Archive

Archive for July, 2010

How do I export from blogger to wordpress without ruining indexed permalinks?

July 31st, 2010 1 comment

I have a blogger blog with a custom domain set up. I want to export it to a hosted wordpress blog. Some of my posts have good ranks with google and I don’t want to mess that up. My new WP blog will be the .net of my custom blogger domain so the permalinks will technically change if I import the old posts…any ideas how to get around this?

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How to Create a Custom WordPress Home Page Template

July 30th, 2010 25 comments


www.mlwebco.com – In this video I demonstrate how to create a wordpress page template and use a static html page as your wordpress home page. This is useful if you want to use a custom static html wordpress home page and display your blog posts on a seperate page other than the home (index) page. If you have any questions, contact me Email: mlocke@mlwebco.com Twitter: @mlwebco

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Contact Form 7 Plugin Install for WordPress

July 29th, 2010 25 comments


This is a video tutorial teaching how to install and configure contact form 7 for WordPress. You will also need Really Simple CAPTCHA plugin too which I teach how to get both of them working within WordPress admin panel.

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When WordPress Permalinks 404

July 28th, 2010 No comments

The 404/Not Found error message is one of the most hated screens on the Internet; it indicates that though you, the browser, were able to communicate with the server, the page you need was not delivered either because it was not found or because the server for some reason was configured to not fulfill the request (which is happening in some countries with pages containing illegal content).

The page you actually see is not generated by your computer; instead, it is a special page on the server you’ve tried to contact. Many web sites create their own special 404 pages either for artistic reasons, or because the site owner wants to put specific data, like contact or redirect information, on the page. In Apache, having your own special 404 page is as simple as modifying the .htaccess file. (The only caveat: the page must be larger than 512 bytes or IE will not display it.)

In most cases, the 404 error comes up when a page has been moved or deleted from a site. However, in the case of WordPress, an annoying bug can cause permalinks to point to the 404 page instead of the page you want to have it bring up.

How Do WordPress Permalinks Work?

Permalinks are permanent URLs generated to point to your individual weblog posts, categories, and weblog lists. Other bloggers will use a permalink to point to your post from their own articles, or you can send links to other people via a permalink. When they are linked to an individual post, the URL is supposed to be permanent, not dynamic (changing).

The three types of permalinks WordPress delivers are the Default (aka “Ugly”) form, mod rewrite (“Pretty”), and PATHINFO (“Almost Pretty”).

Default links are formatted according to the default settings of a new WordPress install, and will work on all server environments. It looks like this: http://example.com/?p=N , N being a number. It is neither neat nor elegant, but it does the job. Pretty mod rewrite links look more like this: http://example.com/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ . These permalinks require Apache’s mod_rewrite module, and won’t work on other server types. PATHINFO permalinks look like this: http://example.com/index.php/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ , and will work on other server types besides Apache.

Because you’re going from a dynamic to a fixed environment with your permalinks, a variety of things can go wrong with them. For instance, if your server includes Frontpage Extensions, permalinks will not function at all without doing a manual fix. Without this fix, any changes to the permalinks section from the WordPress admin interface will corrupt the Frontpage server extensions because it interferes with the .htaccess file.

Long permalinks can get chopped off as well, with only part of it working properly or with the entire link disabled. This will cause a 404 error to be generated – but not because there’s something wrong with your permalink, rather because the title is too long. You can fix it by editing your .htaccess file to add a line:

RewriteRule ^post/([0-9]+)?/?([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?p=$1&page=$2 [QSA]

You can also make a habit of posting URLs with angle brackets () on either end. Most email and other problematic software won’t truncate URLs formatted this way.

Permalink Structure in WordPress

When your links don’t work, it’s often because you didn’t update your Permalink structure. Every time you add a new static page to your WordPress files, you must generate and update new rules to the .htaccess (which in newer versions is taken care of through the admin control area). If you don’t get a page returned at all, even a 404, and you use PHP 4.4 or 5 with Apache 2, you should look that up in the PHP bugs and issues pages. This is a specific known bug.

