Well, after fixing some bugs in Hide Dashboard, a new version has been put up. Hopefully, this version will now work the way you think it will work vis-a-vis the options 
Also, Serene Theme has been updated to keep in line with Hide Dashboard’s Meta Widget changes.
Hide Dashboard Plugin (version 1.3)
Serene Theme (version 1.1)
Enjoy!
I’ve finally found some time to update my two plugins - Hide Dashboard and MyGallery to WordPress Converter. In short, the following changes were made:
MyGallery to WordPress Converter 1.1
Hopefully, these changes will make the plugins more useful.
As a follow up to my rant in a previous posting, I’ve actually done something about it and put it on the net. Maybe someone can find it useful. Anyhow, I’ve updated my WordPress, and made various changes and updates overall. Hopefully, this current set of software will last, oh, at least the next ten minutes, before being considered out of date.
Recently, I ranted about how WordPress did not give me a clear way to upgrade from external plugins like MyGallery to new features that have been absorbed into “core”. Finally, I decided to do something about it, and thankfully, everything is open sourced, and so I actually could do something about it. And now that I have, maybe I should make it available publicly as well. Now, be forewarned, this is not a plugin which I intend to maintain very much, since I only need to use it once myself. But it could be useful to others.
In short, this plugin helps to convert galleries that use the MyGallery Plugin by Thomas Boley to use the WordPress attachments system and built-in gallery shortcode that comes with WordPress 2.5 or newer.
If you are:
then please, do not use this plugin, because you may lose valuable data! This is a plugin for advanced and experienced WordPress users.
This plugin will attempt to convert MyGallery installations and related shortcodes to the new WordPress Gallery attachments and shortcode system. The actual image files used by MyGallery are kept in the same place and merely added to WordPress. Please note that not all MyGallery shortcodes are converted, so some manual editing is still required. Also, the conversion is only performed on published posts - unpublished drafts, revisions, etc are ignored.
This plugin will directly change WordPress tables, post data, and files in MyGallery. A full backup, ready to restore, is required - better still if you can try it first with on a “mirror” of your blog before actually doing it on the live one.
After the conversion is complete, you will probably still have to go through your blog posts to verify if the layouts are correct. Some (many?) page layouts may need to be edited and changed because there are no exact matches between the layout options in MyGallery shortcodes and WordPress. So, after the conversion is complete, please print or save the results page as a reference of the changes that were made so that you know which pages/posts to check/edit.
Also, due to the fact that WordPress attachments make use of parent/inherited posts as a way to associate posts with the attachments, the conversion process will associate attachments to the first matching published post. Therefore, having the same MyGallery gallery on multiple pages will probably not convert properly. Watch out for “(Previously Added) Parent Post ID:” in the results to indicate that an attachment has been used more in more than one posts.
Steps to take:
All changes made by this plugin are irreversible - use this plugin at your own risk!
Latest Update (2008-08-23): Made a bugfix to import the description and caption (alttext) fields from MyGallery into WordPress as well. Also, added a variable to allow users to change the path of their MyGallery installation from the default wp-content/myfotos/ directory. You will need to edit the plugin php file to change this variable (near the top).
Download Sample Output (PDF File)
So, WordPress 2.5 has just been released. Its new gallery system is really good, I would like to use it. Unfortunately, the WordPress team only added such a feature in to the basic system long - far too long - after picasa and flickr made web galleries a norm. So WordPress users like me had to turn to advanced plugins like myGallery and features like Lightbox to add those much needed “flash”. And now, there is no clear upgrade path for users (who had no choice earlier but to use those plugins) to convert to the WordPress gallery.
Some of the gallery schemes used in WP25 conflict with myGallery, and they cannot co-exist until myGallery is updated. Thankfully, Alex Rabe’s NextGen Gallery has been updated in time. But this is cold comfort for someone like me. When I chose myGallery, NGN was nowhere to be found. And now, with say hundreds of images in myGallery, what is the next step?
The WordPress development team should take into account the issues faced by users who had to deal with WP adding features into core that third party developers provided. The whole thing with Tagging is being repeated with media galleries. What’s next - caching?
Furthermore, at this point, I can’t even run the myGallery and WP25 gallery side-by-side. So I have to convert to NextGen Gallery (which thankfully has an import from myGallery function), then upgrade to WP25? This is a big job needing Big Hairy Balls. And all the time, there is this banner reminding not just me, but all my subscribers that I need to upgrade.
I am not objecting directly to the fact that the WordPress development team has adopted third-party features into core. I am merely saying that when they do something like that, the WP development team should consider the impact on people who did use the third-party function and made it so popular that it was folded into core. It is like screwing the very users who “voted” that the feature is a good one in the first place. If this sort of thing keeps going on, plugin developers will get pissed off and maybe I should bite the bullet and consider Expression Engine - at least I can scream dollars and sense into them.
Phew! What a day!
I must admit, there were times when I was sitting nervously in front of my PC, wondering if things were going to be OK, or if I would end up wiping out several hundred MB worth of online web data. Of course I have backups! But even with backups, it is still scary when performing major surgery on a website..
