Wordpress 3-3-1 Fixed 15 Issues

Below is the statement from Worpress which talk about their latest updates:

"WordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team."

Issues that listed in here were successfully fixed. And, even it takes a bit longer before this update was done,  it is still 100% considerable.

You can download the latest version here or sign in to dashboard and choose the updates in your site admin. Please don’t forget to back up before doing so.

Removing auto Break tags from Form inserted by Wordpress

I love Wordpress, there’s no doubt on that. Being the best platform for making sites (either it is blogging / brand site) through easy content management, thousands of free plugins and themes, helpful support and forums.

 However, it mess some HTML code that entered on its post sometimes. One problem that I always seen is the <br/> tags inside the FORM element. Wordpress is automatically generating a BR tag and insert it before field in a form.

 Due to unwanted BR tags there could be issues on the layout in your form. So, to make the layout fix, simply create a class and make a add “display none” in your stylesheet.
Ex. If you have a form 

 <form class=”remove-br”>

 // all input fields code are here. Including BR tags generated by wordpress

</form>

In your stylesheet:

.remove-br br{display:none;}

Pretty simple, isn’t it? :)

Good-bye Blogger

Even though I customized my blog well yet I'm a little bit worried since I don't host on my own. I really want to move it in Wordpress platform and manage it with no worries. I'm reading some nuts in the net until come to the point to read some reviews regarding Blogger vs. Wordpress. Since in blogger there are several important features that I need customized in my blog but blogger doesn’t allow me to do it. I research enough reasons why I need to move in Worpress Platform.

Easy to set up and use

Yes, you can set up your blog in blogspot for a couple of minutes. For that short of time you will have you blogspot.com and blogger account. There are ready made templates for you and you can start posting as soon as you finish setting it up.

On the other hand, Wordpress take a couple of hours and little tricky installation since you need a hosting service for it. You must download the Wordpress files, upload in your server, set up a database and configure. Wordpress also has default template to use.

However, if you have a Cpanel in your hosting, most of hosting services has a one click installation for well known CMS such as Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal. So, you don’t need to hassle installing it.

Right of Ownership

I finally have time to read the Term of Service (TOS) of Blogger or generally Google TOS yesterday but I’m shocked how they construct a statement where it said "Google is the owner of your intellectual property". Another thing is that they can shut down your account without any prior notice when the time they don't want your blogging. Scary isn't it? And oh! One thing even you custom you domain in Blogger, still, you are using their database so be aware of that.

Please see this excerpt of their TOS.

Compare with Wordpress, you have your domain name and hosting with your own. You have a full access and control over it.

Customization and Features

The first thing that I don’t like with Blogger is that, they don’t support Category. They support labels but you can’t do a hierarchy linking to it. Deeper category improve internal linking, with that said blogger is fail in that aspect. On the otherhand Wordpress has the ability to give you a deeper internal linking by serving the hierarchy category.

Blogger have several widget that are useful but that’s the only distance blogger can go with. With Wordpress though is far beyond that. Custom plugins and advanced tools, very supportive community, and a complete user experience in general.

Addition, In case you want to edit robot.txt and htaccess file in Blogger, you don't have any way to this. since Blogger doesn't have htacces and robot.txt for you. :-P

Easy Posting of Article

Which user interface (UI) do you prefer? Blogger Dashboard or Wordpres?

Based on my experience, I like Wordpress Dashboard not basing on the color scheme or any design. What I like most is the presentation of HTML elements. In blogger if you copy your written article and paste it directly to its editor. The style and other unnecessary elements from MS word is also copied in the editor in which when you publish, it will look different from what you expecting. The code is also untidy. Unlike Wordpress which give you neat and clean HTML elements.

Hug with Mr. SEO

Search Engine Optimization process is easily applied due to free and premium SEO extension. Optimizing keywords, title and description is so easy with Worpdress, Where in Blogger, you need to do hack in your template file to do the process.


See you soon Wordpress. I'm leaving Blogger for Best!

Wordpress 406 Not acceptable Error

Last time is posted about "504 Gateway Time-out - nginx" error that wordpress team encountered few weeks ago. One of my friends asks me to help her for 406 not acceptable errors every time she hit the register button in http://worldvillage.com/ site. This problem basically caused by the site webhosting and has nothing to do with the site structure or any clever assumptions that you might think. Specifically this issue is cause by mod-security rule which installed in the server for security purposes.

What it is mod-security?

