Tech from Hel

A Simple Fix for “Simple Tags”

helene — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:26:28 +0000

I am not an official Wordpress tester, but to keep up with the latest changes and to make sure my own plugins are always compatible with upcoming versions of Wordpress, I run Wordpress development version on this site.

There are several plugins installed on this site that end up also getting tested for compatibility with upcoming versions of Wordpress, although that is not my intention. Wassup, cFormsII, Bad Behavior, and Akismet all run successfully on Wordpress 2.7 development version . One plugin that failed was Simple Tags version 1.5.7 by Amaury Balmer. This plugin produced an error because of a test in the code that rejects unrecognized versions of Wordpress. Fortunately the fix was simple.

Wordpress 2.6 Crashes Safari

helene — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:18:07 +0000

Soon after I upgraded to Wordpress 2.6, I discovered that the Wordpress' dashboard and post/page editor cause the Safari 1.3 browser to crash. Though other Wordpress 2.6 admin functions continue to work fine in Safari 1.3, including the widget functions, without the Dashboard, users can't login, and without the post/page editor, users can't update their blog. This makes Wordpress 2.6 completely unusable in Safari 1.3.

A quick search of the forums showed that this problem has cropped up for other Wordpress users and that it may extend to Safari 2 as well. Here what one user had to say on wordpress.com forums.

Installing A More Secure Wordpress

helene — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:19:22 +0000

Step-by-Step Instructions to Install and Configure WordPress with Better Security

When I went looking for a blogging software, I checked user ratings, server requirements, amount of documentation, available CSS templates and plugins, and did a test install of a few blogs. In the end I chose to go with WordPress because it was one of the easiest to install (it worked on the first try), it had built-in CMS (content management) capability, it had the best documentation, the most plugins, and lots of freely available CSS templates.

I installed and configured WordPress as CMS and blog for my existing website. I put WordPress in a subdirectory of my site's root directory because this is more secure and did not overwrite my existing web documents and applications. The install went smoothly and afterwards, I was delighted to find that the URLs for my other web documents and applications continued to work seamlessly, without interference from WordPress.

Below are instructions to install your own copy of WordPress on a new or existing site, with improved security...

YouTube in a Thickbox

helene — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:16:09 +0000

Embedding Videos: YouTube in a Thickbox

Note: This is a duplicate of an article I originally wrote on April 29, 2008 on the Supernatural Station website.

"Thickbox" is a great way to showcase a youTube video on your web site. Thickbox's light box effect gives videos a dramatic, theatre-like feel. You only need to add a few extra lines of code to the preset embed code supplied by YouTube.com to show your video inside a "thickbox". This method works with embed code from youTube.com as well as embed code from other video hosting sites.

Flv Videos in a Thickbox

helene — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:52:38 +0000

Embedding Videos: Flv Videos in a Thickbox

NOTE: This is an updated version of an article I originally wrote on September 6, 2007 that was posted on SupernaturalStation.org.

Step-by-step instructions on how to display a flash video (.flv) inside a thickbox using JW's Flvplayer

For those of you wondering how to implement JW's Flv player inside a Thickbox, it is actually quite simple. Here's how:

1. If you don't already have them, download jquery and ThickBox 3 and add them to your page's head section

jquery.js is available at docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery. ThickBox 3.1 is a disparate group of files and images, thickbox.js, thickbox-compressed.js, thickbox.css, loadingAnimation.gif, and macFFhack.png, located at jquery.com/demos/thickbox. You need to download all the Thickbox files and install them in a single common directory, "thickbox", on your web server.

In your document head, add javascript links to jquery.js and thickbox.js, a style link for thickbox.css, and a javascript variable definition that points to "loadinganimation.gif".