Jul 25 2008

Problems With WordPress 2.6, Google Gears And The Flash File Uploader?

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 7:35 pm

Sorry about the long title post, but I wanted to ensure the relevant factors were all included for clarity.

This post will be of interest to anyone who wishes to use the new Google Gears option within WordPress 2.6, or the flash-based uploader for image files etc., but is not able to.

The first thing to check is if your browser’s Flash plugin is up to date. Visit this page, and towards the top, where it states “You have version x,y,z,a installed”, make sure you have 9,0,124,0 or later listed. You may find earlier versions of the Flash plugin will work OK, but if you have a problem, it is best to discount all potential causes step-by-step.

If you are already up to date, or you have upgraded, and the problems remain, then the next thing to check is that you do not have a Flash applet blocker loaded within your browser. If you see a small ‘F’ symbol on pages where others see flash applets, you need to whitelist (allow) your own website for all flash – it is not enough to temporarily allow the flash applet on a case by case basis.

Problems still remain with Google Gears and/or the Flash File Uploader? In which case I’ll bet you a small bottle of vodka that you used the WordPress Automatic Update plugin to upgrade. You will most likely that find two SWF files are missing from your installation. I had this issue which was stopping Google Gears from working. One of the files involved was the media uploader one.
The easiest way to check if this is your problem is to FTP in to your site and look at /wp-includes/js/swfupload/ – if the file swfupload_f9.swf is missing, and also flv_player.swf from wp-includes\js\tinymce\plugins\media\img
is missing, then we have discovered the root of the problem. The solution? Download WordPress 2.6, from here. Extract the files to a temporary directory on your hard drive and manually upload those SWG files to your site in those locations I mentioned.

So this should sort your problems out for your current installation of WordPress. What to do about next time? If you enable your site within your flash blocker add-in before you next use the WPAU plugin, said files should be upgraded fine 🙂

Information collated from the WordPress support forums – you can see my post here.

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Jul 23 2008

RSS Feeds

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:36 am

Following on from the last post, I have recently got around to re-adding most of my favourite RSS feeds, following the last hard drive failure. So, check these out sometime and let me know if you want to recommend any others. (If there is no comment feed listed, it is because there is none listed on their site, and I was unable to guess the correct URL.)

Kazakhstan Blogs

KZBlog – KZBlog Comments

The Life Of 2Me – Not actually on Kazakhstan any more, but the older posts are still of interest. The newer ones are interesting too, just not on Kazakhstan 😉

English Advantage – English Advantage Comments – Not specifically Kazkhstan-based, but it does get mentioned from time to time

A Momentary Relapse of Reason – A Momentary Relapse of Reason Comments – See the previous post here for more info on this new blog

News From The Caravan – News From The Caravan Comments

Narcogen – This feed URL should filter out his automatic XBox 360 posts.

Bogar – Live Space’s RSS feed defaults to a lot of items, it would appear. Occasionally times out.

NewEurasia – NewEurasia Comments – Both of these are specifically for the Kazakhstan section of the site.

Registran – Registran Comments

EurasianNet.org

Other Blogs

Celt Photographic – Celt Photographic Comments – Not often updated any more.

StarBlog – StarBlog Comments – A mix of German and English posts.

WordPress Guru – WordPress Guru Comments – Ask Owen – Ask Owen Comments – Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot – Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot Comments

I’ll add the feed URL for Alex’s Dryad Musings blog once we have her hosted somewhere properly – the free hosting’s required adverts inserted at the top of each page currently ruin the feed.

Whilst you’re checking out and possibly adding those feeds to FireFox/your favourite RSS reader, don’t forget this blog’s feed and comment feed.

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Jul 23 2008

The Final Division Bell

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:06 am

So, looking for a new take on life in Kazakhstan? I recently received an e-mail from the person behind the ‘A Momentary Relapse of Reason‘ blog hosted over at WordPress.com . I took a look, and it so far, it looks like one to add to your favourites. Much like KZBlog, the posts are well written with some obvious intelligence behind them, and the subjects cover are thought provoking. Even if you’re sober 😉 So head on over, check what the blogger has to say about Almaty, Astana and a tie in to the Beijing Olympics construction boom. Just don’t forget to come back and visit this blog occasionally 🙂

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Jul 16 2008

WordPress 2.6

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 2:49 am

So, just a few months after WordPress 2.5 was released, we now have 2.6! I checked this version on this blog’s little brother (test.chrismerriman.com), making sure there were no repeats of the problems encountered with 2.5 and 2.5.1 last time around. No immediate issues to be found, so I’ve updated 19 sites in very little time (mainly thanks to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plug in).
One quick thing I’ve noticed so far… the word count feature does not seem to stay perfectly ‘live’. So if you’ve typed out a long post, and the word count is still 0, you probably haven’t started a new paragraph (this seems to trigger an update). Try pressing Enter and then deleting the new para if necessary.
I’ll now not need to worry about installing the Firefox add-on I previously used the next time I do a new install. Also this word count does not take into account the amount of words in the Title box, so that’s an improvement.