ModSecurity is an open source web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache that is developed by Trustwave's SpiderLabs. It has a robust event-based programming language which provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis. With over 10,000 deployments world-wide, ModSecurity is the most widely deployed WAF in existence.


In order to fix the problem, there are two to choose from. First option is to contact your hosting company and let them fix for it and second one is by setting off the SecFilterEngine in your site htaccess.

To disable it, Please do the following steps:


1. Mod-security issue can be disabled by setting the SecFilterEngine to off. So, first you need to locate your htacess file. If you we’re using wordpress, htacess is usually place on the root directory along with index and other php files.

2. Turn off the SecFilterEngine by adding this code: SecFilterEngine off anywhere in your htaccess file.

3. Save and test your site.

Result: You should no longer get the “Wordpress 406 Not acceptable Error.” error.

Wordpress: “504 Gateway Time-out - nginx"

As I surf in Wordpress site, I saw this trending thread in their forum, “504 Gateway Time-out - nginx". The 504 Gateway Timeout issue that interfering Wordpress site owner to go in their dashboard. They got the error when their trying to access the dashboard page. So what is 504 Gateway is all about?

"The 504 Gateway Timeout error displays inside the Internet browser window, just as web pages do which cause of one server did not receive a timely response from another server that it was accessing while attempting to load the web page or fill another request by the browser.This usually means that the other server is down or not working properly."

“Unfortunately we're having some problems at the moment, but rest assured we're looking into it. I'll keep you posted as and when we have more information!” designsimply ( Forum Name) said, Wordpress Engineer and a forum moderator. Wordpress engineer trying to solve the issue without creating troubles at any cause. In the forum thread on of forum engineer assure that all data of blog will be safe as they soliving the issue. “No need to worry” he added. Few hours ago, the announced that problem was fixed. Everybody was started to check their blogs if their post still in complete compact. Several feedback are started to rise in the forum such as lost of post.

atropos77 (One of the member ) problem:

“I Wrote an 800-word blog post when WP decided to explode. Site kept telling me that it was regularly saving drafts of my blog post (lies). Tried to save it when I was done and got about 50 '404' messages. Now the site's back up. Checked my draft so I could finally publish it after trying half the afternoon and it only remembered 69 out of my 800~ word post, even though you 'engineers' have repeatedly said that no data was lost. Uh, it was actually. An entire post of mine is down the drain. “

Bad timing for those bloggers which created a post more thatn 400 word post (or even it so short) and save i as draft. They’re “GONE” :(

Mr designsimply reply to atropos77”

@atropos77 I'm so sorry to hear about the post you lost! If the post data never made it into the system because of the server issues then drafts would not have been autosaved and there wouldn't be any post revisions to recover. If you can't find revisions, then I'm afraid the data may have never made it into the system in a case like this one. So sorry for the trouble!


To know about this issue. You can see the full thread here

How to Add Media/Audio Player in Wordpress

Hi Fellas! for now I will tell you on how to add audio/media player in your Wordpress post. Post including audio can give reader more accurate information and other option on how to acquire the information you want to rely them.This type of post can be seen for those site engaging in grammar, pronunciation and spelling. See this screen shot below.

Steps in adding audio player in wordpress

1. Log in to your wordpress site.

2. Go to plugin section and click the add new button.

3. Search this plugin wp audio player or you can download it http://wpaudioplayer.com/download , upload, install and activate it.

4. Now, after activating this plugin. Go to Settings tab --> Audio Player (and you will see the screen below). In this section you can customize the look of your audio player and configure other information. 

5.  After configuring the audio player. Your now ready to go with your post. 

        a.  Go to Post and click add new.

        b.  Click the add audio icon above of editor. 

        c.  Upload pop up form will now appear. 

        

       d. After uploading your mp3 files. Click audio Player button and then click insert to post.

           e. Holla! Save it and you now have an audio player in your post.

Wordpress: Random Posts Without a Plugin

If you were using a Wordpress as your CMS in your blog featuring some kind of random post of testimonials can bring useful purposes. 

 First, you can widen the possibility that your reader can see other post without navigating the older post button or links or simply make your old archive post visible randomly. Normally readers only read a couple of new post and leave the site if they got any valuable post. “Readers Behavior”.

One of my projects are asking me to have random testimonial excerpt in their site header so their client can view their other client testimonials which serve as encouragement. I was looking some plugins in the internet and found a lot of them. Since the client is only asking for a simple random functionality. I look for a better way (a code snippet) rather than to download a plug in and upload to their site which can add up to the slow load up.

