Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: wordpress

  • CodePoet Interview with Me!

    CodePoet Interview with Me!

    Laugh a LittleLast week they asked if I was interested in an interview. Of course I said yes.

    Do I consider myself a developer? Yes. But I’m not a computer programmer. Sure I can manage my way around the block with many things, but I don’t do desktop software, or really server software very much. I just like to make the Internet more awesome.

    If you want to hear the story about how French Toast led to working at DreamHost, or my secret to how to not kill users, or even my next big WP book plan, go read my interview on Code Poet.

  • Multisite eBooks Updated for WordPress 3.5

    Multisite eBooks Updated for WordPress 3.5

    Cat BookNo, it’s not out yet, but it is in Release Candidate land. This means that you can download and test 3.5 RC3 now to help us debug and finish up so that WP 3.5 is ready ASAP. Nacin says, don’t put this on a live site unless you’re daring. I’m running it here, which is a Multisite, so I can tell you it works.

    In preparation for all this, I’ve updated WordPress Multisite 101 and WordPress Multisite 110 for use with 3.5. Very little was needed to be done, but getting to say “Yes, you can install WP in it’s own directory!” is one of the happiest things I get to write. The only thing that’ll make me happier is the day I say “It’s easy to change the blog slug.”

    In addition to adding in the 3.5 information, each ebook has been updated to reflect other community changes, such as new plugins to help you make it through the day, and the magic of per-site-registration.

    As always, my ebooks are Pay What You Will. I suggest a $5 donation, but I also encourage you to download, read it, find value, and then come back. Sadly I can’t do that with the Kindle copies, which are priced at $7.99 in order to break even with those costs.

    Oh and the reasons you should test 3.5 before it drops:

    • You wrote a theme/plugin
    • You support people who use WP
    • You want a much better media upload interface
    • You want to give WordPress it’s own directory and run multisite
  • Multisite Login Loop

    Multisite Login Loop

    Congratulations, you’ve decided to go Multisite and added in all your lines to your config file. You’re raring to go, and the last step is to log out and back in.

    But you can’t.

    You get to the login screen, enter your credentials, and the page just refreshes. What’s on earth is going on?

    This is actually a pretty rare thing, and I was only able to reproduce it when I moved my site on the server. The fix is actually pretty easy, and there are three things to do.

    1) Edit your wp-config.php.

    Visit https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ and get new salts/hashes. This should prompt your users to re-login and hopefully generate new cookies.

    2) Dump your cache.

    Sometimes, however, browsers are idiots and you have to flush the local cache. You shouldn’t need to dump caching plugins, since that doesn’t impact logins.

    3) Delete your cookies.

    I hate this one. Delete the cookies only for your domain if possible. Chrome hides this, but it’s doable for all sites.

    4) Check your .htaccess

    A lot of people miss this. When the directions say ‘Replace your .htaccess with this…’ what they mean is replace. And yet many people leave in the old WordPress rules. Remember to replace your .htaccess calls for WP with the correct one: Multisite .htaccess rules

    5) Check your wp-config.php again

    You need to have both define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true); and define('MULTISITE', true); in there.

    But what if you have this problem on Single Site? Do the same thing, but if you’re using CloudFlare, go check your settings. They’ve been known to cause problems with this, due to handling of redirects. Me and a coworker wasted a couple hours on that, before someone else pointed it out.

    Edited to add….

    6) Kick wp-config.php in the butt

    Tom McFarlin came up with added this to your file:

    define('ADMIN_COOKIE_PATH', '/');
define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '');
define('COOKIEPATH', '');
define('SITECOOKIEPATH', '');

    This kicks the cookies.

  • A Theme By Any Other Name

    A Theme By Any Other Name

    When I redesigned my sites earlier this year I struggled with some concepts that later drove me away from child themes and into the arms of custom plugins. The issue at heart is that the term ‘theme’ is used in far too broad and encompassing a manner, which confuses people when they find out there are different types of themes. And no, I don’t mean responsive vs static vs mobile. I touched on this earlier in the year when I reviewed the very concept of managed themes, but apparently I didn’t do it well enough.

