Effutio » Hints and Tips

Advanced Nested Comments on Wordpress Pages Issue Fix

Neil — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:11:57 +0000

OK so I used a technique I found here: http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/advanced-wordpress-comment-styles-and-tricks/ to setup advanced, nested comments for effutio.

It all works fantastically untill I used the same technique on another site which used more Pages than Posts. There are two parts to the problem that happened on this site.

Firstly the “Reply” link (allowing you to reply to a specific user comment) didnt work and once the first comment was made on the page the comment form would disappear!

The fix to these bugs are as foloows:

1. In your comments.php theme file replace:

with this

2. In wp-includes/comment-template.php at line 1012 change:

$comment = get_comment($comment);
$post = get_post($post);

to:

$comment = get_comment($comment);
$post = get_post($comment->comment_post_ID);

Upload the updated files and hey presto the comment form shows on pages with a comment and you can now use the “Reply” link to respond to specific comments. Ahhhhhh the world has been put right once again. Incase you are wondering no1 above fixes the comment form disappearance and no2 fixes the Reply link bug!! Enjoy!

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Custom Wordpress Loop Breaks Pagination

Neil — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:28:36 +0000

Holy smokes, well this took me around 2 hours to sort out so Im writing it all down so I can save people some time and remember it myself!!

Right OK if you are diving into WP you will undoubtably want to try some wonderful things with the loop, if like me to display posts from a certain category on a page. Well its pretty easy to do but doing so breaks any pagination you may have i.e. WP-Pagenavi or posts_nav_link(). Whatever you are using it will not work if using a custom loop containing a query_posts() or $wp_query() function.

A lot of people will tell you it cant be done and just to use showposts to display all your posts or there is a few blogs out there sporting fixes which dont work….I dont know if they ever have or if its using a different version or if I had missed something (as others said it worked for them but I tried lots of variations on the theme). Anyhoo I finally picked up on a couple of comments, I combined two ideas and hey presto it worked….I couldnt believe it.

So here it is, this is what your loop should look like:


query('cat=20&paged='.$paged); ?>

....loop content


....alternative content

This line is key and a few other fixes out there use it with query posts like this:
$paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1; query_posts(‘cat=3&showposts=12&paged=’.$paged);

That didnt work for me and I picked up on a comment suggesting that wp_reset_query() wouldnt work with query_posts(), then I found another comment posting a different solution utlising wp_query->query(). Well it was 1am and I thought ‘ah well nothing to lose’ and it worked. Well Im very relieved to have found a solution that works for me and I hope it save you time and works for you too.

Oh yeh and remember if you have adapted loops on other pages, always include wp_reset_query(); at the end of the loop on each page.

Share and Enjoy!

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Wordpress RSS Error – Blank Line Fix

Neil — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:50:10 +0000

Well for some reason or other sometimes your Wordpress feed will break, which I recently discovered here at effutio. This is normally down to a blank line (error will be on line 1 column 1 or some such) being inserted at the top of the xml file (feedburner especially doesnt like these blank lines)? This extra line could be caused by a plugin or something else, who knows and whos got the time to bloody look through everything to try and fix it. Not I.

Luckily there is a simple and effective fix (provided by www.Wejn.org) and here it is:

Download this file

Put it in your Wordpress ROOT folder so the one with wp-config.php and wp-settings.php (DO NOT put it in your theme root folder!). Upload file to your server.

Then add this line to the index.php in Wordpress ROOT folder so it looks like this:

Upload the updated index.php file and you now have a working RSS…..Awesome!

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Simple:Press Forum Review – Is it the best forum for WP?

Neil — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:58:30 +0000

A lot of Wordpress website owners either need or want a forum. After all they can add another social interaction tool, its another place to put your content and place ads. So we are agreed that a forum is cool and adds extra dimensions to your WP site but there are a few options out there but one for me stands out head and shoulders above the rest: SimplePress Forum (SPF).

SPF was born in 2006 after creator Andy Staines found existing forum plugins to be sub-standard and set about creating a simple yet effective forum plugin for his website. People started asking about it and for it and it was released as a plugin, from then on its gone from strength to strength with more features being added by request of SPF users.

I personally have been using SPF since 2008 and for me it is the most complete and feature rich forum plugin available today and Andy and Steve should be congratulated for all their hard work and unrivalled support (remember and donate too)!

SPF seemlessly integrates with Wordpress, meaning users need only log in once to the website. You can also write posts in the usual way in WP admin and create Forum topics using said post. Even the comments on the WP Post and SPF Topic can be integrated. Users can build a comprehensive profile with an Avatar (although for a small minority of people this could become an issue…Ive explained more below) and expect all the features that the dedicated Forum scripts deliver like phpBB and vBulletin.

Well all in all SPF for me is THE best forum plugin for WP and has unrivalled functionality and support; Andy, Steve and helpers really do a fantastic job. However as mentioned above Avatars could cause a slow down issue for a minority of SPF users. I discovered this when I changed servers for one of my sites running SPF. I asked in the SPF Support forum and both Andy and Steve have been extremely helpful in trying to solve this problem (the full support thread is here). I also asked my server support guys and they said that the site is making loopback requests that are being blocked by the firewall???? Doi?

Andy eventually got me to try switching of the forums Avatar display. This resulted in my 10+ post topics to load in 4-5secs compared with the 35secs they were taking!! Of course I was thrilled to have a quick forum again but I had lost functionality which I like and users like; its a personal identifier which can portray a little about you or simply puts a face to a name.

So I kept annoying Steve and Andy over on the SPF support forum and they have been very patient and keen to solve the issue even if it is for a small minority of users!! So we tested varying sequences of Avatar calls and for me the tests revealed that the SPF Default Avatars and ther Uploaded Avatars seemed to be causing the slow down for some reason (which is still a mystery).

Andy then directed me to here: /library/sf-common-display/php and the function is sf_render_avatar() which is where the Avatar code is. I noticed the two case statements which seemed to be causing my slow down shared this variable: SFAVATARURL. After a number of bumbling tests I actually found something that worked!! It now displays the offending Avatars and does it quickly….so here it is; in Case 2 I changed line 257 from this:

$url = SFAVATARURL.$avfile;

to this:

$url = "www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/forum-avatars/".$avfile;

And in Case 3 I changed line 284 from this:

$url = SFAVATARURL.$image;

to this:

$url = "www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/forum-avatars/".$image;

Im still trying to work out exactly why this works for me and so are Andy and Steve, if we can determine why this is working then Im sure they will release a bug fix with this included. However I would be really interested in knowing if this fix works for others suffering a topic load slow down!! Then Steve, Andy and I will know its not just me and my server being weird!!

So I hope this helps the few SPF users which may be experiencing slow topic loading and hopefully a bug fix can be intergrated into the next release of SPF. Please if this does help you report back here and let me know as it will be a big help!!

Below are my forum avatar settings just incase you need these too:

My forums avatar settings found in Forum->Profiles->Avatars

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Hide Wordpress Update Nag Without a Plugin

Neil — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:48:07 +0000

Yes the annoying update/upgrade notice that appears at the top of the admin screen can be a bit annoying. It can also be quite dangerous. DANGEROUS you say…how so?

Well if you have designed a CMS for a client using wordpress and added extra things even its its simple things like changing the admin images or the memory usage. All will be wiped when the client upgrades and their precious site suddenly looks different or doesnt work at all.

Taking the top update nag isnt the only way to update via the admin panel of course buts its the most obvious one.

So lets get rid of it:

First open: wp-admin/includes/update.php

Scroll to line 135 (if file is in original condition)

Find this line:

add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );

And simply comment it out like thus:

/* add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 ); */

// add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );

Both will work, once uploaded hey presto no more top update nag. Nag nag nag…your not my Mum Wordpress!!

Using multiple/different headers, sidebars, footers and comment templates in Wordpress

Neil — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:32:37 +0000

Once you start messing about with Wordpress and looking to expand it to fit your websites requirements you will undoubtably want to use different headers, sidebars, footers and even comment templates.

Its actually really easy to do in Wordpress and because you will be utilising files that should already exist in your template, it doesnt take long at all.

I guess most people will want to change the sidebar first, implementing new menus i.e. floating it left or right to create different page styles etc, so I will focus on sidebars but applying the principles will work for every template file mentioned above.

OK lets get started.

First create a new template file called called ’sidebar2.php’ or similar and open ‘the original ’sidebar.php’. Copy the code from sidebar.php and paste it into sidebar2.php. Now you have a new sidebar! Obviously you will want to make changes to the structure using CSS etc but I will leave that up to you.

Now that we have the new sidebar2.php file how to we get Wordpress to display it? Just replace this line:

with this one:

You would use this line to include all your new files i.e.

However getting the new comment template to display is slightly different. You must replace this line:

with this one:

Well there you have it, you can now create as many different template files as you want and implement them on your Wordpress site. Sweet!

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Page Templates in Wordpress

Neil — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:00:09 +0000

I realise this is a very simple thing to achieve in Wordpress and has probably been written about a thousand times, however I thought about what a great tool it is in Wordpress’s arsenal and surprisingly not used on too many sites Ive seen.

Aside from being able to use page templates to create different page designs they are very useful when using Wordpress plugins such as NextGen Gallery and SimplePress Forum.

These two plugins benefit greatly from using a full width page template i.e. no sidebar. So I will not go into the full intricacies of page templates and their many uses and implementations. Instead I will just show a simple example of how to create a full width page template with no sidebar. Ideally used for galleries and forums.

