Category: Blog Tech

A bomb and a reset

Posted on By jennego

So I kind of abandoned this blog for awhile. Moved it a few times folder-wise. Didn’t bother to update it in any way. Pretty much haven’t touched it since early 2016. Stuff happened. I got lazy. Focused on web dev for a while (not PHP or wordpress).

I don’t even know how I managed to kill it. But it was 2019 and I haven’t updated wordpress. Meh, whatever. But it was acting weird when I was trying to change themes. And then it locked me out with a 500 server error. No explanation. Can’t find logs. Can’t view blog past the first page. No access to wp-admin. Tried everything. Reinstall wordpress. Reinstall wordpress with a older version. No dice. Played around with htcaccess so much. Nope. Nope Nope.

So I just deleted the whole thing in the folder. Made and remade the subdomain. Backed up the database. Fresh install of wordpress, database, everything. Just used Fantastico because I know it’ll work. (Yes, I did try a manual install and connecting my current database….no dice)

I’m sure there’s a way to import .sql with the table prefix changed but I didn’t know how so I just imported my old database tables into my new one. I changed the posts by renaming. Yay! It works.

But I try to change the categories/tags tables (_terms). It doesn’t work. Doesn’t show. Doesn’t work to make a new one. I can see that it was actually making new terms, I just couldn’t see it on the front end. I thought maybe it’s an issue of writing to a different table somehow via id. But I could not find how to get that far into the source.

I was ready to bomb it again when I finally accessed my error logs. It turns out I didn’t rename one of my term tables.

I am still not sure where the term to post relations went. You’ll think that one of the tables will store it and it will be preserved but ???? or at least one of them is the many-to-many but I can’t find it and it seemed to have disappeared on the front end for sure.

I later found in in wpprefix_term_relationships.

The lesson here is read the damn error logs. And figure out the how the database works before trying to do a transplant.

Or use a simpler database schema haha . I don’t know. It’s fine when it’s complicated and you know about it because you made it but it seems less fine when it someone else’s!

Blog not showing up in Chrome (Win XP)?

Posted on By jennego

I don’t get it. The blog won’t show up on Chrome (yes, the latest version) on Windows XP. The backend, however still works (accessible only through the url and I can write drafts etc) but it will not load the blog itself for more than a few seconds before going “aw snap”. It’s not my server as my hand coded site works. I tried disabling plugins and that didn’t change anything.

It is possible it’s just that computer as it’s the only Windows XP computer at this time. But I tried playing with the firewall and still no go. The site works on the computer in Firefox just fine and and Internet Explorer 7 will load it – badly – but it will load it. But it won’t load in Chrome. Not just any Chrome – just that Chrome in XP and yes, it is updated.

It’s not completely validated but that is mostly due to WordPress doing things that I don’t know how to control and images without alt tags because I was too lazy to fill them  (to be honest).

I don’t get it. Hopefully, there’s not too many people that use Chrome on Windows XP (if it is a widespread issue) and if you are using Windows XP, please use  Firefox. ARRGGHH!!!  I don’t know what it’s doing that. I suppose I could try with a different theme but….we’ll see.

Bizarre Google Webfont Glitches in Chrome

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You’ll think that Google web fonts will work well in Google Chrome. Well, no. And it was WORSE before too!

In <h1> titles, at least with my font  (amaranth) – an ellipses (…) can make it revert to the fallback font.  If you have a comma, then the text on the other side of the comma that is not with the ellipses will display the webfont. Weird eh?

Firstly I don’t understand what’s with the “read more” link and why it seems to be doing its own font thing even though I’ve told it not to. (I’ll let it go for now).

Some fonts have weird issues

  • Arvo displays oddly on my WP site on chrome (it seems to insert 9s that overlap).
  • Alegreya displays oddly with italics in body text (and yes, that font does have a italic), making a huge space within the entire line, some sort parts reverting to the fallback font

This issues don’t seem to be in Firefox. (Or even, gasp, IE!) So it’s a chrome issue.

It’s still an improvement to about a year ago when google web fonts wouldn’t render clearly in Chrome.

“My” new theme!

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Welcome to my blog on a new theme!

I am using a custom child theme of the default Twenty Twelve theme. It features a modified featured image, custom width sizing depending on the size of monitor (it’s also slightly wider on most larger monitors than the original), footer widgets and a generally different style.