    After some talks on WP-Hackers, I’ve got a better list.

    • Theme – The traditional theme.
      • Child/Parent Themes
    • Theme Framework – Can be used as a traditional theme, normally used as a parent.
      • Starter Theme – Never used as a standalone theme, only used to build themes.
      • Managed Theme – A theme that acts like a framework and a child at the same time.

    So let’s look at them in order.

    Theme

    Example: TwentyEleven, Buttercream, pretty much anything in wordpress.org

    This is the most basic, simple, normal theme in the world. It works right out of the box. You can make a child if you have to, but most people don’t. Themes may or may not be built off of a Theme Framework, but they can all be used as is, no alterations needed.

    Child / Parent Themes

    The short version here is that child themes are built off a parent. A parent can be any of the themes here (Theme, Managed, or Framework). A child theme can never be a ‘theme’ however, it can never stand on it’s own. And there are some themes that don’t support children at all. The parent/child relationship muddies the waters quite a bit when it comes to understanding what type of theme you have, but I would go with the basic rule of “If a theme requires another theme to be installed separately, it’s a child theme.”

    Theme Framework

    Examples: Hybrid, Genesis

    These themes are crazy robust. It’s like taking a normal theme, giving it steroids, and then handing you toolkits to expand it. Theme Frameworks can be used as a theme themselves, but often are treated as either Starters or Managed (see below). Frameworks come with a bunch of new, extra functions, along with documentation. Oh yes, these babies are documented so the theme guru can carry on, or the newbie can learn all about how themes work.

    There are two types of Frameworks (and this is where people will disagree with me a lot).

    Starter Theme

    Example: _s, Bootstrap, Hybrid

    These are used to build a parent theme off of, and cannot stand on their own as a theme (they’re skeletons). No one actually uses the theme as a theme on it’s own without forking and adding in their bells and whistles. These are turned into full-blown themes, and use the normal parent/child relationships from there out (which is why they’re a subset of frameworks). The starter theme itself is not a stand-alone theme, however, and the person who builds their parent theme off these ‘framework’ is responsible for updating their theme when the framework is updated.

    Managed Theme

    Example: Genesis, Thesis

    A managed theme is usually built on a framework, but unlike a starter theme, these can be used as is if you want. The real difference is not that, however, but that everything that you should be doing is within the WP Dashboard. All CSS tweaks, and even functions, can be added there-in, and not the functions.php files. Sometimes these are just parent themes that you don’t make children off of, ever, and others are children themselves of a framework. The best ones have a way to export your theme settings. To make things easier, you’ll find a lot of plugins that do what most people want, and they never need to edit code.

    Drawing The Lines

    What is a theme and what is a plugin, then? I was trying to explain this to a non-techy the other day, and jokingly said “You know how Barbie has all those clothes you can put on her, like the ski outfit? That’s a theme. A plugin is the Barbie Camper.” As horrific as the metaphor is, it’s not inaccurate. The theme changes the design, the plugin changes the function. Many theme developers hate putting code like Custom Post Types into their themes, because they feel that code should be separate from theme, and you should be able to keep your content, no matter what theme you’re using.

    For a long time I never used ‘starter’ as a theme designation, because to me the word ‘framework’ meant ‘a frame I build off of.’ With the conversations I had on wp-hacker in mind, I have reclassified themes into two types. Themes and Theme Frameworks. That’s it. That’s all you get. And yes, that means I think a Starter Theme is a framework. Look, Genesis, Hybrid-Core, and Bootstrap are all themes that someone uses to build other themes. They’re all frames that people can use to paint their own masterpiece.

    When you start looking at managed vs starter, it gets clearer. I call Genesis managed because that’s how the end users will see it. It’s not a starter, because people don’t fork Genesis to make a new theme, they use it and make children.

    The following explanation is using the two frameworks I’m most familiar with.

    Hybrid is a Starter Theme Framework. People download it, extend it into their own theme (see Oxygen, News, etc, all of which are stand-alone themes in the repository), and use those themes as full born ‘traditional looking’ themes. They can make children theme, but the point is not that Oxygen (built off Hybrid) is a theme or not, but that Hybrid, it’s source, is not a theme, but a Framework. They are separate things.