When you’re creating permalinks, another strange thing can happen: your WordPress blog must start the process of creating a permalink before it knows whether or not the page you’re creating one for actually exists. If it doesn’t, too late – your link is already pointing at a 404 page. To repair this, you need to include a 404 direction in the header of your .htaccess file so that your rewrite conditions allow for a not-found error, and simply eliminate that page from your permalinks task. Try adding the following line above the WordPress rewrite rules, outside of #BEGIN WordPress[...]#END WordPress. Some plugins will overwrite this part if you edit the permalinks structure if it’s in the wrong place.

ErrorDocument 404/index.php?error=404?

Another solution is to use this following:

ErrorDocument 404/foo/index.php?error=404

foo = the directory you are using as a blog. The structure should be like this:

/foo/%category%/%postname%/

If you call a nonexistent directory, however, you’re still going to get that 404 permalink.

You can automate your permalinks tasks with several plugins, though. The Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) has gotten some good reviews, especially for search-engine sensitive pages. Google Sitemaps is a good plugin as well.

One more thing: if you use the xampp setup, your WordPress permalinks won’t work at all in the default installation..

The ultimate solution is actually to install WordPress 2.0.2; this new version has repaired the permalinks problem as well as a number of other problems.

Always double-check all your pages before you start working with permalinks, and after you’ve permalinked them. In some cases, you may have to delete all the permalinks and start over, but in most cases just taking a look at what you’re telling your server to do will prevent you from making a lot of stupid mistakes.

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Categories: light-hearted Tags: ,

WordPress Version 2.0.3 Review

July 27th, 2010 No comments

WordPress, the premier free open-source blogging utility, has gone through several upgrades in its life. Today it’s one of the most popular blogging tools on the Internet; it’s easy to use, powerful, and very versatile. It also has a very active base of skilled users who are eager to improve the product and to help out those who haven’t tried it before.

Though the Strayhorn 1.5 version is the favorite for many, it is not as stable or as secure as the newest version 2.0.3. The best part of the new version is the security patch; the new “nonce” security key reduces the chances of a malicious hacker finding a way into your admin panel. Besides the security patch, though, several minor bugs have been squashed with this version. Though a major upgrade to 2.1 is due out soon, the 2.0.3 is something you should definitely download and install if only because of the security fixes, which were actually backported from the major upgrade files.

In addition to the 2.0.3 install, you should be aware that some bugs have already been found, and that a plugin will need to be installed to repair those bugs. If you modify any of the files that this patch plugin fixes, you’ll need to either merge the changes with the new files or make those changes manually once again. You can find these issues by running a diff to locate changes; if the only changes you find are your own, then you’re fine, and otherwise you’ll need to merge them manually into the new files.

The short list of what WordPress 2.0.3 fixes includes:

•Small performance enhancements

•Movable Type / Typepad importer fix

•Enclosure (podcasting) fix

•The aforementioned security enhancements (nonces)

One mostly annoying bug shipped with 2.0.3 as well. It gives you an “Are You Sure?” dialog when you edit comments, and adds a backslash before each quotation mark in the post you’re editing. Make certain to download the patch.

What’s Up With The Security Problem?

The security problem seems minor, but the WordPress team is fixing it before it grows into something major. It’s a bug that takes advantage of the cookie you download when you sign into WordPress. The cookie in question prevents anyone unauthorized from accessing your admin panel. It’s tied to your user account, and verifies that you are the authorized administrator of the account you’re working on.

The bug that’s being fixed is one that takes advantage of a sociological trick. If someone created a link or a form pointing to your WordPress admin account, they might possibly be able to trick you into clicking the link. In the case of the one here, you delete a post. This sounds both minor and highly unlikely; but a small crack in the door can be exploited later by a dedicated hacker. And this is also the kind of bug that, a few years ago, allowed a hacker access to the Microsoft databases, from which he stole portions of the Longhorn and other codes. So yes, you do need to take it seriously.