Anyway, I have since upgraded WordPress from 2.0.5 to 2.3.1, and at the same time, changed and updated various plugins and so on and so forth. Upgrading the WordPress itself was a breeze. I also used the Maintenance Mode plugin to lock people out until I was ready to have them back in. Since was was going to redo all the plugins and themes, I just threw away most of the wp-content folder, and just upacked the new WordPress. Copied over the wp-config.php file, run the upgrade program, and boom, website is back online. Then I added all the plugins, themes and widgets, enabled them and spent some time configuring them for their various options etc. All this, I did for both DW.Net and for Route 901.
Then came the really scary portion. I decided to change the DB collation type from the default latin1/latin1_swedish_ci to UTF-8. Luckily, I had the UTF-8 Database Converter plugin from g30rg3_x to help me. Now, the plugin has very scary warning pages saying it doesn’t support WP 2.3.1, and you can lose all your data, yadda, yadda, yadda. However, I was already completely out of my mind by the time I reached this point, and said, “F* Me!” and hit “Go”…
I was incredibly lucky, and everything worked. All the pages, etc were still there, and nothing was lost.
That was when the sky fell down. All the graphics from the MyGallery plugin was missing. It seemed that the gallery information and images were all still there and correct, but it kept looking for an “a” folder in the URL. I tried to go look in phpMyAdmin and see if there was a problem with the table data, thinking maybe I could edit the fields by hand. No luck, the database looked OK. Fearing the worst, I was about to go hacking around in MyGallery code to see where the problem was, when on a hunch, I decided to try disable the MyGallery plugin, and re-enable it. Wah-lah, what do you know, it worked. I just needed to resetup and reconfigure the MyGallery plugin and everything was back to normal.
After that, it was a matter of editing tags, rechecking post/page data and so on and so forth. But, basically, things were back to normal. So, here we are, with DeepWave.Net 4.1 - do check out the new Serene Theme and the updated Hide Dashboard plugin - both of which are being released at the same time and used at this site.
It should be noted that the site upgrade also owes its success to one key unsung hero: XAMPP Lite.
The entire upgrade process and all themes, plugins and widgets was tested and rehearsed on my Windows PC before a single modification was made to the live server. This rehearsal even included real live database data from the server imported into the XAMPP test environment. I am happy to say that thanks to XAMPP, the upgrade process was smooth and generally uneventful except for the one problem with the UTF8 conversion and MyGallery plugin.
Conclusion: All’s well that ends well, and hello to widgets, tags and shoutboxes!
With the changes to DeepWave.Net, a new theme was required (of course and so, Serene was born. A simple, clean and neat theme with widget support and easily customisable code. Includes a choice of 3 banner images, support for Hide Dashboard plugin, WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin and comments/trackbacks in Pages. Tested with Firefox 2, IE6 and IE7, minimum 800×600 resolution.
Bonus: Includes the Manic Depressive Web Server!
For a screenshot, just take a look around DeepWave.Net, this is the Serene theme. Banner images are below:
Photographs are from Hakone, Japan - Copyright (c) 2007 Patrick Khoo
One of the most common comments about the Hide Dashboard plugin was that while it “hid” the dashboard, it did not change the default view of subscribers when they log in (which is still the Dashboard). The new updated Hide Dashboard gives you an option to use its own Meta section as a widget (instead of the WordPress default), and thus bypassing the Dashboard completely for subscribers. This makes it more seamless and cleaner for subscribers.
Just as soon as I upgraded the whole of DeepWave to 2.0.6, I find out that 2.0.7 is right around the corner. Sigh.. Nevertheless, I think I’ve nailed down the proper procedures, along with the necessary diffs and backup scripts to do another painless upgrade in the future.
Another interesting piece of news is that some of the key members of WordPress are starting a new project called Habari. It remains to be seen if it will be as good as or better than WordPress of course. Right now, only SVN checkout is allowed, but some kind of developer preview will be available soon, I guess. It is interesting though that in this free world, it is possible to challenge the "establishment" and forge your own way should you feel the need to do so. Now, while many may highlight the various advantageous of a more authoritarian approach, it is important to realise that this sort of "rebellion" every once and a while is very useful to produce the quantum leap forwards.
For example, Apple’s new iPhone is a dramatic change from convention. One of its groundbreaking changes is introduced simply by having only one hard button on the entire device. Some (including myself) argue about tactile feedback, SMS-ing in the dark, a hard-button slient/vibrate mode (ala Palm Treo) etc. But regardless, the iPhone is a (dare I say it) revolutionary device. Which phone company executive would have ever agreed to removing every button except for one? So, it took a rebellious, dare-to-be-different, no-past-historical-baggage company, namely Apple, to "rebel".
I’m sure there will be all sorts of issues with the iPhone, from 3rd-party apps, to battery life etc. But simply because it is a device that dares to be so different, using it will probably be a very different experience. I can’t wait. Ditto for Habari.