We Fix WordPress Blogs

Just in time … WordPress 2.8.1 arrives

WeFixWP — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:36:38 +0000

Today WordPress announced the launch of its latest version: 2.8.1. The WeFixWP team couldn’t be more happy!

While we have had the pleasure of helping a bunch of new clients who blindly pressed that “Update to 2.8″ button, many people were often caught unaware of what an automatic upgrade can do to production blogs.

We would love to think that bloggers would take the time to back up their existing configuration before taking the plunge, but alas they usually just take that leap of faith.

We applaud Matt Mullengweg and his team to create such an easy to use platform, but we have found that 2.8, in particular, had a lot of issues and conflicts:

Blank screens of death
Missing WYSIWYG editors
Conflicting plugins
PHP errors
and more

We want to caution everyone to have a plan for “what if something goes wrong.” We recommend learning how to clone your blog and test the updates on a development server before launching live. Don’t know how or don’t want to know how? Get someone to help you before pressing that button.

We look forward to putting 2.8.1 through its paces. We think this latest release will be a “must install.”

Our Favorite Plugins: Viper’s Video Quicktags

WeFixWP — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:27:47 +0000

Want to easy include videos in your posts? Look no further than the robust Viper’s Videos Quicktag plugin.

How to Use It

Upon successful install, you’ll find new video icons in the Write panel.
To embed a video, simply click the icon from the video site you wish to use, then copy and paste the URL that the video is located into the prompt box. This works in both Visual and HTML modes.
The video will play upon click right inside your post.

Features

You can fully configure how the videos are displayed by adjusting for your blog’s width, height, colors, alignment, etc.
Supports a wide variety of video sites / filetypes:
- YouTube (including playlists)
- Google Video
- DailyMotion
- Vimeo
- Veoh
- Viddler
- Metacafe
- Blip.tv
- Flickr videos
- Spike.com/IFILM
- MySpaceTV
- Flash Video Files (FLV)
- QuickTime (MOV, etc.)
- Generic video files (AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc.)

Why do we love it?

It’s easy to use - just click one of the video icons in the Write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box
It’s well maintained - The author does a great job keeping it updated and compliant with the latest versions of WordPress.
Works every time - The plugin never conflicts, always compliant, and every version we’ve ever used has performed beautifully

Display a warning message to IE6 users

WeFixWP — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:16:10 +0000

Are you tired of visitors still using the obsolete and buggy IE6? We are. With yesterday’s launch of Internet Explorer 8, there is little excuse to not upgrading. But for those who insist on using this platform, you can warn them that your site is not (purposely) optimized for their viewing.

Here’s how to display a message only to IE6 users, asking them to upgrade their prehistoric browser.

The first thing to do is to create a style for our message. To do so, paste the following code in your style.css file:

#ie-message {
background:#C00;
text-align:center;
border-bottom:1px solid #900;
color: #fff;
position:absolute;
top:0;
padding:5px;
width:100%;
}
#ie-message a {
color: #fff;
}

Once done, open header.php and paste this code just after the tag:

Save the file and you’re done. Only IE6 users will see that message asking them to upgrade.

Upgrade to WordPress 2.7.1

WeFixWP — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:47:24 +0000

Yesterday, WordPress announced the launch of version 2.7.1.

This is considered a maintenance release, which fixed 68 tickets. Although it’s not a security update, it’s always a good idea to keep your WordPress software up-to-date.

If you are already running 2.7, you can update to 2.7.1 via the Tools->Upgrade menu, or you can download the package and upgrade manually. (Tip: Perform safe upgrading practices and please backup your database first!)

Not on the 2.7 path? We can assist you in updating your WordPress blog quickly and easily.

Create a handwritten signature with a WordPress shortcode

WeFixWP — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:33:47 +0000

Did you ever want to add a handwritten signature to your posts just like you would when signing a letter? Here’s a nice code snippet to create a “signature” shortcode.

First, you have to get a signature image. To do so, scan your signature or create one using your favorite photo editor. Once you have it, name it signature.jpg and upload it into your wp-content/themes/yourtheme/images directory.

