The two complains I’ve heard that I can not re-produce is:

1. Post Teaser skipping post. Most of the posts are teased but a few is not and it does not look like the post itself is malformed.
2. Post Teaser caused sidebar to disappear. When ever Post Teaser is enabled, the sidebar is gone.

For problem #1, my investigation always starts at checking the post to see if the cause for Post Teaser to skip certain post is the way those posts are written. To be brief, the two common type of post that cause Post Teaser to skip post are to write a long post in one paragraph and to use <br /> in place of <p>…</p> tag pair for paragraph break. I’ve eliminate both the cause in the recent reports. However, I’ve not been able to find anything else that may cause the problem.

For problem #2, this is the first time I’ve heard of this problem. After testing that Post Teaser does in fact works with WordPress 2.3.2, I have one suspicion, which is widgets. I’ve tested that quite extensively as well and still I can not find what is causing some blogs to crash their sidebar.

For those who have one or both of the above problem and is willing to spend time to help me determine what is the real cause of those problems, please drop me a note here: http://sandboxblogger.com/contact/

What’s new in 3.10

• Post Teaser now in Greek. Many thanks to Alexander for the translation.
• Added a FAQ entry. I have had quite a few queries about why Post Teaser failed to split some/all of the post. I’d figure that need to be addressed in the FAQ.

For users that is waiting for a fix or feature enhancement, I’m sorry but none made it to this release due to me busy schedule of late. I’ll still try to get one release out by the end of the year and hopefully be able to fix some issue at that release.

So be warned. For non-Greek speaking folks, there is little point in upgrading to 3.10. In fact, there is no point upgrading even for Greek speaking folks. Just grab the translate file form the repos and follow “Is this plugin available in other languages? in the FAQ. It will work just fine with 3.9. The only reason for the version bump is due to how WordPress Plgins directory is organized (details too boring to include here).

If you want to upgrade for the sake of a higher version number, here is where you get the latest Post Teaser.

After much debugging and sleepless nights, I’ve got to fix the Post Teaser plugin. Although if I’m an experienced PHP programmer, I would have manage the fix in a matter of hours but I’m still learning. I still can’t program PHP if my life depends on it (at least not in a timely fashion). Regardless I’ve fix the issue and I’m now happy with the result.

Now, the difficult part. I have had a chat with Jonathan Leighton, the original developer for the Post Teaser plugin and he is not maintaining the plugin anymore. On top of that, he has also lost access to the official Post Teaser wiki page at WordPress Plugin Repository. So, I bite the bullet and ask to take over maintaining Post Teaser. Hurray! He agrees. However, there is still one issue to resolve. That is the access to the WordPress Plugin wiki. I’ll need to work it out later but for now (in order not to keep everyone waiting), I’ve hosted it on SandBoxBlogger.com at the Post Teaser plugin page.

Please feel free to download and use it as you would on the WordPress Plugin Repository. Post Teaser is not my puppy. Hurray!

PS: If anyone knows how to get into contact with the WordPress Plugin Repository admin, please help pass along the word that I have taken over the development of Post Teaser. I need the access if I am to continue working on this plugin.

It was quite a disappointing experience because I really like the post-teaser plugin and now the plugin does not work anymore. I’d figure I’ll track down the plugin writer and report the problem. After finding the WordPress Plugin wiki and the project page for Post Teaser, I’ve found the author Jonathan Leighton. However, after looking at his site, I’ve found that Post Teaser was listed under the Projects in the past and his current projects are all Ruby on Rails. I’ve generally find it rude to ask Open Source developers to support past projects that they are not actively maintaining so I’d figure I’ll have a look and see if I can fix it. Who’d know that my second little thought cost me a lot more really late nights… Sigh.

I’m still trying to fix it so if anyone knows better please do give me a hint!

UPDATES: I’ve found that if I remove all the <!--more--> tags in all my post, the site is fine. Go figure. Luckily I don’t have a lot of post here. I would not recommend this solution to mature blogs with thousands of post and possibly hundreds of them have a <!--more--> tag.

UPDATES2: I’ve taken over the maintenance of Post Teaser and the problem with WP 2.2.x is fixed. The official post teaser page is now here: Post Teaser

As for the rest of the blogging world, at least ones that I know will start to see comment spam when popularity and traffic pick up. I’ve also seen quite a few blogs out there react to the bombardment of comment spam by closing off comments or make it mandatory for readers to register an account just to write comments. Once that happen, those said blogs might as well declare spammers the winners because those blogs have just allowed spammers take away the freedom from those blog owners to allow open comments in their own blog. Along with that, gone is the freedom of their readers to easily make comments, even anonymously if they choose.

Some blog owners resort to adding captcha or other more creative method to force readers to prove themselves as human and not spambot in the comment forms. These measures may help to a certain degree but they are quite annoying to readers who simply want to make a comment. Having readers do something extra to proof themselves worthy of a comment is a really punishment to your readers for the spammers fault. On top of that, there are technology to beat these systems and besides, there is no stopping spammers paying a small amount to people in poor country that have access to the Internet to beat these systems manually.

