I’ve also found my plugin on Download Route.

Just updated brscPicasa plugin.

Changes:

• Added support for all major browsers (not only those that support CORS)
• Replace also links with https protocol (https://picasaweb.google.com/…)
• Bug fixed: links without usefull information (http://picasaweb.google.com/) should not be replaced
• Code optimizations
• Fixed and modified demo page, added demos with Colorbox

I’ve also added brscPicasa to jQuery plugins repositiory.

I host most of my photos on Picasa Web Albums so I needed some simple way to embed my photos or whole albums on my WordPress blog (or on any other page). I did not want to insert any special tags or shortcodes on pages because I don’t like them and they look stupid if you turn off plugin that uses those shortcodes. I just wanted to insert link to Picasa photo or album page on my page and it should be changed into photo or list of photos automagically

After searching and trying some WordPress plugins and inspired by my colleague’s post I decided to write my own jQuery plugin for my needs. And that’s how brscPicasa came to life. It works exactly as I wanted: it finds links to Picasa Web Albums on page and replaces them with photos or photos lists. No configuration needed, no special codes and special markup. It can be also easily integrated with any lightbox clone plugin (I use ColorBox on my websites). More info can be found on brscPicasa plugin page.

Recently I have discovered great caching plugin for WordPress: W3 Total Cache. I’m not going to write how to install and use it (well maybe I will in some other post later but there’s a lot of informations on the web about it) but I’ll tell you one thing: this plugin is much more powerful than very popular and commonly used WP Super Cache and you should at least try it. There is one problem with W3 Total Cache (W3TC) though: it’s not compatible with WP Hive plugin so if you’re using WP Hive you’ll have to hack W3TC and I’ll show you how I did it.

One important note: solution described here will only work for multiple blogs installed in subdomains, it’ll probably not work for those installed in subdirectories (but I did not tested that).

OK, let’s start.
Both Wp Hive and W3 Total Cache are using wp-content/db.php file and they both overwrite this file during installation (it is not WordPress core file). So when you install W3TC it’ll break WP Hive by overwriting wp-content/db.php with its own content. Solution is simple: you have to merge code needed by WP Hive and W3TC into one wp-content/db.php file. You’ll find source files for merge operation in wp-content/plugins/wp-hive/db.php and wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/wp-content/db.php. Do not concatenate those files because you may get some strange errors (well at least I had). So do not create something like this:

<?php
/*
 WP Hive...
 */
...
?>

<?php
/**
 * W3 Total Cache Database module
 */
...

but better something like that:

<?php
/*
 WP Hive...
 */
...


/**
 * W3 Total Cache Database module
 */
...

?>

Difference is simple: closing PHP tag was added at the end, closing and opening PHP tags between plugins code were removed.

OK, so now both plugins are properly installed but W3TC needs to know that we have multiblogging feature on our installation. Thankfully it has support for WPMU and WordPress 3 “network of sites” new feature. We will just modify two functions used by W3TC to detect if it’s in multisite WordPress environment. We’ll be editing wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/inc/define.php file. Find this portion of code (it’s somewhere around line 255):

/**
 * Returns if there is multisite mode
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
function w3_is_multisite()
{
    return (w3_is_wpmu() || w3_is_network_mode());
}

/**
 * Returns true if WPMU uses vhosts
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
function w3_is_vhost()
{
    return ((defined('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL') && SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL) || (defined('VHOST') && VHOST == 'yes'));
}

And change it into that:

/**
 * Returns if there is multisite mode
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
function w3_is_multisite()
{
    // WP Hive support hack
    return true;
    return (w3_is_wpmu() || w3_is_network_mode());
}

/**
 * Returns true if WPMU uses vhosts
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
function w3_is_vhost()
{
    // WP Hive support hack
    return true;
    return ((defined('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL') && SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL) || (defined('VHOST') && VHOST == 'yes'));
}

That’s all folks! Simple isn’t it?

W3 Total Cache should now create separate caching folders for each WP Hive powered blog (but not for those in subdirectories). Of course you have to enable and configure W3TC for each blog separately.

There’s no graphic interface for cloning virtual machines but there’s command line tool called VBoxManage which can be used:

VBoxManage clonevdi source.vdi target.vdi

It’s simple and straightforward to use but there’s one thing you have to remember: you have to be in VirtualBox directory (on Linux it’s ~/.VirtualBox/) or in directory with virtual hard disks of VirtualBox machines (~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/). For most use cases this limitation is OK but what if you have your virtual machine in some other directory (for instance on virtual encrypted disk created by TrueCrypt or you just created subdirectories in ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/ to separate Linux machines from Windows machines)? Above command will not work in this case (at least not in VirtualBox 3.2.6 and below). To bypass this limitation you have to copy virtual machine:

cp ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/some_directory/source.vdi ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/some_directory/target.vdi

and then generate new UUID for it:

VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/some_directory/target.vdi

Now you can create new virtual machine in VirtualBox GUI and use target.vdi as its hard disk.

Here is what I want to have on one WordPress installation: one portfolio page in two (or more) languages, one personal blog in Polish and one technological blog in English.
For portfolio page I’ve installed qTranslate plugin and from now on that page can be in any language I want.
My WordPress wp-config.php file has line define ('WPLANG', 'pl_PL'); so WordPress is in Polish and it’s OK for my personal blog. But what about my technological blog which should be in English? It doesn’t make sense to install qTranslate or any other similar plugin because those plugins modify post contents by adding some specific markups to identify languages. If I change language in wp-config.php to English my personal blog interface will be in English also. So what should I do? Just write simple if statement in wp-config.php:

if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == 'tech.barszcz.info')
	define ('WPLANG', 'en_US');
else
	define ('WPLANG', 'pl_PL');

instead of default single line:

define ('WPLANG', 'pl_PL');

This way I can define different language for any blog I have on this WordPress installation. Of course above code should be modified if you have multiple blogs on subdirectories and not on subdomains like I have.

If you are using Ubuntu Karmic or newer all you need to do is:

aptitude install libssh2-php

and then just restart your Apache server.

If you have older Ubuntu or some other distribution without libssh2-php package you can try this solution:

aptitude install php5-dev php5-cli php-pear build-essential libssh2-1
pecl install -f ssh2

If everything is OK create file /etc/php5/conf.d/ssh2.ini with contents:

extension=ssh2.so

and restart Apache.

Now you should be able to update your WordPress installation from admin page using SFTP connection.

Read more here and in comment #250.

Soon I’ll translate all old posts into English and from now on all further posts will be in English only.