Category: General

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Fixing author pages in WP

I just noticed that my author pages at wedin.org were pretty messed up and now that I’ve fixed them I figured I’d make some notes about what I did.

The first problem: Giving the admin a nickname that’s the same as an existing username breaks that user’s author page.

I thought it would be nice to give the admin user the nickname ‘isaac’ because then when I commented on posts without remembering to log out the comments would say ‘isaac’ rather than the Orwellian ‘admin.’ Obviously, I wasn’t thinking straight – one should only do serious admin tasks when logged in as the admin. The danger of making a mistake isn’t the only drawback – it somehow confuses WordPress, breaking the author archive page of the user whose nickname the admin uses. This may only happen with permalinks – I didn’t investigate it extensively.

The solution: Set the admin’s nickname back to ‘admin’ (and log out after doing admin stuff!). Or I guess you could promote your normal user high enough to do most admin tasks.

The second problem: Broken author pages for users with ‘@’ and such in their usernames.

Some of my users have registered using their email addresses as usernames. That shouldn’t be a problem – WordPress allows ‘@’ and ‘.’ in usernames, so it should be able to deal with them, right? Apparently not with permalinks turned on. Without permalinks the author page receives an author ID to identify which posts to show. With permalinks the author page receives the author nicename to identify which posts to get. Unfortunately, the WordPress function the codex suggests using to get the author info is get_userdatabylogin(), which wants (duh) the author’s login. The login has things like ‘@’ and ‘.’ but the nicename does not. So, for my users crazy enough to use their email addresses for login names the author page was showing nothing.

The solution: Rewrite the author page to use this query instead of get_userdatabylogin():

$wpdb->get_row("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->users WHERE user_nicename = '$queried_name'");

This should probably be in a cascade of if…else statements so that turning off permalinks doesn’t break the author page.

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Photopress 0.8.3

It took forever to wring out the bugs in this version.

New features and fixes:

  • Fixed the problem with uploading in IE, in the process made the MIME/extension checking work better.
  • Better error handling, including a check for the GD module for PHP.
  • Added some support for the rich editor in WordPress 2.0-RC1. If you’re not using the rich editor it works as usual.

Download Photopress 0.8.3: photopress.zip OR photopress.tar.gz

Updates: Fixed the problem that Prashant found with having 2 images next to each other on a line (me and regexps never have gotten along that well). Fixed the problem Miroslav found with the no-album option (it was being ignored entirely). Fixed a problem Kaibo found with using exif_imagetype – now it falls back to the slower getimagesize if you don’t have the exif stuff installed.

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crontab + wget = Tivo for internet radio

Let’s say your favorite radio station has an MP3 stream. Unfortunately, your favorite radio show on that station is on at some odd hour. Or you’re just scatterbrained and forget to tune in. You desperately need to record the show so you can listen to it whenever you’d like. Using cron, wget, and a little shell script it’s pretty easy.

Find the stream address

At my favorite station, KEXP, clicking an MP3 stream gives you a .pls file, which contains the stream address. Normally, you’d open this in an audio client such as xmms and listen away. Instead, download the .pls file so you can view the stream address.

Write a script

Here’s an example bash script that records a show with wget, using the date to make a unique name for the show. URL is the stream address you found earlier. LPath is the path where you want to put your recorded shows.


#!/bin/bash

Date=$(date +%F-%k-%M)
URL="http://internet-radio-station.net:8000/"
LPath="/home/joe/music/radio_shows/"

/usr/bin/wget $URL -O ${LPath}radio_show-${Date}.mp3

Save the script to your bin folder as something like “radioshowrec” and test it out – run it for a few seconds, stop it, then listen to the resulting mp3 file.

Setting up the cron jobs

First, make sure your user can use cron. I did this by switching to superuser mode and making an /etc/cron.allow file with my username in it.

Next edit your crontab file by typing “crontab -e” and add a pair of lines like this for each show you want to record:


00 12 * * 1 /home/joe/bin/radioshowrec
00 13 * * 1 /usr/bin/killall wget

The first line starts the recording at noon every Monday. The second line stops it at 1 pm. It will actually kill all of the wgets that might be running – if you plan on having more than one going at once you should figure out a smarter way to stop the recording.

Since the above script makes files with unique names, the files will pile up after a while. Personally, I just want to listen to the most recent show, so I leave the date part out of the script, overwriting the old file every week.

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General

Photopress 0.8.1

I almost just appended a note about this version to the last post, but some of the new stuff is pretty spectacular. As usual, please let me know if you find anything broken.

New features and fixes:

  • Automatic permalink setup. Turn on the option and update your permalink structure at Options:Permalinks. Thanks to this page in the codex.
  • Paging and sorting in mass edit and browse were a bit broken but should be fixed now. I also added sorting by category.
  • The mass editor now has a delete field, and also popup links to images.
  • I added a category manager where you can change category names.
  • album.php has been renamed to pp_album.php. Now you don’t have to rename it if you copy it to your theme folder.
  • Choice of CSS classes when inserting images into posts. Enter a space-separated list of classes to use in options, with your favorite first.
  • Inserting code from the uploader or browser doesn’t close the window anymore.

Download Photopress 0.8.1: photopress.zip OR photopress.tar.gz

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Photopress 0.8

I think I’ve squished enough of the bugs to share this version. Let me know about any bugs or annoyances you find.

New features:

  • Path and addresses in Options – if Photopress guesses badly you can easily enter a new path and addresses.
  • Up to ten images can be uploaded at once. (Is this enough?)
  • Now inserts simplified image tags, cleaning up the posting window a lot. (Should this be optional?)
  • Paging everywhere and better queries so working with lots of images is much smoother.
  • One button (Photos) instead of two; rewritten browse and upload tools.
  • Sorting all over the place. (Except in the album – should visitors be able to sort the album?)

When upgrading, you should probably first de-activate, delete the old plugin files, upload the new files, then re-activate the plugin. Manage:Photopress has a couple of tools to clean up your DB table if necessary.

Download Photopress 0.8: photopress.zip OR photopress.tar.gz