We have 82 installations of WordPress on our servers and are excited for the new release of WordPress 3.1. There are a bunch of neat new features, but probably the thing that most of our clients will notice first is that there is a new admin bar that will show up for them. Should be fun managing the upgrades.

Read more about the new update here.

WordPress 3.0.2 has just been released. Announcement here: http://wordpress.org/news/2010/11/wordpress-3-0-2/

This is a security release, so you should definitely upgrade your installations of WordPress!

If you’re like me you’ve been using the excellent Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress for a while now. Recently a client noticed that there was a sporadic error being shown that was similar to this:

Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(twitteroauth.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/fern:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/fern/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php on line 1516

Here is the fix that I figured out would work — add the absolute path of the file into the plugin code and it should clear this up. Obviously this isn’t an ideal long-term solution. Hopefully Alex will incorporate this simple fix into the next version of the plugin. Note that this fix applies to Twitter Tools version 2.4.

In twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php change line 1516 to:
require_once(dirname (__FILE__) . '/twitteroauth.php');

And in twitter-tools/twitteroauth.php change line 10 to:
require_once(dirname (__FILE__) . '/OAuth.php');

When you need to know where the php.ini configuration file is on your server, here is a handy way to find it:

php -i | grep php.ini

Give it a try.

If you find a directory such as /tmp/ filling up with old and uneeded files, here’s a quick tip for finding and removing what you don’t need anymore. Note that the delete function WILL remove everything it finds, so please understand exactly what it is you are doing here before running that command.

Command to find all files older than 5 days:
find . -mtime +5 -type f;

Command to delete all files older than 5 days (USE WITH CARE!):
find . -mtime +5 -type f -exec rm {} \;

From the man page for find:

-mtime n
     File’s data was last modified n*24 hours ago. See the comments
     for -atime to understand how rounding affects the interpretation
     of file modification times.

Hope that helps! Thanks for the pointers from this page.

We’ll be upgrading most of our clients to the latest version of WordPress 2.9.1 now that they’ve resolved a number of the issues we were seeing with the 2.9 release.  Good job guys on getting a quick fix out!

The current import script (as of WordPress 2.8.6) is broken when it comes to successfully importing images from WordPress.com. The error you see is something like

Remote file error: Remote file returned error response 301 Moved Permanently

Fixing this involves adding a couple of lines to a core WordPress file. Hopefully a future version of WordPress will include the working version.

Note that these instructions are for WordPress 2.8.6. Your version may be different, and you may need to play with this to get it to work for you. This worked for me, YMMV.

1. Open wp-includes/functions.php
2. Around line 1208 or so, you’ll find the wp_get_http function.
3. Right below where it says $headers['response'] = $response['response']['code'];, add the following code (around line 1227):

   
   // added to fix 301 redirects for blog import code from WordPress.com
   if ((string)$response['response']['code'] == '301') {
   	$response = wp_remote_request($headers['location'], $options);
   	$headers = wp_remote_retrieve_headers($response);
   	$headers['response'] = $response['response']['code'];
   }
   

4. Save the functions.php file and copy it back to the server.
5. Re-run the import function (Tools > Import > WordPress). Don’t worry, it won’t make copies of the posts you’ve already imported, it will just download the images to your new blog.

To fix the references to the images so they’re being served off your new blog, you can either go through every post and manually correct them all, (not very fun), or better yet, download the Search and Replace plugin, activate it and do a search for all instances of the WordPress.com image server URL in all your posts (something like http://BLOGNAME.files.wordpress.com/ with your own new URL — http://BLOGNAME.com/wp-content/uploads/). Don’t forget to test the new URL structure before you do the search and replace, otherwise you’ll have to go back and fix it.

Hat-tip to Bill Zitomer for pointing out the link to this WordPress support forum page that had a good clue to the solution.

Question: Is the built-in WordPress automatic install / upgrade process compatible with a SVN deployment of WordPress?

Short answer: Yes.

Ever since WordPress came out with the automatic upgrade functionality in 2.7 I’ve hesitated to use it since the majority of our client installs are deployed using Subversion (svn) and I wasn’t sure how it would react with the .svn directories.

Today I finally decided to figure it out, and found that the WordPress team coded their upgrading functions exactly correctly (as far as not overwriting or deleting .svn directories goes). In addition, their script correctly removes old and unneeded files that might be present.

