did have available at blog.example.com. I have recently moved it to be a subdirectory of my main site www.example.com/blog. I am having some trouble with redirecting old links from the subdomain across the the new main site subdirectory, and I really need some help to get it working right. can someone help me craft a .htaccess file to handle the redirects?

blogging via iphone = win

almostmanda — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:59:15 -0800

I need an alternative to Gmail that does pop3 without SSL, and won't expire after so many days of inactivity. I'm trying to set up my wordpress install to do posts-by-email. To do this, I need to set up an email account that only myself and my co-blogger know about. Wordpress allows support for this and will access a POP3 account for you and post contents, but it doesn't currently support SSL, so a new gmail account is a no-go.

Any suggestions for a webmail provider that will do POP3 without SSL, will stay up reliably, and won't expire if we don't log in for such an amount of time? (I guess expiration after a couple of years would be OK, but Fastmail's 45 days is a little short). Things like ads and interface don't really matter since we ideally won't be checking it, but the provider can't be selling the address to spammers or sending us service updates either.

There's some workarounds with old wordpress plugins, but I'd like to not have to worry about getting them to work and updating them. Also, I'm not really interested in setting up my own email server or using my ISP.

Internal links plugin for Wordpress

backwards guitar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:22:44 -0800

I'm looking for an internal links plugin for Wordpress. I'm using Wordpress as a CMS, and one of the editors wants an easy way to link to site pages from the TinyMCE editor. I'd assume this has already been done, but the only plugin I can find that looks like it might work (RB Internal Links), doesn't seem to work in 2.7. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

How I am picturing such a plugin working is the editor clicks the LINK icon in TinyMCE, and they have a dropdown of all the site's pages (showing the page hierarchy if possible).

WordPress 2.7 and Angsuman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin

sindark — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:10:15 -0800

On one of my WordPress hosted blogs, I previously used Angsuman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin to restrict access to registered users. After upgrading to WordPress 2.7, the plugin doesn't work anymore. It won't let anybody log in, trapping people in a constant loop of entering (correct) passwords and being returned to the login screen. Does anybody know:

(a) how to alter the plugin so it works with 2.7. I don't want to shell out US$30 for 'Authenticator Plugin Pro' when only about ten people access the site in question.

(b) of another plugin that does the same thing - blocks off a WordPress site to everyone other than registered users with passwords.

Many thanks.

Dear Log...

dreamphone — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:36:36 -0800

Journal replacement (Wordpress?) – seeking blog software that will allow me to designate categories of users with permissions to view content. I’m looking for a replacement of my pen-and-paper journal, and am considering using a blog format because I’d like to be able to categorize each entry so that I can create “custom readings lists” (for lack of a better description) – for example, I’d like to share certain parts of the journal with certain people without allowing them access to the whole thing. For example, with a few keystrokes, I’d like to perform a quick ordering of all entries appropriate for my 10-year-old.

I’m not sure what blogging software to use, because every web search I perform using words like “category,” “access,” “permissions,” etc., brings up technical details unrelated to my question.

Basically, I would like the software to be able to do the following:
- Allow me to categorize each entry as either personal, family, or friends. The Family and Friends categories would each be automatically a “child” group of Personal. However, “Family” and “Friends” are not mutually exlcusive categories, so some entries will be Family-only, some Friends-only, some both.
- If someone is a Family member, I’d like them to be able to click on the Family category, and see ONLY Family entries. The idea is to avoid having children or relatives reading Personal entries.
- I’d like the Friends entries, and some (but not all) of the Family entries to be viewable online. The rest I don’t want to be “published” at all.

Also, one final consideration: I’m not sure if simply putting something in a category is enough “security.” Since this is a personal journal and I don’t plan on putting any but the most public posts online, I’m not too concerned about passwords/permissions and all that, but I want to be sure that if I order posts under “Family,” that a child could read through the posts uninterrupted without being bounced back to the master list of all entries.