    Gensis is a Managed Theme Framework. It remains a separate parent theme, and technically can be used as is (it’s a very nice basic theme), so in that way it’s a Framework, but people don’t take that as a base theme and extend it like they do Hybrid. When you make a child theme of Genesis, it’s a true child theme, and never a copy of Genesis, renamed, and extended. Thus, Genesis could be a framework, but it’s really a managed theme because you never fork it, you always manage it via the dashboard or a child theme. Genesis is a theme built off a framework, and no one else uses that framework but Genesis.

    If you treat everything like a nail, you’ll always use a hammer. And a nail will go wherever you want if you hit it hard enough. I don’t suggest that, by the way, and as a principle of forcing your way on everyone, it’s not a good one. Treating all theme types as exactly the same will get you into trouble. If I extend one the nail/screw metaphor, one reason themes take on so much is that they can’t install plugins. Managed themes are a great example of themes crossing the line between being a hammer (theme) and a screw (plugin).

    A starter theme framework is Home Depot. All the tools are there, there’s even some help, but you’re going to pick out your tools and your lumber and build what you want. When you need more, you can invent and create anything you want. You may have to go back to the store and buy more nails and screws, but your limit is your own ability and imagination.

    A managed theme framework is Ikea, with that Ikea Toolkit. It has all the parts you need, and while you can hack the bookshelf into a standing desk with little work, and no extra parts, you’re meant to use it out of the box and follow their directions to design differently. And when you need more, there are plugins to add on to what you have to make it more. Within limits.

    My Recommendation

    Use what you like, but understand what you’re using.

    Themes are very personal. A plugin is easy, you want something to fit a specific niche, you find it, you use it. You may pick one over another based on ease of personal usability, but the final function is the real deal breaker. A theme, on the other hand, has to look right and feel right to use, and that’s very, very hard. No matter which one I use, and I use a theme, a framework, and a managed all on my sites, I make sure it meets my feel-good and my needs. I know I’m perfectly comfortable hacking functions to bend to my whim, but if I was handing over a theme to someone less techy, I would think twice.

    When you’re making a site for someone else, think about how much you want to support. The more complex a theme, and the harder for the users to edit it, the more calls you get. Even when you’re making a site for yourself, you have to know what kind of theme you have, and the best way to edit it. If you’re using a stand-alone theme, built on a framework or not, once you know how to use child themes you’re good to go. But a managed theme may be a new learning curve for you, so remember to take time and ask around for how to use this theme the best way.

    The best thing about learning to use a managed theme is that they’re usually used to the newbies, so for an experienced theme dev, that learning curve is short and shallow. You already know how to find the docs, read them, and apply them. You know that there will be options, between editing functions.php and using a plugin, and you can weigh the pros and cons for yourself and your clients.

    Understand what you’re using, understand how it works, and use what makes you happy.

  • Switching Network Types

    Switching Network Types

    This actually isn’t hard to do, but it can be tricky to complete if you don’t remember what you started with.

    To start with, let’s say I have a multisite with subdomains: ipstenu.loc. I’ve added in two subsites, foo.ipstenu.loc and bar.ipstenu.loc. But then I decide I really wanted to have ipstenu.loc/bar and ipstenu.loc/foo instead.

    The easy part is first. I know my wp-config.php has this:

    define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
define('MULTISITE', true);
define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true);
$base = '/';
define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'ipstenu.loc');
define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/');
define('SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);
define('BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE',1);

    All I have to change is the one line define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true); to define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false); and now I’m using sub-folders!

    But that means that foo.ipstenu.loc isn’t really valid. Amusingly, it doesn’t break anything at first, so the still will work. But once I change the .htaccess, things will get hinky, so I’m going to do the ‘hard’ part.