First, check to make sure that our svn checkout is clean:

$ svn st

Next, we begin the automatic upgrade process.

Step 1: Click the WordPress 2.8.5 “Please update now.” link:
Step 2: Backup your files as suggested – http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
Step 3: Enter your FTP connection details and click the Proceed button
Step 4: Wait while the files are downloaded and unzipped. This can take a minute or two, so be patient.

Now we can check to see what files were changed:

$ svn st
M wp-app.php
M xmlrpc.php
M wp-includes/post-template.php
M wp-includes/version.php
M wp-includes/theme.php
M wp-includes/comment-template.php
M wp-includes/bookmark-template.php
M wp-includes/media.php
M wp-includes/formatting.php
M wp-includes/author-template.php
! wp-includes/images/swf.png
! wp-includes/images/audio.png
! wp-includes/images/zip.png
! wp-includes/images/html.png
! wp-includes/images/doc.png
! wp-includes/images/video.png
! wp-includes/images/pdf.png
! wp-includes/images/js.png
! wp-includes/images/exe.png
! wp-includes/images/text.png
! wp-includes/images/default.png
! wp-includes/images/tar.png
! wp-includes/images/css.png
M wp-includes/rewrite.php
M wp-includes/general-template.php
M wp-includes/capabilities.php
M wp-includes/classes.php
M wp-includes/category-template.php
? wp-content/plugins/hello.php
M wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php
M wp-content/plugins/akismet/readme.txt
M wp-trackback.php
M readme.html
M wp-admin/includes/post.php
M wp-admin/includes/update-core.php
M wp-admin/post.php
! wp-admin/js/forms.js
! wp-admin/js/upload.js
M wp-admin/edit-attachment-rows.php
! wp-admin/import/btt.php
! wp-admin/import/jkw.php
M wp-admin/import/wordpress.php
! wp-admin/edit-form.php
! wp-admin/link-import.php
! wp-admin/images/media-button-gallery.gif
! wp-admin/images/tail.gif
! wp-admin/images/gear.png
! wp-admin/images/comment-stalk-classic.gif
! wp-admin/images/media-buttons.gif
! wp-admin/images/comment-stalk-rtl.gif
! wp-admin/images/tab.png
! wp-admin/images/comment-stalk-fresh.gif
! wp-admin/images/comment-pill.gif
! wp-admin/css/press-this-ie-rtl.css
! wp-admin/css/press-this-ie.css
! wp-admin/css/upload-rtl.css
M wp-admin/install.php
M wp-admin/page.php

Notice that some old files have been removed and others have been modified. (See http://codex.wordpress.org/Files_Automatically_Replaced_by_Core_Upgrade for details on all the old files that the automatic upgrader removes).

Next we schedule old files to be removed from svn:

$ svn st | grep ! | sed 's/! *//' | xargs svn rm;

Next we commit the modified files and the removed files:

$ svn ci -m "Upgrading to the latest version of WordPress 2.8.5"

That’s it. The WordPress automatic upgrade process does not interfere with .svn directories, and is therefore compatible with maintaining a deploy from Subversion workflow.

If you deploy projects live out of Subversion repositories to public web servers, here’s a good tip for denying access to the .svn directories to keep people from snooping around your files.

Edit your global Apache config file (httpd.conf) or .htaccess file to include the following directive:


# Disallow any .svn directory browsing
<directory ~ "\.svn">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</directory>


This will tell apache to not serve up any directories that are called .svn.

One of the neat things about WordPress is how easy it is to add custom metadata to a given page or post that you can then use in a template to display structured information. I’ve been using this technique for a while now to extend the basic WordPress elements of title, body, excerpt, etc and allow the creation of easily editable information-rich content.

Before now I’ve used the built-in WordPress Custom Field functionality in the Add New screen where you select previously created custom fields from a drop-down list that is limited to only showing 30 items. This is quite cumbersome as you have select each field you want to add to the entry and enter the value, click the Add Custom Field button, then repeat for however many custom fields you want to use. Needless to say, this can be frustrating to have to remember to do every time, especially for non-technical clients.

The Old Way:

During a recent site conversion to WordPress that involves 4-6 custom fields for each post, we finally decided that there must be a better way, and ended up finding a WordPress plugin that is so good that it should probably be added to WordPress core, it is so highly useful. The plugin is called Custom Field Template and is developed by Hiroaki Miyashita.