I have downloaded and installed Wordpress and the Advanced Category Excluder plug-in, which appears to have the ability to “hide” certain categories so that they don’t appear on my home page. (This would appear to address the issue of publishing only “Friends” entries online; I would basically use the plug-in to hide all other categories.) I’m not sure if the plug-in has more nuanced functionality, such as being able to publish some entries and not others (i.e., some Family entries). (Although I suppose if I wanted to do that, I could categorize them as *both* Family and Friends, right?)

Although I know little about the available software, I’m a quick study, and have no problem playing around with software to understand it better. If Wordpress, or a plug-in, or the ACE plug-in, has this functionality, great – just want to find out from those who know before I spend a lot of time with software that may not offer a means to my end. Thanks to all willing to advise.

URL repeating, repeating URL

lilkeith07 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:48:20 -0800

Why is the url on my blog showing up twice in the address bar? I have a wordpress blog hosted on my own domain as "www.domain.com/blog."
When you enter that url it will load and then the url in the address bar will change to "http://domain.com/blog#http://www.domain.com/blog"

It does this for sub pages of the blog to, for example,

http://www.domain.com/blog/?p=123#http://www.domain.com/blog/?p=123

So my question is why is the url repeating itself in the address bar? I checked the wordpress settings and I don't see any way to set it this way. The other pages not on my blog don't do this domain.com/contact.html just stays the same.

Thanks and I hope this isn't to confusing.

Blogger to Wordpress, side order of Flickr

Pater Aletheias — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:56:42 -0800

Blogger to Wordpress conversion: I've imported all my old Blogger posts reasonably successfully, but I've got this extraneous html stuff on most of my posts. Is there a way to edit it out of every post at once? The problem comes from the posts that display a Flickr image, which is most of them--around 400. Before every picture there is this bit of code for all to see:

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

I don't really know anything about coding, but I'm assuming this this was meaningful in the Blogger template, and unneeded in Wordpress. At any rate, Wordpress isn't doing anything with it. I've manually deleted it out of twenty posts or so with no noticeable problems. But I'd rather not do that step by step another 380 times.

Is there some magical step that will clean up all the affected posts simultaneously?

Help me fix my new blog.

Ironmouth — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:14:37 -0800

I just started a new blog on wordpress, which I've never used before. I want to make a totally minimalist blog, but I can't seem to get some things off the page. Wordpress seems counter-intuitive to me. The methods for changing the appearance of the blog are scattered amongst multiple menus and I can't seem to find a way to get some links off the page. At the bottom of my blog, there are three huge link areas, archives, categories and meta. I'd like these links removed. I don't want categories and would like to remove these links if possible.

Although I'm terrible at HTML, I found a few things which seemed to help with the issue, but I'm using a publically hosted blog and can't seem to find a place where I can even work with the html script.

Is there anything I can do?

What are best practices for changing the directory of a Wordpress blog?

tweebiscuit — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:06:13 -0800

I want to move my Wordpress blog from a subdirectory on my domain to the root directory -- i.e., I want the URL of my posts to be changed from http://www.domain.com/blog/post-permalink to http://www.domain.com/permalink . What's the best way to ensure that external links don't die? Is there a way to make sure that individual posts will retain their Google PageRank? I know that some variation on a RewriteRule in the site's .htaccess file is what I'm looking for, but I'm unclear on the specifics. What are best practices for this sort of transition?

seeking wordpress 'popular posts' plugin

bingo — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:53:16 -0800

Where can I find a plug-n-play wordpress plugin that displays (to readers) which posts have received the most pageviews? You would think this would be simple to find, on some plugin directory or Google search, but I have not had any luck. The plugins that I find turn out to display popularity by comments (not pageviews), or they're so old that they were not made to be sidebar widgets, or some other problem.

I just want something in the sidebar that basically says, hey, here are the five (or whatever) posts on this blog that have been viewed more than any other posts on this blog.