Watch the video below for more information on the changes that can be found with WordPress 2.6…

[edit]
I’ve just noticed my comment feed is now working again! I first noticed it wasn’t functioning a couple of months ago, and just assumed it was a configuration issue with feedburner. Since upgrading to WP2.6, all seems well again 🙂

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May 29 2008

Cat Lands On Its Feet

Category: Pictures — ChrisM @ 12:45 am

The following pictures are of a cat Tama, who lives in Kishi railway station in Japan. Unfortunately, the Wakayama Electric Railway company had to lay off all their staff at that station a couple of years ago.
However, Tama, who was originally a stray, has bought in enough tourists that the company has seen profits increase some 10%!

Tama Station Master Cat

Whether or not Tama is happy enough wearing the cap (I’m guessing it is only put on for photos?), is difficult to tell, but his role as ‘station master’ means he gets fed properly every day, and even had a ticket booth converted to a home…

Tama Station Master Cats Home

No news on who the fellow cat is, and whether the 2nd cat is responsible for announcements or not, but given that many Japanese believe cats to be good luck, many passengers on the railway line are really only attending the station for the sake of meeting the cat, rather than commuting!

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May 28 2008

Sitemaps For Blogs

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 12:22 am

If you are currently looking at the range of sitemap generators specifically available for WordPress blogs, then I can recommend the (free) Google XML Sitemaps plugin – you can download it at www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator . In case you are interested/concerned, it does actually generate valid sitemaps that can be read by MSN, Ask and Yahoo as well, it was written back when Google originally came up with the sitemap standard, hence its name. Oh also, before I forget, if anyone else has had problems with the Bad Behavior plugin being deleted, when you attempt to auto-update from within a WordPress 2.5.x blog, you need to ensure the files are kept within their own folder, and that the old individual PHP file from older versions has been removed from the root of your plugins directory.

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Apr 15 2008

Executable PHP Widget And WordPress 2.5

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 12:53 am

Or more specifically, the possibility of an issue with the Exec PHP Widget and the plugin auto upgrade feature found in WP 2.5
When upgrading this blog to WordPress 2.5, I thought I had tested all plugins thoroughly, however after I auto-upgraded the Executable PHP Widget a couple of days ago, it appears that my widgets were removed from the sidebar, and their contents lost.


So, before upgrading this plugin, it might be an idea to keep a copy of any widget(s) code you have placed.
The next time a new version of this plugin is released, I will check whether simply overwriting the PHP file is sufficient to keep the widget’s contents and placement in the sidebar(s). Part of the issue could have been that the auto-upgrade process first de-activates the plugin, downloads the new version, then re-enables it. This is, of course, the recommended course of action even when manually updating, it is just I’ve not bothered in the past, and so didn’t think to check if the code was still present.

[edit]
I’m also going to need to monitor the Blog Voyeur plugin closely sometime, as I’m not yet convinced it has retained full functionality since this blog was upgrade to 2.5

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Apr 10 2008

All OK?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 5:07 pm

OK, after waiting for various backups to download, the upgrade process was started, and apart from the previously mentioned hiccup with Bad Behavior updating, all appears fine so far.
I would appreciate it if any readers could leave a comment should they notice anything looking unusual.
Let me clarify, anything unusual that didn’t look weird BEFORE the upgrade 😉

Re. Random Tagline – the original plugin I had failed following upgrading other blogs to WordPress 2.5, with the pages no longer rendered correctly. Luckily Gino came through with a solution that works. If you have no idea what I mean, press F5, and you’ll notice that the tagline at the top of this page will change. It also changes in the browser window’s title, and does not match up with the one shown on the page, but as there are quite a few I’ve stored, this shouldn’t be a problem, you shouldn’t see any repeats for a while 🙂

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Apr 10 2008

5 4 3 2 1 – WordPress 2.5 Installation Beginning?

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 4:43 pm

I’ll post details on the fix I found for randomizing the tagline on this site later, but just in case things go wrong, and no new posts appear for a while, I about to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.5, as I think there are no remaining problems preventing me from doing so.

Famous last words 😉

See the WordPress category page for recent posts on my investigations into this new version of WP, and the testing of plugins used on this blog, as well as the test blog sibling of this site, and my other niche article sites.

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Apr 09 2008

Bad Behavior 2.0.14 And WordPress 2.5

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 4:41 am

Looks like I spoke a little too soon…

I noticed that Bad Behavior 2.0.13 had been updated by the plugin’s authors, and so attempted an automatic upgrade (part of the improvements with WP 2.5), and was greeted with

Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bad-behavior.2.0.14.zip

Unpacking the update

Deactivating the plugin

Removing the old version of the plugin

Installing the latest version

Installation failed

Not exactly the end of the world, and once I realised that the core file ( bad-behavior-wordpress.php ) had been deleted during the process (normal behaviour), I didn’t worry about it no longer appearing in the list of plugins available for activation. I uploaded the file, and then overwrote the original associated updated bad-behavior directory, and proceeded to activate it with no problems.

So, assuming you take the time to read any messages during attempting an automatic upgrade of plugins, no harm is done 🙂

btw, this is the first plugin I’ve found that did not like the upgrade process…

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