The New Way:

Using a simple set of options to define the template you want to use is easy. After downloading and activating the plugin, go to Settings > Custom Field Template to define your template. One is provided for you to show you the possible template values. You can set up two separate custom field template designs.

This is the code used to generate the Custom Field Template form shown in the screenshot above:

Template Instruction

<strong>Story Template Metadata Instructions <em>(All fields are optional)</em></strong><br /><br />
1. Use this form to enter metadata about this story.<br />
2. Each item will get assigned to the correct Custom Field for use in the display template.<br />
3. Click the <strong>Save</strong> button to save the values.<br />
<br />

Template Content

[summary_deck]
type = textarea
rows = 3
cols = 50
label = Summary Deck:

[byline_writer_name]
type = text
size = 35
label = Byline Writer Name:

[byline_writer_title]
type = text
size = 35
label = Byline Writer Title:

[byline_writer_picture_url]
type = text
size = 54
label = Byline Writer Picture URL:

[lead_photo_caption]
type = textarea
rows = 3
cols = 50
label = Lead Photo Caption:

[lead_photo_credit]
type = text
size = 35
label = Lead Photo Credit:

[lead_photo_url]
type = text
size = 54
label = Lead Photo URL:

Then set this setting to true by checking the box to make the form look prettier:

Next, I tweaked the Admin CSS settings to right-justify the labels:

#cft dl { clear:both; margin:0; padding:0; width:100%; }
#cft dt { float:left; font-weight:bold; margin:0; padding: 0 8px 0 0; text-align:right; width: 20%; }
#cft dt .hideKey { visibility:hidden; }
#cft dd { float:left; margin:0; text-align:left; width:70%; }
#cft dd p.label { font-weight:bold; margin:0; }
#cft_instruction { margin:10px; }


Click Update Options to save the settings and then go to Posts > Add New to see the form in action. You may need to go back and forth a couple of times to get your text field sizes just right and to put them in the right order you want them in.

Using the Custom Fields in a template

So how do these values get displayed on your page?

Simply edit your template PHP file to look for custom field values and then display them where you want them if they’re present.

This is how I do it for the Principia Pilot site. This code goes at the top of the template for single.php

<?php
// Retrieve custom meta values from post if they're present
$byline_writer_name = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_name", true));
$byline_writer_title = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_title", true));
$byline_writer_picture_url = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_picture_url", true));
$lead_photo_url = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_url", true));
$lead_photo_credit = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_credit", true));
$lead_photo_caption = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_caption", true));
$summary_deck = wptexturize(get_post_meta($post->ID, "summary_deck", true));
?>


Now each of the possible Custom Fields are available as PHP variables that can be checked for content.

This code example shows the “summary deck” being displayed on the page if it has been entered on the create content screen:

<?php
// Show summary deck if we have one
if ($summary_deck != "") {
    echo '<h3 class="summary-deck">' . $summary_deck . '</h3>';
}
?>


Using this excellent plugin, you can set up select lists, radio buttons, check boxes and more to help you populate your Custom Fields more easily if you prefer that to using simple text fields. You can also specify default values to use for the custom fields so you don’t have to type them in every time.

Plugin Default Template Options

These are the default options included by the plugin:
[Plan]
type = text
size = 35
label = Where are you going to go?

[Plan]
type = textfield
size = 35
hideKey = true

[Favorite Fruits]
type = checkbox
value = apple # orange # banana # grape
default = orange # grape

[Miles Walked]
type = radio
value = 0-9 # 10-19 # 20+
default = 10-19
clearButton = true

[Temper Level]
type = select
value = High # Medium # Low
default = Low

[Hidden Thought]
type = textarea
rows = 4
cols = 40
tinyMCE = true
mediaButton = true

Which displays a form that looks like this:

Summary

This plugin addresses a key need when using Custom Meta Fields in a WordPress custom template design — making it as easy as possible to enter values time after time on multiple pages or posts. There are a bunch of other neat options this plugin offers to make the authoring experience even easier. This is now on my “must install” list of essential WordPress plugins.

Please support Open Source by donating to the plugin author

If you use this and like it, I highly recommend sending a nice donation to the plugin author to help support ongoing development and to say thanks. This plugin will save you and your clients a lot of time and frustration. Thanks Hiroaki!

Requirements

Requires WordPress 2.1 or higher.

Click here to download Custom Field Template plugin from WordPress.org