Fortunately, all is not lost. There are solutions out there to help blog owners keep those pesky comment spams under control. In my experience, the Akismet spam filter that comes preinstalled in WordPress is quite effective at filtering out spam. Once activated and configured, comments spam are dump to the Akismet spam list area located under the “Comments | Akismet Spam” tab in the WordPress dashboard. You are then free to remove it, unmark as spam or just do nothing and allow the Akismet plugin to auto remove it after 15 days. With a very low miss-rate, managing comment spam is a breeze. That is until the spam bombardment begins. That is the only snag about Akismet. As the spam list grows it will simply become too great of an effort to unmark legitimate comments that was falsely flag as spam.

This is where the Bad Behavior plugin will come in real handy and the best part, it works together with Akismet or any other comment filters for WordPress. This plugin is very effective because unlike Akismet, it does not filter comments by its content. Rather, Bad Behavior looks at how the comment form is access and submitted. By doing so, the Bad Behavior plugin is able to determine if there is really a human on the other side of the Internet. If it is typical of a spambot access pattern, the comment will be stop. Spam filters like Akismet will not even have the chance to see the comment. Furthermore, in the case where the Bad Behavior plugin fails to flag a comment spam, there will always be Akismet spam filters and the likes to act as the second line of defense.

So, don’t wait another day. Start using these plugins and take back the control over your reader’s comments from spammers.

I mean, it is one thing to have the style in the style.css, even though requires bloggers to manually apply the class to image tags, but it is another to give little or no consideration to photos layout and style within a given theme. I frequently tryout themes and I have yet to really come across one that have photos styling sorted. Immediately after applying the theme to my mock blog, I notice photo layout in my mock post will be off and there is no class in the CSS to apply to the image tag to fix the layout problem.

In addition, the rest of the theme’s layout usually never caters for photos that are layout with float. If I add a class to float images to the left or right, it most definitely breaks the theme layout. Although only apparent in short post with images taller then the wrapped text. More likely than not these tall images will extend beyond the post metadata area disrupting the post metadata layout. Images that are tall enough will even extend beyond the next post title.

Of course, I hear you protest that theme writers are usually very generous to give their hard work out for free and that I should be more grateful to their effort. Don’t get me wrong. This post is never intended to slam theme designers and I am really grateful for their work. I’m just hoping that some theme developers may come across this post and perhaps notice missing layout style in their design. Besides, I do feel that most theme developers do what they do to build up a portfolio plus it is a very good way to build links, traffic and attention to their site or blog. An over sight like leaving out style for photos does taint their effort in my opinion.

How many themes have you come across that not only have support styling and layout for photos in the CSS but also to have the styling of photos matches the theme?

Today, I’ve learn the difference between the DIV and the SPAN tag.

During my WTF moment with AdSense-Deluxe plugin, I was just eager to fix the unsightly misalignment that I have neglect to check the other aspect of the layout.

It was days after I’ve fix the misalignment in the home page that I realized the first and second paragraph in all my posts was always join together when I have place an ads panel on top of the post. In other words, the paragraph spacing had gone missing between the first and second paragraphs. The rest of the post seems unaffected and the paragraph spacing turned out correct. When I look at the page source, I saw this:

<p><div…><adsense code></div>followed by the text in the paragraph</p>

So I went to my best pal Google and ask for help. Turns out the reason for the missing spacing between my first two paragraphs is because the DIV tag creates a line break before and after the DIV block and that will interfere with the paragraph tag <P>.

Ah ha! So all I need to do is to move the DIV in front of the paragraph tag. Like this:

<div…><adsense code></div><p>followed by the text in the paragraph</p>

Well, that’s what I thought. Unfortunately I was not able to locate any options in WordPress that will allow me to tell WordPress to stop adding the <P> tags for me and let me do it myself. To fix it in that manner, it would be nothing short of a hack or a plugin. Both of which I don’t fancy.

When I dig deeper into some more HTML reference, I began to understand.

DIV is a generic block-level container that will interfere with other block elements if the DIV is contained within the other block element such as the paragraph block. What I needed was an inline container instead.

The solution to my problem is to use the SPAN tag instead. Like this:

<p><span…><adsense code></span>followed by the text in the paragraph</p>

I still think this is a hack because the ads block should be logically divided from the rest of the post text. After all, I am going to use the float property in my style.css to move it out of line. However, WordPress does not support pure HTML writing in the write post interface, at least none that I can find.

If any readers knows better, please feel free to correct me.

NOTE: If you intend to follow the instruction below for the upgrade, please read and understand the official upgrade guide at WordPress.org before you proceed. There are no guaranties that the fine folks at WordPress will not throw in a curve ball from time to time. At the very least scan through the guide to see if there is anything different with the version you are going to use for the upgrade. You have been warned.

Here are the simple steps I’ve taken to upgrade WordPress from version 2.1.2 to 2.1.3. You are expected to know your way around the Linux/UNIX prompt or the cpanel equivalent to be able to follow the guide or (God forbid) the Windows system.

