All 3 entries tagged Wordpress

Wordpress Mac Permissions Issues with Zend Server CE

If you have installed Zend Server CE on your computer to use as a development server, you may have ran into the issue of Automatic update not working on Wordpress. This is the function that usually updates your Wordpress plugins and Wordpress system or core files. Furthermore, another related problem that you will likely to have as a result of this is that you won't be able to have Wordpress edit your .htaccess to change the way your blog URLS look like.

The cause of this problem is that the Apache user used by Zend Server CE (User: daemon, Group: daemon) is not given enough permissions to be able to make changes to your files on your Mac. The solution to this should be simple, at least it worked for me right away.

The Solution:

• Open your Terminal application (Applications -> Utilities)
• Use the following commands in bold:
  

1. Navigate to your htdocs folder that was created by Zend Server CE using something like:
   cd /usr/local/zend/apache2/htdocs
2. Change the user of your blog folder which resides within the htdocs folder. In my case my blog folder is called blog, so I used this command:
   sudo chown -R daemon blog
3. Change the permissions of the folder using:
   sudo chmod -R g+w blog

• Now, try to update your Wordpress plugins or Wordpress system itself (core files), this should have solved your Wordpress Mac permission issues. In my case, I didn't restart and it worked. If it doesn't work rightaway on your development environment, try restarting your Mac.

Note: The solution above worked for me because I don't allow any network access to my development environment, if you for some reason need better security, you should probably check Zend Server's documentation to follow their suggestions with regard to how to make your development environment safer.

Hope these steps work for you!

: 21 Aug 2011 09:08 |  Tags: Ce Issues Lion Mac Osx Permissions Server Wordpress Zend |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thumbnails in Wordpress 2.9+ and 3.0+

Now that Wordpress added a thumbnail feature (2.9+), we longer need to assign custom fields and give them values each time we write a blog post. Insted, while writing a blog post, there is a small panel or block to the side that allows us to choose a thumbnail for the post.

However, for people like me, who have been using custom fields to show pictures for sometime, there is a decision to be made. Should we stick to the custom fields and just continuou using them or should we start using the core thumbnails featre instead?

Well, you don't really have to the choose one of these two, you will keep using them both. How you ask? Well, simply, stop using custom fields for any new posts you write and use the thumbnail feature to assign thumbnails to blog posts. Then, edit your templates and add some simple conditions so that Wordpress checks whenever a blog post is viewed if it has a custom field thumbnail or a core wordpress 2.9+ thumbnail. By doing this, your old blog posts thumbnails will still show and your new thumbnails, the one you assign using the new feature will also show.

Honestly, I was very worried about having to choose one of these two, and since I am not a programmer/developer/coder, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to figure this out. However, with some thinking and imagination and with the help of a number of great Wordpress articles I was able to use my thumbnails in my Blog homepage. Not only that, but using some of the new features related to thumbnails, I was actually able to set specific sizes for the different pages in my blog. For example, on my homepage, all posts thumbnails are 100px x 75px. However, when a visitor clicks on a certain blog post to view it, he is shown the same picture but in a different size, say 200px x75px. This is really nice and it's really simple to achieve.

As I said, I am not a programmer and I was able to figure this out with the help of the following resources. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to get similar results :). I would also like to thank each one of those blog authors:

• Bulletproof Post Thumbnails in WordPress 2.9
• WordPress 2.9 : Display post image with backward compatibility
• Using The New Post Thumbnail Feature In WordPress 2.9
• The Ultimative Guide For the_post_thumbnail In WordPress 2.9
• New in WordPress 2.9: Post Thumbnail Images
• Everything you need to know about WordPress 2.9′s post image feature

If anyone (not good with coding as I am) wants to look at the code I have used in my template pages to show the thumbnails, I would be happy to share.

If you want to check what I was talking about, you can visit my Arabic Research Blog. Don't ming the language, but make note of the thumbnails then follow some of them to the post view page to see if the thumbnail's dimension will change or not. Please note that because some of the thumbnails are actually cropped, they might not show in a bigger size if you follow them to the post.

: 07 Dec 2010 01:59 |  Tags: Blog Custom Fields Images Post Thumbnails Thumbs Wordpress |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Wordpress Link Library plugin

Writing about web page http://yannickcorner.nayanna.biz/wordpress-plugins/link-library/

Wordpress Link Library plugin is one of the most useful plugins I have used for Wordpress. Not only it allows you to show your links along with their categories in a nice way that can be easily formatted, it also allows your Wordpress blog visitors to suggest new links, this was very helpful on one of my websites as I needed a way to allow others to do this.

Other features include: the ability to set an RSS icon for each link and show/hide links descritions. ofcourse, there are many more!

I have been using Wordpress Link Library plugin for quite some time on my Arabic Research Blog, in the Research Links Library and Link Library Wordpress plugin have proven to be a very useful and stable plugin.

Lastly, the Link Library plugin's developer Yannick, is also very useful and helpful when it comes to answering any questions related to any of the Wordpress plugins that he developed, and his blog is the biggest indicator of his will to help others. Thanks Yannick!

To view some examples of how this plugin can be used, visit the Link Library plugin and look under examples or configuration.

Lastly, if you find this plugin very helpful (like I did), please don't hesitate to donate, as this will help keep the project going and help Yannick with any costs related to the maintenance of his blog or as a little incentive for him to keep going :).

: 12 Jul 2010 17:20 |  Tags: Library Links Plugin Wordpress |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem