Target: Make WordPress rewrite this URLs

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/food/

to

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/?ingredients=food

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/food/asia/

to

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/?ingredients=food&origin=asia

1. Create your plugin and create a shortcode

(eg. add_shortcode(‘myapp’, ‘myfunction’); )

2. Create a new Page and add the shortcode

[myapp]

With Permalinks off your page looks like

http://www.thesite.com/?page_id=5

And is basically the same as

http://www.thesite.com/index.php?page_id=5

With Permalinks on

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/

3. If you pass a query on your app the URL may look like this, Im passing the queries on the URL

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/?ingredients=food

or

http://www.thesite.com/mypage/?ingredients=food&origin=asia

Depending on the queries passed the contents on your page changes.

4. Now to rewrite the URLs to be friendly you need to add a filter and use query_vars

add_filter(‘query_vars’, ‘my_query_vars’);
function my_query_vars($public_query_vars) {
$public_query_vars[] = “ingredients”;
$public_query_vars[] = “origin”;
return $public_query_vars;
}

This ensure that when WordPress parses the URL, the ingredients and origin gets saved in the query variables.

4. Next is create your rewrite rules and store in an array

add_filter(‘generate_rewrite_rules’, ‘my_rewrite’);

function my_rewrite($wp_rewrite) {
$wp_rewrite->rules =
array_merge(array
(
‘^mypage/([^/]+)/?$’ => ‘index.php?page_id=5e&ingredients=$matches[1]‘,
‘^mypage/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$’ => ‘index.php?page_id=5&ingredients=$matches[1]&origin=$matches[2]‘

), $wp_rewrite->rules);
}

Note: That you are rewriting to the original URL of the page. You are storing each rewrite rule to an array and finally adding them to a filter by generate_rewrite_rules.

5. To get the variables back just call the get_query_vars function on your plugin.

echo get_query_var(‘ingredients’);

So this is how I got my problem solved. Hopefully it would be a great help to others. Happy rewriting and coding!

Official release

From 2.6.3 version there are no 2.6.4 release and there never will be. Go update now.

Yesterday my host changed servers, then I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and everything got whack on uploading images in the admin with this error.

Unable to create directory /home/username/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2008/05. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Here are troubleshooting steps you can do.
1. With the error above, it can be assumed it is a permission problem with the folder. Default is 755, With your FTP software or WebFTP, edit the uploads folder in the wp-content to 777. Then try again.

2. If that doesn’t work, it can be an ownership issue. Wherein the owner of the files is apache and not your user account.

If you have access to SSH, you can edit the file to change ownership to

chown -R username:apache_user /home/username/public_html/wp-content/

username:apache_user for me is the ftp account, others are different.

3. If this doesn’t work. Check the upload path in the admin – Settings – Miscellaneous and make sure it is wp-content/uploads sometimes the upgrade or server move changes it to the absolute path.

The 3rd solution worked for me. Hope you find this useful

But today it seems all has returned back to normal. Check out the screenshot I took yesterday.

Wordpress Codex showing Cantonese links on front page

I found out Fireshot Pro to do what I needed, it offers more than the usual screen capture for it has an option to save, upload and edit the screenshot with the built in editing tools. So far so good but seems this takes several steps. Just when I was about to live on and use it for my project, I found another tool that simplifies the task further. This has got to be the best addon for WordPress, it is specifically created to work for wordpress. Currently it is experiemental but it works great. Screen Grab for WordPress.

What is XML-RPC?  From wiki pedia It is a remote procedure call protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.

4 things I needed to do to get setup.

1. Download the addon and restart Firefox

2. Go to Tools and choose Addons, select Screen Grab, then hit Options, Setup the blog details, fill in the blog URL, username and password. Cool thing is it allows adding multiple blogs.

3. Next signed in to your admin in WordPress. I went to settings then  Reading, checked the option Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols then save.

4. With that option enabled, when using Screen Grab for WordPress, simply right click on a page then choose Screen Grab! With Online Upload, then select either Save, Copy or Post. I used Post then Selection and select the image or text I wanted to capture and use in my blog post. After that select the blog where to post to. It automatically generates the post and uploaded the image to my upload folder plus generated a title for my post.

It made my wordpress project site a breeze to update. Hope you find it useful too.

A theme I’m working on runs fine and was tested on PHP 4.3.x locally in my machine, I tried testing on PHP 5.2.x and I immediately encountered syntax error on WordPress. Traced the problem to be inside the Loop in WordPress. Sharing it here for those having hard time making their themes work on their host.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDWHILE

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ELSE

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDIF

Solution: check your if/else or while scripts and modify them accordingly to confirm to WordPress or your initial PHP tags.

Example script courtesy of undersigned.net, This code changes every other post to their own css tags. This runs fine and tested on PHP 4.3.x only

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

$loopcounter++; ?>

<div class=“post”>

<?php if ($loopcounter % 2 == 0) { ?>

<h1 class=“even”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<?php } else { ?>

<h1 class=“odd”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<? } ?>

<?php the_content(); ?>

</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

You used the if/else normal php codes inside the WordPress loop tag. Make a strict code by simply changing your if/else to WordPress tags to make it work on PHP 5.2.x.

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

$loopcounter++; ?>

<div class=“post”>

<?php if ($loopcounter % 2 == 0) : ?>

<h1 class=“even”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<?php else : ?>

<h1 class=“odd”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<? endif; ?>

<?php the_content(); ?>

</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

That’s it, issue fixed! It should be similar to other scripts using similar coding style and not just to WordPress. Happy theme tweaking!