Make my urls purty!

drjimmy11 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:01:08 -0800

What's the best way for me to create human-readable urls for a Wordpress site? So I've taken a job converting a very static site to one that will use Wordpress as a CMS. A couple of key points up front:

1) We are 100% committed to using Wordpress. Thanks for respecting this.
2) I will NOT be making use of any wordpress theme or allowing users to go to any Wordpress pages at all. We are using it as a CMS on the backend, and on the frontend I will write custom php pages and queries to display what i want to display.

The site as it stands now has 1000s of articles in totally flat html pages. We want to get away from that for obvious reasons. My inclination is to create one page to use over and over again, so where the old url would've been like:

www.thesite.net/article_name.html

the new url would look like:

www.thesite.net/article.php?id=124

two issues with this:
1) the site is quite popular, so a lot of people have probably bookmarked old articles and I dont want those links to die when we remove all the flat html pages.

2) I would prefer people to see human-readable urls rather than ugly querystrings.

My first instinct would be to create a big redirect file (301), sending every old article url to the new format. This addresses point one but not point two, since after the redirect the user would still see the ugly url, right? (if not, please enlighten me!)

My other thought is to use the "ugly" article.php as an include inside a wrapper, so create "article_name.php" which contains nothing but a variable for the article id and a copy of the include which takes in that variable. problems with this are a) we still clutter up our server with 1000s of files, and b) I have non-tech people messing with code and ftp, which i'd rather not.

So, what is the solution? How does mefi get those awesome clean urls like "http://ask.metafilter.com/107722/Batch-Adding-Text-File-Name-to-JPEG-Images"?

I'm guessing "107722" and "Batch-Adding-Text-File-Name-to-JPEG-Images" are some sort of aliases and not literal folders on the server. Is this something automated that is beyond the power of Wordpress? I hope not.

thanks!

uploading videos to wordpress

dearleader — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:36:42 -0800

Wordpress filter: I was trying to upload a video for display on a wordpress blog directly from my hard driver (as opposed to via youtube). Doesn't seem to be working. Anyone know any tricks? And as it happens, I tried uploading the video to youtube, but got a more low-res version than I'd like — any tips there?

Wordpress banhammer?

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:50:14 -0800

Anybody with a Wordpress blog have any suggestions for how to ban users? I don't allow commenting anywhere, but I do have a bulletin board that i would like to prevent from becoming a cesspool. I have a captcha requirement for registration, which should catch most spam bots (naive?) so I'm mostly interested in being able to wield the banhammer on the occasional individual asshat. I've got the WP-Ban plugin installed, which seems straightforward enough, but I have no idea how to associate an IP with a user in order to bring down the hammer. What am I missing?

Why can't I hide from Google?

hamster — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:24:03 -0800

Help me hide my blog from the Googlebots. I blogged professionally from 2002-2007, when the project ended. I decided to start a personal Wordpress blog, and linked to the new blog from the old site before it was taken down.

Unfortunately, because of the link to the old site, the personal blog is now the first Google result when you search under my name. The new blog doesn't use my name or identifying details, but the Googlebots must know it's connected to my name anyway.

I'm starting a new job soon and expect that clients will search for me by name, so the old blog has to go. I'd like to continue blogging for the sake of old fans who still read me, but it would need to be "secret" and not associated with my name in any way.

I don't have email addresses for most of my readers, so I'd like to post the new blog on the old site... but will that just lead the bots to the new home? Can I do something like writing out the new site's address in a way that doesn't link and wouldn't search?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Whats the best platform and tips for a new band's website?

schindyguy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:22:48 -0800

I am trying to help out a band with a website. Whats the best platform and tips for a new band's website? It needs to combine youtube, flickr, twitter, myspace, facebook. I am trying to help a band out with their web development and marketing.

I think the site should contain:

blog
built in music player
picture section (maybe linked to a flickr account)
video section (linked to youtube maybe)
sometype of twitter integration
sometype of myspace and facebook integration
a way to purchase merchandise
a subscriber/fan database for email newsletters communications

I got some the above ideas from the jonasbrothers.com website, however the band that I am doing this for is a completely different genre of music (it is an alternative rock band). The members are completely into talking to fans via their website, but I want to make it easy enough for them to just post in one place and have it update to all these social media sites. (ie if they post a picture, it will put it on their myspace, facebook, flickr and main website). I am thinking that there has got to be an out of the box solution that I am not aware of.