Code Snippet to Random Post:

<?php query_posts('category_name=YourCategoryName&orderby=rand&posts_per_page=1'); ?>

This line code will filter the query based on the category name, the number of post per page, and take note: orderyby=rand is the one who make a random query. :

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

You must change the YourCategoryName to whatever category you want to get the random posts. Change the number in the posts_per_page variable to the number of post you want.

After that you can now print the excerpt and the author information.

<?php
  $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
  echo $excerpt;
           
 ?>
 <div class="random-author"> 
           
            <?php echo the_author_meta('last_name'). "-"; ?>
            <?php echo the_author_meta('first_name'); ?>
            <?php echo (','); ?>
            <?php echo ('&nbsp;'); ?>
            <?php echo the_author_meta('user_description'); ?>
          
 </div>

Then you can close your looping with this code...

<?php endwhile; else: ?>
             
<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.', '') ?></p>
              
<?php endif; ?>

Complete Code for Random Post:

<?php query_posts('category_name=Testimonials&orderby=rand&posts_per_page=1'); ?>
   <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
 <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
     <p>    
 <?php
             $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
   echo string_limit_words($excerpt,15)."...";
                    ?>
           
  <div class="random-author"> 
           
 <?php echo the_author_meta('last_name'). "-"; ?>
           <?php echo the_author_meta('first_name'); ?>
           <?php echo (','); ?>
           <?php echo ('&nbsp;'); ?>
           <?php echo the_author_meta('user_description'); ?>
          
   </div>
     </p>
 <?php endwhile; else: ?>
             
<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.', '') ?></p>
              
<?php endif; ?>

How to activate Network in Worpress MU

Video by Youtube

For the new Wordpress 3.0 emerged in the internet most of the wordpress users upgrade their current version to the latest 3.0. Wordpress 3.0 has the broader capabilities in handling sites. One of the major feature of the Wordpress MU is the ability to run multiple blogs from a single Wordpress Installation.

Here are the steps on how to achieve the multiple user/sites/blogs of the Wordpress MU.

To get started with, make sure you have the latest version of Wordpress or simply upgrade the upgrade your Wordpress to 3.0 and enable multiple site network option.

1. After editing your wp-config.php file which enable the multiple network settings.

GO TO:  Tools -> Network

Your Screen will have this.

           

You have two options to select from 

·         Sub-domain : site1.sample.com

·         Sub-directories : sample.com/site1

In this case, site1 is your sub-domain.  First one is  working as a sub-domain and later one is sub directory. To make your sub-domain work, you need to play with DNS (A Name record). Whereas for sub-directories, it is much easier to configure. In this tutorial we will be using Sub-directories.

·         Select Sub directories

·         Give a Name to your network: Ex: Thesis Customization Service Sites

·         Admin Email:

2. After clicking the install button, you will redirected to a page which contain instruction in playing your wp-config.php file and .htaccess.

 Here are the steps.

 1.     Create a blogs.dir directory in /thesiscustomizationservice.com/wp-content. 

This directory is used to store uploaded media for your additional sites and must be writeable by the web server.

Login to your FTP server and create a directory with name Blogs.dir under wp-content folder. This directory will be use to upload all the media files.

2. Add the following codes in the images in your wp-config.php file

3. Add this Authentication code in your wp-config.php

4. Add .htaccess code and save .htacces

If  the steps above are done. Log out in your Wordpress MU sites and try login back. Then you will see this super admin Tab.

Super Admin in Wordpress 3.0

Do share your views about this tutorial. If you have any query feel free to ask via comments. If you like this post, don’t forget to share it with your followers via Twitter and Facebook.

Wordpress MU

Hi to all, have you upgraded your Wordpress site to the latest version 3.1 or the they called the Worpress MU. Wordpress MU (Multi User) allow the administrator to setup sub-domain and sub-folder for its site. Furthermore you can add user for every sub-blog/sub-domain/sub-folder that you created.

Wordpress 3.1 has the SUPER ADMIN access that can set all the functionality for its sub-domains and sub-folder. Some of the functionality that SUPER ADMIN can handle is the installation Network installation plugins, different themes for each sub-domain site, and the
hierarchy of user.

Start your Wordpress blog now :http://wordpress.org/download/ or upgrade now.

For more information:http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/