Then, open the functions.php file from within your theme. If your theme doesn’t have that file, just create it. Paste the following code in it:

function sc_signature() {
   return '';
}
add_shortcode('signature', 'sc_signature');

Last, define the style for the #signature id by adding the following code to your style.css:

#signature {
background:url(images/signature.jpg) no-repeat top left;
width:100px;
height:100px;
}

Note: You may have to edit the width and height to fit your image size.

Now, when you’ll want to insert your signature at the end of a post, simply switch WordPress editor to HTML mode and type the following:

[signature]

Here it is in action…

Burned Your Feed at Feedburner? Google is Taking it Over

WeFixWP — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:17:04 +0000

Google purchased Feedburner (our favorite feed mirror and statistics company) in the summer of 2007, and they now are pushing FeedBurner users to move their accounts under the Google umbrella.

Google has set a deadline for transfering your feeds: February 28, 2009. Check out this tutorial from Pro Blog Design so you can do it before Google redirects your feed to a very unpleasant 404 error. You also can read more Google FAQs here.

While this is happening, we’ve noticed some recent performance issues at Feedburner, and unfortunately for Google, they are becoming quite well documented on Twitter.

We have been Feedburner users for a while and were shocked that there has been no emails regarding this switch. We have seen the link on Feedburner, but feel with a major change in service, Google could have been more proactive. Expect some bumps moving forward …

Meet the WeFixWP Team at SXSW Interactive

WeFixWP — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:29:28 +0000

Our travel plans are complete - WeFixWP will be at this year’s SXSW! This conference:

… celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies. In addition to panel sessions that cover everything from web design to bootstrapping to social networks, attendees make new business connections at the three-day Trade Show & Exhibition …

We hope to meet you there!

Happy Holidays from WeFixWP!

WeFixWP — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:09:22 +0000

We would like to send out some special holiday cheer to all our wonderful clients, partners, and friends. We are so thankful to have such a great network of people who we enjoy working with!

May 2009 be filled with tons of inspirational blog posts, huge traffic influxes and more twitter followers then you could ever dream of…

Cheers! Dana & Karen

WordPress 2.7 and Auto Updates

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:09:48 +0000

WordPress 2.7 or “Coltrane” was released last night. Here are some of the features you can look forward to:

A new interface that allows you to do things faster with fewer clicks.
A drag-and-drop dashboard that allows you to arrange the things that are most important to you (actually everything is pretty customizable now).
Install any plugin from WordPress.org with a single click.
Automatic, built-in upgrades for new releases with a single click.

The WeFixWP team wants everyone to take special notice of feature #4. We want to caution those of you out there with custom themes and/or those of you who have lots of plugins - it still may not be as easy as you think.

While WordPress is making a great effort to offer the ability for all to upgrade future releases with one click, it’s still important to remember (as with all software) things can go wrong.

Please backup your blog’s database and turn off all your plugins before pressing that button. Also, take the time to ensure that your theme as well as all your plugins are compatible with the newest release.

We’ve already read tweets from those who have plunged into the upgrade and came out with a broken blog and without a rollback. Diligence will still be important moving forward.

That said, we are still excited because this upgrade looks rather nice - good luck out there!

What Happened to My Blog’s Sidebars in IE?

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:38:21 +0000

The WeFixWP team has been fielding a lot of questions this week about missing sidebars when viewing the blog in Internet Explorer.

If your blog looked OK one day and a mess the next, the fix can be actually pretty simple. Here’s what check for first:

Review some of your recent posts by Manage > Posts > Edit
Click over to the HTML tab
Look for some rogue code, often you’ll find an unneeded
tag or another HTML tag that was not closed properly.
Delete the code and press the Save button.
Your sidebars should now be back in IE.

How to prevent this? Be careful when cutting and pasting content from Word documents and other websites / blogs because they often have HTML formatting that gets entered into your site and causing havoc.

Take advantage of the Kitchen Sink icon (see image below) to reveal more editing features. Then either use the Paste as Plain Text (T) or Paste from Word (W) icons to clean up any formatting brought over. When pasting from Word, we often click on the HTML tab and remove all extraneous formatting code that is often found toward the top of the post editor.

If that doesn’t bring back the toolbars, you may have a theme problem - but it’s a good place to start.