Tag: Archive

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LaunchPad tweaks for WPMU

LaunchPad is a great WordPress theme for parked domains — allows you to accept requests for rss subscriptions to your site while you are still in development, thus you can build a database of people interested in your website before you even launch.  I’m using it with a WPMU project of mine and had to tweak a couple of the files to get the functionality I liked.  Here’s the files and the changes:

themes/launchpad/index.php      changed around line 29 that read:

<p class=”rss-subscribe”><a href=”<?php if($lp_feedburner_address) { echo $lp_feedburner_address; } else { bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); }?>”

to

<p class=”rss-subscribe”><a href=”http://MY_WPMU_DOMAIN_NAME.com/feed/rss/”

obviously put in your own domain name where it says MY_WPMU_DOMAIN_NAME.com

I also changed the footer to be kind of an advertisement for myself as the developer of the project, by changing around line 42 from:

<p>Powered by <a href=”http://wordpress.org/” title=”WordPress”>WordPress</a>, <a href=”http://feedburner.google.com/” title=”Google FeedBurner”>Google FeedBurner</a> and <a href=”http://themeshaper.com/” title=”A ThemeShaper Theme”>ThemeShaper</a>.</p>

to

<p>Powered by <a href=”http://mu.wordpress.org/” title=”WordPress Mu”>WPMU</a>, php/mysql application development and customization by <a href=”http://www.iwebspider.com/” title=”iwebspider.com”>iWebspider</a>, lead developer <a href=”http://www.iwebspider.com/stefan_christian/” title=”Stefan Christain Densmore”>Stefan Christian Densmore</a>.</p>

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branding osTicket

One of the best things about Free Open Source Software is that you not only can tweak the code, you can re-brand it as well.  The osTicket platform has been a favorite of mine to track customer support requests.  The development community for osTicket came out with a new release of the software recently, here’s where the banner images are located (relative to the install folder) if you are interested in re-branding the software:

/images/… logo-support.gif, and ostlogo.jpg

/scp/images/… poweredby.jpg, logo.jpg and logo2.jpg

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WP-Table plugin – Fatal Error fix for WordPress 2.5+

The following post first appear at http://www.wpsnippets.com/2008/06/wp-table-plugin-fatal-error-fix/

WP-Table plugin by Alex Boelinger is a unique WordPress plugin that allows admins to create tables, by this I mean the ones with rows and columns like in Excel, easily in WordPress. It is the only one that I am aware of at the moment that makes it possible to add actual tables without putting-in extra HTML when creating new posts and pages.

However, activating the latest version (1.52) of the plugin triggers a fatal error (shown below) in WordPress 2.5+:

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Fortunately there is a quick fix that can be done to resolve this issue, where the full credit for this solution goes to Michael Bester, the developer of the Kimili Flash Embed, who posted a comment on Jovel Stefan’s Embedded Video Plugin post about a fix to ensure that a plugin should check for the buttonsnap class upon activation.

This class is used to add a button to your WordPress editor, and should only ever be loaded once, so if any other plugin uses buttonsnap, it will cause the fatal error to occur.

To resolve this problem, find Line 344 in wp-table.php

require_once(WPTABLE_ABSPATH.'js/buttonsnap.php');

and add before it:


if(!class_exists('buttonsnap'))

So ultimately you should see this:

// ButtonSnap needs to be loaded outside the class in order to work right
if(!class_exists('buttonsnap'))
require_once(WPTABLE_ABSPATH.'js/buttonsnap.php');

I tested this on a local install of WordPress 2.5.1, and it worked very well. This quick fix has also been posted on the WordPress Support Forums, and hopefully others will find it helpful as well.

Any feedback would be brilliant! If it works for you, please let me know by posting in the comments. Similarly, if it doesn’t work for you, then again, please do post! I don’t see the plugin requiring any further edits for the time being (apart from new features) and am confident that it will also work with later WordPress versions as well.

UPDATE 20/07/08: Apparently the plugin does work with WP 2.6!
UPDATE 28/12/08: And in WP 2.7 as well!

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matrix rain code

Here’s the code used to the display the matrix rain, thanks mgccl.com:

<p align=”center”><img src=”http://mgccl.com/gallery2/g2data/albums/2007/03/advancedmatrixphp.gif” alt=”matrixrain” height=”400″ width=”600″ /> </p>

This code can be placed in .php or .html documents, works for pages and posts in wordpress, and can be added to .css files.  Fairly easy for novice users, send a post if any questions.

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mini-meta widget hack for mu

the minimeta widget by daniel huesken works with mu when put in the plugins folder, except that it never produces a registration link for new users. Otherwise it’s a very useful widget for customizing your login window. You can find it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/minimeta-widget/

I add the following code around line 151, which adds a permanent registration link (for those who are not already logged in):

global $user_level ;
get_currentuserinfo();
if (” == $user_level) {
echo ‘<li><a href=”wp-signup.php”>Register</a></li>’;
}

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Sweet Skin Color Hack for wp-forum plugin

This hack can be used with any of the skin themes that come with the wp-forum plugin by Fredrik Fahlstad, but looks best with “sweet”.  This hack changes the color of the title bars and large folder graphics, and requires an image editor with a gradient tool (for the folder graphic to look best), I used photoshop.  3 files are hacked in the wp-forum/skins/sweet/images folder: folder_big.gif, cellpic3.gif, and cellpic1.gif.

Its pretty self explanatory once you know which files to edit and open them in an image editor.  Just change their color, then re-upload to the images folder where you found them.  The hardest part for a novice image editor is using the gradient tool to get the folder image to look nice.  Here’s a hint: you can combine the use of the lasso and gradient tool to capture the color area you want to change.

I had to hit refresh twice, per file change, on my browser (Firefox) to see the changes employed.

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wp-forum skin hack for mu

These are directions for hacking the wp-forum plugin to work with wordpress mu.  The need for the hack derives from problems trying to change sub-blog forum skins.  Using the admin interface, you can change the main blog skin from the default setting, but not any of the sub-blogs.  Basically anytime a sub-blog tries to change the skin of their forum, it not only fails to do so, reverting back to the default skin, but actually changes the forum skin on the main blog instead.  The current work around that I’m using allows EITHER all sub-blogs and the main blog to have the same forum skin (other than the default skin), OR the main blog forum to have a different skin from uniform skin that all the sub-blog forums have.  [Note that the later of these two options DOES NOT STOP THE PROBLEM of users with admin privileges on sub-blogs from changing the main blog’s forum skin accidentally. ]

The hack can be done prior to uploading the plugin, or by directly editing the files live.   Basically you are going to replace the default skin.  The plugin comes preloaded with three skins to choose from aside from default: sweet, tiger, and web2.  Delete the default skin folder.  Open up the folder of the skin you want to use and edit the style.css file, changing line #2 where it says “Skin name: whatever” to “Skin name: Default”.  Then change the name of the folder to Default and you’re done.   The skin folders are located at  /wp-content/plugins/wp-forum/skins/

If you want the main blog’s forum skin to be different from the uniform sub-blog forum skin, select the skin you want in the admin interface.  If you want all the forums skins to be the same, and thereby disable sub-blogs ability to accidentally change the main blog’s forum skin, delete all the skin folders except for the new default one.

The original plugin, written by Fredrik Fahlstad, can be found at fahlstad.se/wp-plugins/wp-forum/