    Go in to Network Admin -> Sites and Edit each site that uses a subdomain and you’ll see this:

    Looks familiar, right? I’m going to change foo.ipstenu.org to ipstenu.org and the line with / becomes /foo/:

    As soon as I hit save, the site is ‘moved.’ Great! Do this for all my sites and .. wait. Now they look all ugly!

    That’s because I have to edit the .htaccess. Go to Network Admin -> Settings -> Network Setup, and copy the .htaccess from there, replace, and now it works too.

    The one last step is re-saving the permalinks in your main site, and remembering your links are about to break. What’s that now? Oh, yes, you see ipstenu.loc now gets /blog/ shoved in for any posts, so ipstenu.org/2012/postname became ipstenu.loc/blog/2012/postname. The catch here is that if you don’t resave the permalinks, they will continue to work until you do. Once you hit ‘save’ on permalinks, blog jumps in, and WordPress cheerfully redirects people for you, so you lose nothing.

    And now you know!

  • Google Apps

    Google Apps

    Google AppsI don’t like Google very much. However when my grandmother had a request for something to be added to her website, I realized Google’s email would actually be much easier for them, especially since her domain, taffys.org, is mapped to this server as a part of my Multisite network. Oh, it’s not terribly hard to make emails for her, but she wanted someone local to do that.

    There’s a minor story behind that, but the shortest version is she’s doing some totally awesome not-for-profit work with Parkinsons patients. One of the things she wants is an email, used by many people, to ‘collect’ messages like ‘I’ll be there.’ While I could do this on my site, it’s actually easier to get this up on Google, where I can tell people login to go to http://mail.google.com/a/taffys.org or http://mail.taffys.org and it’s something they know.

    I chose to do this by command line, for the experience. If I wanted to do it via cpanel and WHM, you’d go in to edit the DNS zone for the server and add in the mx records.

    MX Records

    The command dig mx taffys.org tells me what I have right now, which I knew was self referential.

    ; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-20.P1.el5_8.5 <<>> mx taffys.org
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 20605
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;taffys.org.			IN	MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
taffys.org.		14010	IN	MX	0 taffys.org.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
taffys.org.		78943	IN	NS	ns1.ipstenu.org.
taffys.org.		78943	IN	NS	ns2.ipstenu.org.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
taffys.org.		6943	IN	A	50.28.84.96

;; Query time: 11 msec
;; SERVER: 69.167.128.254#53(69.167.128.254)
;; WHEN: Tue Nov 13 08:09:06 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 104

    Looks like that for all my stuff. Okay, no problem, I go in and edit /var/named/taffys.org.db and find this:

    taffys.org. IN MX 0 taffys.org.

    Change it to this:

    ; Original
; taffys.org. IN MX 0 taffys.org.

; Gmail
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      10 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      30 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      20 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      30 ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      30 ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
taffys.org.             14400   IN      MX      30 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

    And then I ran /usr/sbin/rndc reload taffys.org to refresh it. But ... wait. Why does it still say I'm on taffys.org? Per usual, I didn't bother to change my TTL. As everyone always reminds me, if you make a change to DNS without lowering your TTL values, you're gonna have a bad time. Since I'm (rarely) in a rush for this stuff, meh. Besides, it takes 24-48 hours from changing TTL for it to be usable, and then I can make my change. Followed by waiting again, and then changing it back? DNS is pretty zippy these days. 72 hours max, and usually less, so I just don't.

    While I waited on that, I went ahead and made a Google Apps account for taffys.org. When you go to Google Apps they only show you business and education. I'm neither (though I suppose what I'm doing for Taffy would be non-profit). Really they're trying to sell, which makes sense. If you go to their pricing model, you'll see the free option. Unless you're running a business, click that.

    The rest of the directions are really straight forward, and Google shows you what to do. It's really just set up the account stuff from there out. The directions to make mail.yourdomain.com are under Create a custom web address.

    If you want to do it with a GUI, it's even easier. I went into my DNS management setup on cpanel and did this:

    Will I do this for other domains? Maybe. I think I'll be doing this for hosting going forward, since the people I host rarely (ever?) use cPanel. Congrats, Taffy! You're the first! Liv's the second.

    Now I have to fix up Taffy's site.