No, the webhost did not change, I finally shelled out some cash for a domain name of my own. This in preparation of some future projects, and WordCamp MSP in November. More details on the projects will come later. In the mean time, feel free to start updating your links. Note that mtekk.weblogs.us will still link to the same blog for as long as it is hosted on weblogs.us (I do not have any intention of switching hosts any time soon).
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
On this day, way back in 2005, the first post on this blog was published (there is one article that predates the blog, it was added after the first post and backdated). Since that time a lot has changed. WordPress has changed dramatically over the past five years. This blog originally ran WordPress 1.5; it now runs WordPress 3.0 beta 1.
Being the five year anniversary of the beginning of this blog, changing themes today seems appropriate. This is Cran-Berry 2. While it is a little rough around the edges, in the coming weeks it will be polished and expanded upon. Once WordPress 3.0 is released, a public version of Cran-Berry 2 will be available.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Question: What causes the following error in Apache’s error logs?
[IP_address] Undeclared entity warning at line 226, column 1
Answer: A fairly popular, yet, poorly written WordPress plugin.
The first time this error hit the Weblogs.us error_log, one had no clue what was causing it. Unfortunately, the error does not indicate what file triggers the error. However, it will include the referring URI, if applicable. That’s how one found the specific virtual host on the Weblogs.us server that was triggering the error. Next, was finding the infringing code. To do this, one added define('WP_DEBUG', true); to the wp-config.php file for the virtual host. Now, there will be an avalanche of errors and warnings for most sites, all that needs to be done is sift through them and look for ones like “undeclared variable” and “undeclared index”.
Now, what was the actual culprit? The Twitter-for-Wordpress plugin. Specifically, lines 100, and 158. Line 100 tries to increment a non-initialized variable. To fix the issue on line 100, add a new line between line 66 and 67 and place in it $i = 0;. The error on line 158 is it tries to use the undeclared variable $username. What probably happened was author copied the line directly from line 53, while not properly modified for its location. Line 158 should read:
$messages = fetch_rss('http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/'.$item['username'].'.rss');
After these two changes everything should be good to go. Yes, the plugin author was notified of these problems. We’ll see when they officially get fixed in the plugin.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
December is almost past, and still little to show for it here. It’s not that one wanted it to be this way, but it just happened. Now into the first full week of “Winter Break” , one would think there would be time to do things that could not be done in the semester. However, thanks to some interesting projects one is part of, the free time will not show itself for yet another week or two. That brings us to January 2009.
There will be no Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0.3, no critical or minor bugs have been reported for 3.0.2, so this month’s release would be pointless. Comming January, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1.0 will feature some changes in the way default settings are loaded. This may cause a change in the anchor templates, but will allow localized default settings. The Tabular plugin will be removed, and its usefull parts integrated into the Administrative interface.
Berry will be updated with the Build 100 Cran-Berry code. There will be a design refresh either in late January or in late March. No code names yet, but it will probably be a red color scheme again.
A new, previously unannounced navigation plugin will rear its head near the end of December to early January. It is dependent on theme setup, and has been tested to work with Berry and the WordPress Default theme. More on that next week.
The Weblogs.us transistion to its new apache server is suspended until later this week. We setup the new server. Now a process of testing, transfering, and opening up ports on the firewall must take place before things go live. Expect the transition to take place near the end of the year.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]