My gut says the major decision I am going to have is which CMS to use (I am leaning towards wordpress). I am very interested in knowing what the hives suggestion would be for me. I know they have a small budget to work with so maybe any custom programming could be done by some freelances. Thanks for the hives time...

Experiences with Disqus or IntenseDebate on Wordpress?

daboo — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:08:56 -0800

I'm interested in using one of these social commenting systems on my blog, but I'm unsure about their integration into wordpress, and the general future of either. Disqus is on Tumblr, but Automattic acquired IntenseDebate. Do you use either (either as a blogger or commenter)? What are your thoughts? I finally looked into Disqus after seeing it on Tumblr blogs for a while now, and its an interesting idea. There is another similar system called IntenseDebate that I've seen on a few Wordpress blogs now, and does pretty much the same thing.

On the blogging side of things, I'm a little worried about moving my comments offsite, but apparently Disqus syncs their comments with my database, so I won't lose any if I stop using them (I think). I haven't seen if IntenseDebate does the same, but because of the Automattic acquisition, I would imagine it is coming soon if not there already.

On the commenting side, it sucks that there are two competing systems out there. Prior to today, I hadn't signed up for either, and had just left 'unclaimed comments'. But I would imagine someone who uses one comment system often would be unhappy about having to use the other. Maybe I'm wrong?

I'm really just looking for thoughts and experiences concerning either of these social commenting systems. Thanks

Is there a Wordpress plugin which will hide sidebar widgets based on geolocation?

friedbeef — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:12:31 -0800

Is there a Wordpress plugin which will hide sidebar widgets based on geolocation? I have a Wordpress blog which has readers from the US as well as Malaysia. If I put a widget on my sidebar with promos from Malaysia, it would be irrelevant to my US readers, and vice versa.

Is there a plugin I can install which would let me hide selected widgets on my sidebar based on geolocation so my readers only see promos which are valid in their country?

A Tool To Convert HTML to something importable into WordPress?

eustacescrubb — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:16:46 -0800

Need a tool to help me convert html files to something I can import into WordPress. I am converting a client's site to be run by WordPress. She has hundreds of articles, blog entries, and podcasts that have to be imported. But the site was manually managed and updated, so there is no current database. Am I looking at hours and hours of soul-crushing tedium? Or is there a handy tool that can parse through the pages, grab the content, and convert it to a WordPress-friendly import file?

I'm on a Mac, and have BBEdit; using Find/Replace hasn't proved helpful, because each page is slightly different.

How do I migrate from b2evolution to Wordpress?

Nixie Pixel — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:13:12 -0800

I am a new blogger using b2evolution who is considering a switch to Wordpress. I would like to back up & restore the whole blog. What exact steps do I need to take (on both the blog & database side) to accomplish this? Unfortunately, I am brand new to blogging, hosting, PHP, SQL...I am a real noob. I wanted to start my own blog so I registered a domain (www.nixiepixel.com), found a webhost (HostGator), and purchased a hosting package. With my hosting package came Fantastico, an application that enabled me to easily set up various programs through a few clicks of my mouse button.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew (at least until I become better educated!). I have had some problems setting up my b2evolution blog and getting it formatted the way I would like it to be. After days of pulling my hair out I read up on Wordpress and am seriously considering a switch.

I have found a couple of sites that have instructions on how to migrate over to the new software, but they kind of leave me behind. These are not meant for newbies like me to understand. Here are my current problems:

Because a script was run to install b2evolution, a database & database user were created automatically, and I have no information on the user login and such. I can't access that info...or if I can I have no idea how to do so.

I don't know how to backup my b2evolution blog (either the database or web side) and wouldn't know how to restore it if I screw this up.