WordPress had ensured you were safe from this kind of hacking by using a utility called HTTPREFERER. But this utility has some issues. For instance, with JavaScript in Internet Explorer, it can be spoofed. In addition, certain firewalls and proxies can strip the information it’s supposed to carry out, causing some people to be unable to use their WordPress admin accounts the way they’re supposed to be able to.

Now, instead of the HTTPREFERER, a nonce is used; this is a number used once. It’s like a password that changes every twelve hours, and is valid for twenty-four hours. The nonce is unique to the specific WordPress install being used, the WordPress user logged in, the action, the object of the action, and the 24-hour time of the action. When any of these is changed, the nonce is no longer valid. All plugin authors will have to ensure the nonce is added to their forms and other interactive capabilities that may be affected.

Upgrading from WordPress 2.0.2 to 2.0.3

As with any upgrade, the first thing you should do is back up everything: the files in your WordPress directory, the database plugin with any changes, and any data you have added should be backed up as well. In addition, it might be a good idea to do a second backup of your entire WordPress directory just in case something goes wrong with your install.

Now remove the wp-admin directory entirely. Also remove the wp-includes directory, except for any translation and language files or directories you may have added; add these files to the backup files you created earlier. Finally, remove all the files where WordPress is installed with the exception of the file http://wp-config.php.

Now you’re ready to start your install. Download and unpack the 2.0.3 version in a separate install directory. You want to make sure you can control files and directories you copy over. Now install the new wp-admin and wp-includes directories.

Install the rest of the files of the top directory, with the exception of the http://wp-config-sample.php file.

Now enter the admin panel. You should see the following message: “Your database is out of date. Please upgrade.” Follow the link provided to update the database, and follow the directions there. Now remove the files wp-admin/upgrade.php and wp-admin/install.php. Download the plugin fix; add it and activate it. Replace your backup files where they need to be, and do the comparisons if you’ve modified any of your earlier files. This should take care of the whole thing.

For geeks, there is also an upgrade package that only includes the changed files. Look for it under Changes Diff (2.0.2 > 2.0.3). It consists of a zip file that is much quicker to install, but you should be certain you can handle it before using it.

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Categories: light-hearted Tags: , , ,

Web Design Tutorial – How to install WordPress

July 26th, 2010 4 comments


Nick and James from Creare demonstrate a basic WordPress 2.8 installation and highlight some important features to take advantage of when installing. This website design tutorial is intended for people who are new to WordPress.

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WordPress Salesletter Websites Creator

July 25th, 2010 No comments

This unique software is a WordPress Theme that users can create professional salesletters (Dan Kennedy, Michel Fortin, Yanik Silver style) as well as it has the option to expand their site to add a blog, contact us page, affiliate pages and hundreds more.
WordPress Salesletter Websites Creator

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WordPress Article Automation

July 24th, 2010 No comments

WordPress Article Automation is a 3 pack of plugins to help Automate the process of adding content to your site. Whether it is adding Mass amounts of Plr, Unique Articles, RSS feeds or even repeating a post for Maximum Exposure, this pack is for you.
WordPress Article Automation

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WordPress Websites Secrets

July 23rd, 2010 No comments

Product Description
Learn why so many marketers are secretly using blogs to create easy make in a day static websites.

Discover a wonderful trick many top internet marketers know. (The ones who create hundreds of minisites, and have multiple business ventures in full swing at any given time.)

You can take an afternoon to create an easy WordPress blog with this step by step guide.

Learn:

* How to set up a wordpress blog on your own site

* How to easily… More >>

WordPress Websites Secrets

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Categories: light-hearted Tags: , ,

How to use WordPress to design to a website.

July 22nd, 2010 25 comments


Learn to design a website using the popular blogging program, WordPress. Follow along with veteran web designer, Matt Hackney, as he creates a racing website from scratch that is simple enough for anyone to do. For more videos, check out our website: www.hardmagic.com

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Categories: light-hearted Tags: , ,

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