Random Musings of Brian A. Thomas. Love for Ari and Sidd.
Site News
Trying to Block Some Posts from the Front Page
Jul 13th
Calling all WordPress Gurus.
I am trying to block posts from a category from showing up on the front page. I tracked the category number down and put this code at the end of my functions.php file, but they are still showing up.
PHP:
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// remove from home page
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function exclude_category($query) {
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if ( $query->is_home ) {
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$query->set(‘cat’, ‘-11');
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}
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return $query;
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}
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add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘exclude_category’);
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// remove from home page
Am I supposed to put a call to this in my Index.php? Or am I missing something? Did they change how this works with WP 3?
Family History Page Backup
Jul 8th
It has been down for a couple years, but now the Brian A. Thomas Family History page is back up.
Information on the Drake family, Jolley Family, Sollers Family and of course the Thomas Family among others. 919 people from 1620 on.
I guess not PHPGedView
Jul 8th
Since I used it before I thought I would return to it, but when I go to access the page it takes me to one of the WordPress pages... this may be a WordPress issue, I'll know for sure when I try the other one.
Site is back and updating again
Jul 5th
I am back to updating this site again as one could perhaps tell.
Zoo Updates All Day Long
Jun 6th
If you were checking the site all day today you would notice that we kept updating with what was going on with our Zoo trip today. On the top right corner is my Twitter feed... though I am having troubles formatting it correctly.
Pages Gone
May 22nd
Either I deleted them, which I don't recall, or they got deleted somehow. I'll have to look over old tables to make sure...
Hacked
Sep 22nd
We were recently hacked. I am trying to mitigate damage as I write this. Hopefully I'll have Internet access back at home real soon so I can properly fix everything.
Odd Firefox 3 Bug on This Site
Jul 6th
If you are using Firefox 3, such as we are, some parts of this site are may not rendering properly. None of the videos are showing up. They show up with Internet Explorer or if you use IE Tab on Firefox. Hopefully a fix will be found... Not sure if it is a WordPress issue or a Firefox issue, or a plugin issue yet.
Individual Posts Not Showing Up
May 26th
Not sure what the problem is yet, but if you click on an individual post title, or the More link, it doesn't work. Even on ones I knew to be working not too long ago. For some reason, I am getting a 404 error when WordPress tries to go to an individual post.
The Permalink structure is correct in the options, so not sure what is going on...
EDIT: Fixed.
Site Back Up
Mar 7th
Thanks to the wonderful people at my host, A Small Orange, we are back online after a few sketchy days.
A reminder, the site will be down for a little soon as I upgrade to the new version of WordPress once it comes out. It should be out the 10th, though I may wait until that weekend.
Theme Change and Update Coming
Mar 1st
I changed themes again (a few times today actually as I tested various ones out).
I'll probably update WordPress itself here real soon. I spent this morning updating the themes and plugins to make sure they are up to date, though I may wait until 2.5 comes out in a few days.
The host seems to be having issues, so if this site doesn't show up, or a post doesn't on a try, try again and it usually will load. This was happening with all themes I tried today... of course if it isn't loading then you may not be seeing this post in the first place. 
Now 33rd in Google for Nelson, New Zealand Blog Searches
Jan 7th
EDIT: As I jumped from 33rd to 1st, this isn't a Nelson, New Zealand Blog... at least yet. 
So if you are searching Google or whatever, ignore this entry... hopefully you see this show up before you follow the link. Original post below:
I am presently the 33rd Google result of looking for: Nelson, New Zealand Blog.
I was actually looking for another blog I saw before and ran across mine... actually an entry from just yesterday.
I was amused... go about your normal business, there is nothing to see here.
Still trying to find that one to my entry on the Pros of Nelson, New Zealand...
Blockquotes Fixed
Jan 4th
I finally fixed the overly light text on block quotes, so they should be easier to read now. Sorry for the overly long delay on that one.
