Internal server errors, aka Error 500, can happen under WordPress just as often as they happen under practically anything else running on a server. You may think that the error itself will tell a tech all they need to know, but it really doesn’t say anything. In fact, internal server errors are the server equivalent of a patient explaining to a doctor, “I did something and now I don’t feel well.” Before you ask for support, internal server errors are often caused by plugin or theme function conflicts, so you should start by manually resetting all of your plugins and your theme, which we already covered in WordPress and the White Screen of Death. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, it’s possible that a .htaccess rule could be the source of the problem. To check for this, access your server via FTP or SFTP and rename the .htaccess file. If […]
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‘WordPress FAQs’ Category
Perennial Weblog Tools Collection community favorite Who Sees Ads can be used to show ads only to certain visitors – such as people who have arrived on your site from a search engine. It’s a useful way to improve your click-through-ratio, and please your regular readers by hiding ads from them. This is a quick introduction to using the plugin. Showing ads only to search engine visitors is extremely simple – Who Sees Ads can do much, much more. Check out the links at the end of this article for more information. NOTE: Although the plugin says it’s for WordPress 2.5, it works fine with WordPress 2.92. I haven’t been able to test it with 3.0 yet because I don’t have any 3.0 test sites indexed in any search engines yet. Anyone else know if it works with 3.0? If you don’t want to do this with a plugin, you […]
[Continue Reading...]You might find yourself in the situation where you only want a script to run on a certain page. In fact, it’s good practice to only load your JavaScript files when absolutely necessary; loading the files on every single page is a big no-no (I’ve been chastised before for this). While on the blog’s front-end, WordPress makes it super-easy with its conditional tags. I’m not going to go over the conditional tags here, but here are a few you can take advantage of: is_home() is_front_page() is_single() is_page() And much more. While being selective on the front-end is relatively straightforward, the admin-panel is another monster. Sure, there’s the is_admin() conditional, but what if you only want to run a script in a certain section within the admin panel? One technique is to use the PHP reserved variable called $_GET. Say you have a plugin options page with a URL of: http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=my-plugin-file.php […]
[Continue Reading...]When adding scripts to WordPress, you will inevitably run into a small, but painful, issue of localization. Localizing a plugin or theme is relatively straightforward, but JavaScript presents its own difficulties since we can’t easily call the PHP functions necessary (which is one reason authors embed JavaScript in PHP files). Since embedding JavaScript in PHP files is never a good technique, we use localization to save the day. With JavaScript localization, you can use PHP magic to build your localized strings, and then use JavaScript to read/parse those strings. What you do with them is only limited to your imagination. Furthermore, if you display anything with JavaScript, chances are your users will want the strings to be localized. Fortunately, WordPress provides the ultra-handy wp_localize_script function. wp_localize_script The wp_localize_script takes three arguments: handle object_name l10n Handle The handle argument will be the same handle you use for your script name. For […]
[Continue Reading...]Starting in WordPress 2.1 (if I remember correctly), the awesome folks at Automattic gave us the even awesomer function of wp_enqueue_script. Before that, it was every plugin or theme author for himself. If you wanted to add in a script, it was hard-coded in. As you might imagine, this presented a ton of problems. Scripts were loaded twice, out of order, or even when they weren’t needed at all. Furthermore, some themes and plugins had the JavaScript embedded within the plugin’s or theme’s PHP file just to capture a few PHP variables. Not good! In order to add scripts properly to JavaScript, you must always keep your PHP and JavaScript separate. And by separate, I mean separate files. There’s just no excuse anymore (I’ll get into this in Part 2 of this series). The wp_enqueue_script function is the first step in loading your scripts properly. Not only can you add […]
[Continue Reading...]WordPress developers take security very seriously, and many security experts evaluate WordPress’s code for flaws. Security updates are made frequently to keep users safe. However, there are some extra steps you can take to make a fresh installation of WordPress more secure and protect against future attacks. Remember, no system can ever be completely secure, but taking preventative measures can be helpful. Much of this guide is based on the advice from the WordPress Codex article on hardening WordPress, but it is aimed at the WordPress beginner. In future articles, I’ll cover advanced security measures, hardening existing WordPress installs, and recovering hacked WordPress sites. This guide should be relevant for both WordPress 2.92 (the most recent stable release as of this writing) as well as WordPress 3.0. Overview: -Preliminary steps for securing your WordPress install -Changing defaults in WordPress to implement “security by obscurity” -Choosing strong passwords -Installing and configuring […]
[Continue Reading...]There comes a time you may have to leave one web host for another. No matter the reason the idea of relocating an entire website – especially one that has been online for sometime – can seem very daunting. With a WordPress based site – I found it easier than expected – way easier. My WindowsObserver.com website has 1,100 posts, 9 pages, 4 categories, 2,436 comments, uses 17 widgets, and has 35 active plug-ins. On top of all those elements I use Windows Live Writer to create all of my content and I use a good bit of screenshots and graphics in my posts. As a result I have over 40MB of images (1,100 files) to go along with my 1,100 postings. Now for the purposes of this story I am not going to get into a comparison of hosting services or the like. The landscape is massive out there […]
[Continue Reading...]WordPress.com is a wonderful platform and it provides users with an option to create free blogs without spending a single cent. However, a time comes when you might want to move to your own domain name which is a continuance of your WordPress.com blog. A few days ago Jeff posted some links on steps to move from the Blogger platform to WordPress and now Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration has written a comprehensive guide on moving from a WordPress.com domain to a WordPress.org domain. You will find lots of posts which are similar to this one, but I found this guide to be comprehensive and to the point, so if you are planning to move to your own domain now or in the near future, don’t forget to bookmark the article. How to Migrate your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Domain
[Continue Reading...]There may be times in WordPress where you would like to load the WordPress environment manually, and prevent plugins from loading. Two instances where this is ideal are: When loading an inline frame with Thickbox or Colorbox. When parsing AJAX requests in an external PHP file. To further give justification for this technique, I had a major plugin conflict with another plugin. My Ajax Edit Comments plugin had failed to work for one of my clients. After doing some troubleshooting, I determined it was a plugin conflict with “xyz” plugin. When I looked at the conflicting plugin’s code, I was able to pinpoint the problem to one patch of code, but failed to determine a fix. The conflicting plugin was causing my nonces to fail, as well as my AJAX processor to fail (since that uses nonces as well). Since my plugin’s editing options are all in a Colorbox inline […]
[Continue Reading...]About the Author
- James
James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.
Web: http://macmanx.com
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