First of all open the directory containing all your Wordpress template files, normally found here: your-root/wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/

Look for the file entitled ‘page.php’ open it in your favourite code editor. Next create a new file called ‘page_fullwidth.php’ or similar in the same folder as page.php.

Next copy all the code from page.php and paste it into page_fullwidth.php, you can now close page.php as you no longer need it.

You must tell Wordpress that this file is a page template, to do this we must add the following code right at the top of the code:

You can call the template whatever you want, instead of ‘Page Full Width’ you could use ‘Forum’ or ‘Gallery’. This is the name that will be displayed (and can be set) in the ‘Attributes’ section on the right hand side under ‘Template’ in the add/edit page screen.

OK, now you are ready to make the changes to the structure of the page. In this case we want to remove the sidebar. so look for the following line and remove it:

Now you have to add some CSS. Namely adding divs that are the correct width for the new page. SO your CSS will probably have a container for the content called ‘container’ or ‘contentwrapper’ etc and will probably look something like this:

#contentwrapper {
	float:left;
	width: 620px;
	margin: 0 0 15px 10px;
	padding: 0;
	text-align: left;
  }

Obviously the width is to small to allow content to flow right across your new page template so me must change it to match the width of the containg div (if your theme is full screen and all widths are in percentages dont worry about doing this, most are fixed width these days though). Anyway create a new contentwrapper just for this page template. It should look something like this:

#contentwrapper2 {
	float:left;
	width: 910px;
	margin: 0 10px 15px 10px;
	padding:0;
	text-align: left;
  }

Remember and change the div declaration name in your page_fullwidth.php:

so the page template uses the new CSS.

There you have it, a full width page template with no sidebar.

Check out my next tutorial and learn how to setup and implement multiple/different sidebars, footers, headers and comment templates.

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Using Google Adsense for Search in Wordpress

Neil — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:38:57 +0000

Google Custom Search

Implementing a Google Custom Search into your Wordpress theme is actually pretty easy but requires a little bit of theme jiggery pokery!

OK so first things first:

Create a page called ’search’ or ’search results’ in the admin section of your Wordpress site. Take a note of the page id, this can normally be found if you hover the mouse pointer over the ‘View Page’ link or go to ‘Edit’ in the Pages menu and hover over the search page (its the number at the end you need). I would also select the full page template for the search page (what do you mean your theme doesnt have a sidebar-less full page? Spose I could write a tut on that too). Good now we have the search page published and the id of said page.

Next create your Google Custom Search in your adsense account. I’ll not go through all the steps but remember and get the search page url right and set the width correctly for the page! OK you should now have your search code blocks. Highlight the second block of code, go to your Wordpress admin and edit the search page and insert the code into the main text window (use html view and publish).

Then highlight the first/top Google code block and put that in your theme wherever you want the search to appear.

That should be the search fully operational test it in some different browsers to check. “WAIT” I here you cry. I dont want a stupid page called Search Results in my page menu! Quite right, remember the page id I told you to take note of, well here is where you use it.

In your sidebar code you will no doubt have a line like this:

We need to add an exclude function to this line which will look something like this:

Change the ‘86′ to what ever your page id is and hey presto the jiggery pokery is complete!

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Password box different size from text box in IE

Neil — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:53:43 +0000

Just a little web design hint for your enjoyment.

If you have forms on your website you know how annoying it is that IE renders password boxes smaller than normal text boxes. Well there is a quick and easy CSS fix:

input{

font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

font-size:12px;

}

Obviously you can change the family and size to suit your site.

More Advanced Menu only logged in users or certain users can see

Neil — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:03:18 +0000

This is a follow on tutorial from the previous one: Menu only logged in users or certain users can see

In this one Ive added a few extra features. I suddenly thought about the previous tutorial example and saw that any logged in user can see the control panel menu in the sidebar and all the options within it. What if you only want users of a certain level to see the ‘Write New Post’ and ‘Write New Page’ options.

OK Im just gonna list the whole block of code for the sidebar login that I have implemented on this site then talk a bit about the new bits:




Login





 Username


 Password



 Remember me




Register
Recover password




Control Panel

Dashboard
Write new Post
Write new Page
Logout



Control Panel

Dashboard
Logout

OK so if you have read my earlier tutorials on this topic you will recognise a lot of this code and Im not going over it here. So lets take a look at the new bits so we know what changes have been made.

First new line is after the else statement. This basically sets the user level that can access the following menu code. I have set this to level 2, as users granted level 2 status on effutio can write posts etc, but you can set this to whatever level you like (see my previous login tutorial for Wordpress pre set levels).

Then you will notice I have added a second else statement which allows any other users which are lower than level 2 to see a different menu again. Because any user lower than a level 2 cant write posts etc they can only see the ‘Dashboard’ and ‘Logout’ links.

Well I really love this login/menu code for the sidebar, I hope you do too.

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