Running WordPress on a dedicated server

Last Updated on Saturday, 10 November 2012 05:00 Written by Dan Saturday, 10 November 2012 05:00

One of the constant gripes about running websites which are updateable via a CMS is the issue of permissions. We should all know that it’s not good to ever have a production server running with directories CHMODed to anything like 777 – they will be found and bad code written to these directories. 755 is sufficient and 644 is OK for files. But the issue is, sometimes you can’t post a new image, via the WordPress media library because the permissions are wrong. Shared hosting generally sorts this out as the user has permission to write to the directory.

On dedicated / cloud / vps hosting the issue gets more difficult. The user could be set to www-data, but this would mean all directories are writeable by the Apache process. The user could be included in a group which has write permissions.

Or the server could be running suPHP and PHP CGI. This provides security and write access without compromising directory permissions.

There aren’t many articles on the subject, but this one by Mike Beach seems to answer the issue simply. It’s been tried and tested too.

Read more at: http://mikebeach.org/2011/03/20/wordpress-suphp-and-ubuntu-server-10-04/

New website: CJTV

Last Updated on Thursday, 25 October 2012 02:42 Written by Dan Thursday, 25 October 2012 02:42

DJA completed and launched a new WordPress website for television director, Caius Julyan. It showcases his work a director, edit producer and voice-over artist using streaming video in JW Player. There’s more details on the DJA website and the site itself can be viewed at: caiusjulyan.tv

WordPress 3.4.2 update

Last Updated on Friday, 7 September 2012 03:01 Written by Dan Friday, 7 September 2012 03:00

Fixes and security updates in WordPress 3.4.2 – available today.

• Fixes some issues in the admin area where some older browsers (IE7, in particular) may slow down, lag, or freeze.
• Fixes an issue where a theme may not preview correctly, or its screenshot may not be displayed.
• Fixes the use of multiple trackback URLs in a post.
• Prevents improperly sized images from being uploaded as headers from the customizer.
• Ensures proper error messages can be shown to PHP4 installs. (WordPress requires PHP 5.2.4 or later.)
• Fixes handling of oEmbed providers that only return XML responses.
• Addresses pagination problems with some category permalink structures.
• Adds more fields to be returned from the XML-RPC wp.getPost method.
• Avoids errors when updating automatically from very old versions of WordPress (pre-3.0).
• Fixes problems with the visual editor when working with captions.

Additionally: Version 3.4.2 fixes a few security issues and contains some security hardening. These issues were discovered and addressed by the WordPress security team:

• Fix unfiltered HTML capabilities in multisite.
• Fix possible privilege escalation in the Atom Publishing Protocol endpoint.
• Allow operations on network plugins only through the network admin.
• Hardening: Simplify error messages when uploads fail.
• Hardening: Validate a parameter passed to wp_get_object_terms().

More here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.4.2

Using JW Player in WordPress

Last Updated on Thursday, 16 August 2012 05:39 Written by Dan Thursday, 16 August 2012 05:39

A very versatile video player, JWPlayer can be added as a plugin in WordPress.

There are numerous skins and it’s possible to create a custom thumbnail for the front frame when the video is loaded but not started.

More instructions here: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/addons/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/14276/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress-media-management

WordPress Error: You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.

Last Updated on Friday, 25 May 2012 03:01 Written by Dan Friday, 25 May 2012 03:01

Usually setting up a new WordPress you get the option to create tables with a custom prefix, ie not wp_ But if the database already exists then you need to rename table prefixes manually. On top of which, it can produce an  error about not having sufficient permissions when trying to login. This is due to a few options listed within the database.

To avoid a few headaches and searching try:

In wp_usermeta or { prefix }_usermeta

Change the following prefix of wp to { prefix }

wp_capabilities
wp_user_level
wp_dashboard_quick_press_last_post_id
wp_user-settings
wp_user-settings-time

also in wp_options or { prefix }_options
I changed the following prefix of wp to { prefix }

wp_user_roles

Thanks to bhanu2217 here:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/error-you-do-not-have-sufficient-permissions-to-access-this-page-3#post-1737094

WordPress 3.3.2 upgrade

Last Updated on Sunday, 22 April 2012 02:25 Written by Dan Sunday, 22 April 2012 02:25

As one of the most actively supported CMS’s in the world, WordPress just gets better and better. With this new update (WordPress 3.3.2) there’s some security fixes and some user enhancements. Attending to workflow is important as many of us already spend a lot of time updating websites and they’ve added some useful updates including improved media updload, jQuery UI and more flexible permalinks. We’re looking forward to using these enhancements and passing on the good news to our clients.

And if you want to discuss how WordPress development can help you, pay a visit to our main site: www.djaonline.co.uk

WordPress more link in excerpt

Last Updated on Monday, 26 March 2012 01:28 Written by Dan Monday, 26 March 2012 01:28

To control the “read more” part of the_excerpt() in WordPress – add a function in the functions.php file of the theme to filter it. This can remove the [...] part as well as adding custom wording to the permalink() hyperlink.

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3152519/use-wordpress-excerpt-with-a-more-link for how to append the more link to the excerpt text. It use the get_the_excerpt function.

WordPress links

Last Updated on Saturday, 24 March 2012 01:08 Written by Dan Saturday, 24 March 2012 01:08

Smashing magazine has a bumper list of WordPress tools, templates and more here:

http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2012/03/22/useful-wordpress-tools-themes-plugins/

WordPress sidebars and widgets

Last Updated on Sunday, 14 August 2011 04:47 Written by Dan Sunday, 14 August 2011 04:47

In WordPress we can often see sidebars and widgets in use, from a list of recent posts to a search box, blogrolls and RSS feeds. But widgets can be used for a lot more – the text widget for a start allows for all sorts of custom html. And they don’t have to be sidebars (as the name implies). Making boxes editable anywhere on the website is also possible by  using a carefully placed dynamic_sidebar() in the template file.

And with different templates, a sidebar on one page can be replaced by something very different on another page.

Some useful reading: http://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/11/08/sidebars-in-wordpress & http://www.rvoodoo.com/projects/wordpress/wordpress-tip-different-sidebars-on-different-pages/

WordPress media upload error

Last Updated on Wednesday, 1 June 2011 04:06 Written by Dan Wednesday, 1 June 2011 04:06

A quick fix, but very helpful to know. If you have a WordPress website which is password protected this can result in media file uploads failing with a message saying “http error”. This is caused by the .htaccess file in the root of the site which provides password protection.

This post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/media-upload-http-error provides a solution, adding some lines to avoid the upload script being blocked.

# Exclude the file upload and WP CRON scripts from authentication
<FilesMatch "(async-upload\.php|wp-cron\.php|xmlrpc\.php)$">
    Satisfy Any
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    Deny from none
</FilesMatch>

Which came from the WordPress Codex User:Hakre/Htaccess