1. Backup the whole website starting from the root directory of your website. Make sure to include every file (we all screw up from time to time, so better be safe than sorry).
2. Backup your database. Usually during the upgrade, there will be a step to upgrade your database. Always backup the database when ever you do anything that touches the database. Besides, it does not hurt to have an extra pair of backup.
3. Login to WordPress Dashboard and deactivate all the plugins.
4. Logout.
5. At the root of your website, rename your wordpress directory to something like “myblog.bak”. Does not matter as long as you remember what it is and it does not already exist and must not be “wordpress”.
6. Download and unzip the WordPress package. There should now be a directory name “wordpress” in the root directory of your website. If that is not the name you use before, move the “wordpress” directory to the name you have use the last time. For example “myblog”
7. If you have followed the installation instruction in yesterdays post, you should only have custom files in the wp-content directory. Now, move over all your custom files to the new WordPress directory. Remember not to overwrite the new WordPress files. If you have customized some of the WordPress files, you will need to figure what are the changes you have made and port it over to the new files.
8. You should be all set now to upgrade the database. Just follow the rest of the instruction from the official guide and you are set.
9. When you done with the upgrade, and verify that everything is in order, remember to cleanup the old WordPress directory at step 5.

The experience in this upgrade is a much pleasant one for me. In the past, I will have to sort over all the files and see if they belong to WordPress or not and make sure I pull over all the customization. One thing to note is that if you do not customize any files that belong to the WordPress package, the upgrade will be the most trouble free. For example, if you want to customize and use the default WordPress theme, make sure you copy the whole directory and customize the copy. Trust me, it will make your life much easier.

Installing WordPress in the root directory of the website is usually not a problem but really soon, I would start to optimize my blog for search engine and usually means, placing files like robots.txt, and sitemap.xml. Add a .htaccess file to support the customize the URL. Then there are files for ownership verification required by services like Yahoo! Site Explorer to help clutter up the root directory even more. That is all fine until one day a new version of WordPress is released and it is time to upgrade (just like TODAY!)
Every time I need to upgrade, I find myself doing a lot of cross referencing to make sure I’m not deleting the wrong files. This time around, when I’m installing WordPress for SandboxBlogger.com, I’ve came across this instruction on the WordPress.org. What a great idea! Basically, this simple guide showed me how to install WordPress in a subdirectory off the root directory of the website yet the URL will still remain as http://www.example.com/. Also, all other files I place in the root directory of the website is still accessible via URL like http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

For those interested, here’s how:

1. Unzip wordpress package in the root of your website. Assuming the root of your website is ~/public_html/, you will now have ~/public_html/wordpress (wordpress unpacks into a subdirectory named wordpress). Move the wordpress directory to another directory name like myblog. I assume you will want to but if you don’t, remember to substitute myblog to the actual directory name you want to use.
2. Proceed to install WordPress as the installation guide said and use this URL: http://example.com/myblog/wp-admin/install.php. Your blog will now have the following URL http://example.com/myblog/.
3. Login and go to the Options panel.
4. In the box for “WordPress address (URL):” you should see http://example.com/myblog/ leave that alone.
5. In the box for “Blog address (URL):” change the address to the root directory’s URL, like http://example.com/. Click on the picture below to see where in the WordPress Dashboard to make the changes.



6. From the file system, copy index.php from ~/public_html/myblog/index.php to ~/public_html/index.php.
7. Open the ~/public_html/index.php file in your text editor and change the following line:
   require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’);
   to the following:
   require(‘./myblog/wp-blog-header.php’);
8. If you need to customize your permalink, remember to create your .htaccess file in ~/public_html/.htaccess

Remember to also place all other files that do not belong to WordPress in ~/public_html/. Example files like robots.txt and sitemap.xml.

In the past, I have been avoiding ads in posts on my other blog that I either participate or have helped to setup. All for the name of unintrusive ads, in fact too unintrusive… This time around I wanted to be a little bit bolder in my ads arrangement. However, I did not want those post ads to show up in my home page, archive pages, or any non-single pages in the blog. Ahh… Good! AdSense-Deluxe allows me to turn them off with just a few clicks to unchecked the related check box.

Then I saw it.

WTF is there a gap screwing up my alignment?!

As it turns out, I wanted to make the post text wrap around the ads. Also to place a little more space around the ads so that my post text will not be too close to the ads. Without thinking, I went ahead to add a pair of DIVs around the AdSense-Deluxe commented codes in the post. Well, AdSense-Deluxe did its job by not replacing the HTML comment with AdSense code, but that leaves a pair of empty DIVs that naturally takes up space…

At this point, I was still in the WTF moment, franticly digging into AdSense-Deluxe code to see if I can somehow fix it to also handle the pair of DIVs around the AdSense code block. Should I hack it to use a special form of the comment code so that AdSense-Deluxe will recognize how to add the pair of DIVs around the AdSense code blog? I was thinking to myself.

It was only after a few hours that I realized that WTF! I could just add the pair of DIVs along with the AdSense code block in the AdSense-Deluxe options page! WTF do I need to place the pair of DIVs in the post!?

<div class=”adsclass”>< … adsense block …></div>

Talk about feeling stupid…