Intense Debate Off for the Moment
Dec 29th
I turned off Intense Debate for the moment.
It will return.
Meanwhile, in unrelated news, it seems over half the Internet isn't available to us at the moment. Road Runner must be having big DNS issues. I can guarantee if I called about it they would say they weren't having any issues.
Site’s Text
Oct 14th
The text for this website seems to be funky. For some reason the white background is missing, I am working on it.
EDIT: As you may be able to tell, it is fixed now. Seems WordPress doesn't like iframes, which is what the default XBox Live gamer tag used to display itself... Thankfully there was a way around that issue.
New Look
Oct 11th
I decided to use a new theme for a while at least. I'll get some of the things back on in a bit. This theme is GStyles by milo, check out his other themes.
I know about the error on individual post pages. I am tracking that error down now...
EDIT: I did some editing of some of the PHP files and fixed the post2cat errors, though it is just a temporary fix. I need to dive further into some of the other files to find out how to fix the error at the root, though that may be above my PHP editing level...
EDIT 2: I got tags working on most of the posts with yet more editing of the PHP files. For some reason, the posts of the last few days are not showing tags, and to be honest, I didn't tag them, but the other posts seem to have converted their categories to tags, and when I tried again, it says there are none to convert. I also want to drop the General category from the tags, but I am off to bed now.
Tag Cloud On Sidebar Gone
May 8th
I got rid of the Tag Cloud on the sidebar to the right. It is still available on the Tag Cloud page and I may bring it back. For right now I put categories back on the sidebar.
Context Links
Apr 25th
If you see something with a double underline, that is a context link, and not a link I manually generated. Context links are generated by Amazon to help provide revenue to pay for the expense of running this site. I'll see how well they work out to see if we keep the context links or not. If they prove to be too much, I'll get rid of them.
Sorry About the Downtime
Apr 22nd
Sorry if you tried to access the site from last night to this morning. Last night the host had a server problem so it was down for a while then. This morning I am upgrading to the newest version of WordPress, the Tarski theme, and a few plugins. The main WordPress upgrade happened already, but the site may have a few things down for the next few hours off and on as I bring them back to the way I had them before but with the new version of everything.
EDIT: Everything should be done now.
Explore Loch Modan
Explore Dun Morogh
Explore Westfall
Explore Elwynn Forest
Ragefire Chasm
Wishlist.
Mystique theme by
Intense Debate
Nov 11th
Posted by Brian A. Thomas in Site News
No comments
Okay, so I have been playing with Intense Debate (ID) for today. Most of the problems I have run into are either problems with compatibility with my theme, or other plugins.
For example, my theme used to put a little gif on the sidebars for list items, however, I had to turn that off for now as when I put up Recent Comments on ID, it had that gif at a bad spot on all of them. So for now, until I figure out how to override the theme's default on just that small section, this is calling for CSS above my norm, it seems all I need to do is set the script that adds the recent comments inside a div tag and id it with something, then in the theme's CSS override the li placement of the gif, but none of the stuff I tried works yet, so for now the gif is gone, which honestly is okay, the thing looks fine. Odds are I'll have to make a separate CSS for it, then let the ID system know where that CSS file is, and have that override the gif placement. More trouble then I want to go through.
Another problem is that it doesn't work yet with the code highlighter plugin I use...or the plugin doesn't work with the ID... time will tell on this one, I contacted both ID and the author of the plugin to see where the problem may lie. I suspect the problem may be on IDs end, and that they'll just have to add a code highlighter themselves. This is fine since there was little code on any comments.
Importing old comments doesn't seem to work from my old WordPress posts to the new system. I would need it not only to import them, but to keep the names if possible, a sort of self validate process.
The only other problem is that trackbacks doesn't seem to show up.
Aside from those issues, and of those only the importer not working is of any size so far as I am concerned for the moment. It is a very good system and I recommend everyone upgrade to it. Of course we'll see how it handles Spam and if they use Askimet or something like that.