Brian A. Thomas .com » WordPress

Site Upgraded

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:48:04 +0000

Well, I finally upgraded the site. I have to say I like where WordPress is going with things. I don’t think there are too many changes so far as you the reader goes, but there are lots of changes to the admin areas. If you are running a blog, then I suggest WordPress without reservation.

New Theme

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:01:48 +0000

As you may have noticed, I am using a new theme. I really dig the theme. It gives lots of cool options on the front that I seemed to be missing in other themes…
You will notice the featured stories. These are not the newest stories all the time, but just posts I figured were worthy of that space.
There are a lot more ad spaces in this theme. Remember, those are here to help me pay the hosting costs, so please follow them. Same thing with the Amazon links. If you want to buy something from Amazon, click one of the Amazon links first, then find your item and buy it.
~~There is a bug in the comments, but it isn’t from the theme itself~~fixed. I hope to have that issue fixed this weekend.

Probably Going Silent Soon

Brian A. Thomas — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:09:57 +0000

We likely will loose our Internet connection for a while until we can get caught up on all our other bills. So I probably won’t be able to make any posts for a while or approve comments (or watch for ones that got marked as Spam on accident). I should still be able to check my email once in a while at work.

If Your Comment Wasn’t Approved

Brian A. Thomas — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:27:21 +0000

I use Akismet to block comment spam. For one of the very few times in the last few years of using it, I looked through the comments it caught and I found 3 comments out of 60 or so that weren’t spam.
After a bit of searching on Akismet false positives I am now convinced that a ton of messages may have been marked as spam that were in fact not. My deepest appologies and while I can not recover those lost messages, I will try to change to Spam Karma or something like that.
(Also, if we loose our Internet connection again soon, which is likely, it may be a while before the comments are approved, I’ll try to post that when the site goes down…)
EDIT 1: Now using Spam Karma to do help with the moderating… only a couple hours and already 50 some spams… would hate to see what a blog with higher popularity would have to put up with.
EDIT 2: I am now considering switching from WordPres to Drupal… but will probably wait until Drupal 7 is out before making that choice… and it has little to do with the Spam since that would be an equal problem with both platforms.
EDIT 3: With all the real comments I have had since I turned off Akistmit, I am now sure it was giving TONS of false positives.

Odd Comment Error With WordPress 2.5.1

Brian A. Thomas — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:08:40 +0000

I just noticed an error with WordPress 2.5.1, which I recently upgraded to.
It says I have 4 comments waiting for approval, but when I go to the screen to approve them it says there are “No comments awaiting moderation… yet.”

I have searched Google, I found one suggestion to make sure the comment_date_gmt field is in the wp_comments table, which it is. I turned off Brian’s Threaded Comments to see if it was a conflict with that, no luck, so it isn’t that plugin, which aside from Akismet, is the only comment related plugin I use (I turned that off as well, and no luck either).
I have now tried plugins and problems with the database structure, but no closer to a fix. Anyhow, if you leave a comment, it may be stuck in the que until a fix is found.
EDIT: Forgot to add, it shows there are no comments found if I look in the “All Comments” and the “Approved Comments” sections of the Comments tab as well. Yet, if I check a post with comments, they are there.
EDIT 2: Obviously until there is a solution, I won’t see any comments at all, so if somebody has a solution the result will have to be emailed to r underscore flagg 10 at hotmail.
EDIT 3: The problem is there even with IE, so not a Firefox bug…
EDIT 4: Fixed.
For those having the same issue. First backup your database. Then logon to your cPanel, get to the phpmyadmin screen. Check the index option on the comment_date_gmt field in the wp_comments table.

Odd Firefox 3 Bug on This Site

Brian A. Thomas — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:46:38 +0000

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.

Intense Debate Off for the Moment

Brian A. Thomas — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:00:57 +0000

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.

Intense Debate

Brian A. Thomas — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:08:58 +0000

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.

Fixing GStyles

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:41:17 +0000

I am working on fixing the theme I am using, GStyles (available here) and trying to make it work with WordPress 2.3.
So far I have fixed index.php and singles.php.
Here is an original code snippet from singles.php (sorry, the code runs over the edge, the theme is fixed width so it runs over... I might make this column flexible in due time, one thing at a time... or see if there is a "word wrap" feature in the program highlighter)...it should be the same in index.php:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

Category: the_category(', ') ?> | edit_post_link('Edit','','|'); ?> comments_popup_link('Leave a Comment', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?>
Tags: if ( (function_exists('UTW_ShowTagsForCurrentPost')) ) { ?>

UTW_ShowTagsForCurrentPost("commalist") ?>>}?>

This was fixed in my new version to look like this:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

Category: the_category(', ') ?> | edit_post_link('Edit','','|'); ?> comments_popup_link('Leave a Comment', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?>

 if(function_exists('the_tags')) {$my_tags = get_the_tags();if ( $my_tags != "" ){ the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); } else {echo "Tags: None";} }?> 

if(function_exists('UTW_ShowTagsForCurrentPost')) { echo 'Tags: ';UTW_ShowTagsForCurrentPost("commalist");echo '
'; } ?>

That should allow it to fall back to UTW if somebody is still using an older version of WordPress. However, I don't have an old install to test it on, but near as I can tell it should be good.
I am now working on fixing the functions.php and finding a fix for the post2cat problems in it.
The problem with GStyles in WordPress 2.3 as it stands now also comes from the following in singles.php:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

if ( is_single() or is_page() ) {
if( function_exists('cattag_related_posts') ) {
$relatedposts = cattag_related_posts();
if ($relatedposts === false) {
// echo '
No related posts
';
} else {
echo '
Related posts:
';

}

}

}

?>

The fix is simple enough for now, just take that bit out. It kills the Related Posts function, but cattag_related_posts needs the post2cat. Now that is the part that may be past my programming experiences so far... then again, I did figure out how to get the rest working.

Tag Suggest Thing

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:25:44 +0000

With WordPress 2.3 doing away with Ultimate Tag Warrior and having tags built in, it lost the ability to do suggest tags for you. Christine From The Internet, the author of UTW, now presents Tag Suggest Thing, which brings the tag suggestions back to WordPress 2.3.

Brian A. Thomas .com » WordPress

Site Upgraded

New Theme

Probably Going Silent Soon

If Your Comment Wasn’t Approved

Odd Comment Error With WordPress 2.5.1

Odd Firefox 3 Bug on This Site

Intense Debate Off for the Moment

Intense Debate

Fixing GStyles

Related posts:

Tag Suggest Thing