I am brand new to web hosting in general, and this process specifically. I will not want to use the Fantastico script to install Wordpress so I that I can control the installation process, all configuration involved, record the information I need for future administration, and pave the way for me to be able to actually upgrade the software without trying to run another Fantastico script to do so.

Can anyone help me learn what all the various steps are that will allow me to back up and migrate all of my current information, and perform a new installation of Wordpress with the intention of restoring that information?

I tried to learn at least part of this on my own because I needed to back up and restore my b2evolution installation, and the only information I could get from their support forum was very brief, such as "make a database backup." Being a brand new user, this information was helpful but ultimately confusing, and I haven't figured out how to do this yet.

So I do hope that someone is able to help clear up some of this for me, or at least point me to guides or tutorials that start from the very, very beginning. Such as defining basic terms and concepts, and from there specific steps I need to take to reach my goal of moving all my posts, comments, and information from b2evolution to Wordpress, and having a working, configured Wordpress installation (and database backend).

Thank you very much!

~Nix

Publish a post and then keep it open

Solomon — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:25:48 -0800

Wordpress: After I hit Publish, a new blog posting is created, and eventually is saved as a draft. How can I change this behaviour so that the post I've just created is published, but that the post I just published is open, instead of a new post? My methodology is this:
1] Create a new post. Because I use the WP Default Post Content plugin, certain parts of the post are already there.
2] Write the rest of the post.
3] Publish the post.

What happens then is that another new post is created, with the bits from the above plugin included. After 60 seconds, this is saved as a draft, because there is some content to the post (if there is no content, the post doesn't get saved as a draft). At the end of the month, I have 30 drafts, none of which will be used, which all contain exactly the same information. I do not want this to happen.

What I want is for the Publish button to publish the current post, while keeping it open and editable (instead of creating a new post). How can I achieve this?

Reinstalling Wordpress to Dump Spam Comments?

sjuhawk31 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:22:20 -0800

WordpressFilter: Haven't blogged in about three months, and am considering a return at the same URL, but don't want to inherit all my old spam comments. Would deleting the Wordpress installation at that address then re-installing it essentially reset the spam, allowing me to better control it this time? FWIW, I've been using Akismet, etc., to monitor and catch most spam but would like as clean a slate as possible.

WordPress noob totally frustrated trying to export from 1.5.1.3

librarina — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:20:17 -0800

Way old version of WordPress (1.5.1.3). I need to upgrade, obviously. I am considering switching hosts at the same time and so I am trying to figure out how to export the current blog so I can import it once upgraded at either current or new host. But I can't figure out how to export on 1.5.1.3 and I am so frustrated. Apologies in advance for length. I know just enough to get in trouble, as you will see, so I am trying to cover all my bases in terms of providing information.

My site is currently hosted on cornerhost.com; I access my database using phpMyAdmin (version 4.1.22-standard), and I have an installation of WordPress 1.5.1.3. Obviously this needs to be upgraded, badly. I am willing to stay with the same host but it is not simple for me to manage my WP databases and that is a large reason why I am considering switching. I have an account with dreamhost.com for another site, and am enamored of the ease of installing and updating software such as WordPress. So I am leaning towards moving to Dreamhost to avoid future such problems.

EXCEPT I want to move the blog, obviously, and the same problem exists whether I am just upgrading in place at my current host or moving to a new host: I can't figure out how to export the existing blog. I can export a SQL file (or CSV, Excel, LaTeX, etc) from phpMyAdmin. But new WordPress (where the Import feature is really easy to find!) wants a "WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) file." I know I have imported from a Movable Type blog, so import/export must exist in my current installation ... somewhere? But I simply cannot find it.

WordPress Codex doesn't have much documentation on 1.5.1.3, and I've tried searching Codex and Google and understanding the results, but I am so frustrated that I may well be overlooking some relevant information in search results etc.

So, does anyone have experience with old versions of WordPress? Can you help me export? Or perhaps guide me on importing a SQL or other type of export?