My fonts are Zeyada (title), Amaranth (headings) and Lora (body). (Although I still might change it). All fonts are from Google webfonts for now.

This blog is best viewed on a higher resolution monitor (such as 1500px+) with a newer browser. It does work on tablets and phones – more or less. Right now it is currently less… especially on small tablets…I’m still working on that.

It works in all modern browsers (I think?), but I can’t vouch that all functions will work or display correctly on older browsers.

The background is made by me…although I may change it as I’m not entirely happy with it.

For anyone else wanting to undertake this, note that the CSS to this theme is a bit….odd. It makes use of newer techniques and has CSS classes that aren’t as simple as you think.

Tutorials I used

http://zeaks.org/tutorials/twenty-twelve-footer-widgets-tutorial/
http://voodoopress.com/modify-the-width-of-the-new-wordpress-twenty-twelve-theme/
http://voodoopress.com/woking-with-featured-image-in-wordpress/  (and a few other very similar ones on that subject)
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/getting-post-thumbnail-url  (linking featured imaged to itself)
+ probably more! (And lots of trial and error).

I also used several generator and such. (The media query playground is also very useful)

Stole a bit of CSS from the Presswork theme for image hovers.

I do not know PHP so I consulted tutorials for modifications to the PHP files.

Credits:

Designed by Me
Background image by me
Post background: Paper Fibers from Subtle Patterns
Page background: Textured Stripes from Subtle Patterns (modified)

The Featured Images Thing is Driving Me Insane

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So I thought it’ll be a great idea to make use of featured images, you know to showcase more photography and artwork.

I tried following various tutorials on auto-cropping featured images and it still doesn’t work. I tried copy and pasting that portion in my child functions.php and nope. I even broke the site a few times. I tried several methods and couldn’t get it working. Oddly it was working fine at first (i.e. before I made a child theme) but nope, not anymore

I’ve been at this for a while now (okay, just a day) but it’s driving me crazy and I just don’t understand why it won’t work properly! Later I discovered that it sort of works – just with new images and not in the post editor.

With much googling and some logical leaps I did finally figured it out (I was worried there that I’ll never figure it out, but I did). However, since I don’t know PHP…I’m never quite sure what I’m doing although I do have the feeling when something is probably not going to work. When the blog doesn’t load…it means I did it wrong. When the line is in the admin panel…it means I did it wrong. When only the top part of the blog loads….it means I did it wrong. So yeah, that’s how I found out I did the PHP wrong. I still find PHP confusing though. Some parts look really easy (a bit like CSS) while others are just…confusing. I should probably try to learn some PHP.

However, what I should do with single posts as I find full size featured images overwhelming and the smaller ones…well, small and it won’t word-wrap correctly. Oh well. I’ll work on it but I guess it’s okay for now.

My Blog has a New Home!

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My blog has a new home! And is back on my domain!

I will be working on customizing the theme and various technical things very soon so right now it may look very…plain. However, the permalinks, posts and pages should work (except for the contact form which I’m working on since that plugin is not working right now…).

Hopefully, April will be back to normal

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I am planning to move this blog back to its domain in April, provided that I can find hosting.  (I could also complete wipe out whatever was on there in my hosting account and re-install Wordpress on the host I was using but I’m tired of it going down randomly and I don’t want more hacking issues).

Maybe I won’t be so cheap this time and actually pay a bit for some hosting….as evidently you get what you pay for…hmpphh. I was using a free host previously (that let me install WordPress). It wasn’t too slow but it was very liable to randomly stop working. Another free host I’ve tried with WordPress…Freehostia was very, very slow (and updating didn’t work and it ran an old version of WordPress!) when I tried it a few years ago.

There is also a possibility that I stay here at wordpress.com and just map my domain but I would like the option to upload static webpages (for a few projects in the pipe) and I’ll like to customize my design.  So….

I will definitely install some sort of WP Security plug-in on my next install though!  Jeez!  (I got paranoid and already installed one the Foundation Equestrian site).

I’m too busy now but sometime in mid-late April I should work on finally a home (and hopefully redesigning) my blog.

Good News and Bad News

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So previously I got locked out of my blog. (Said my username didn’t exist…even though I’m the only user and I’m the admin and it’s self hosted….). At the time I was also locked out of my hosting panel so I had no access to the database.

The Good News
I regained access to my hosting Cpanel today (finally after days not being able to access it…it is a free host so there’s not really any support per se…). After fiddling around in the wp_users table of my database my phpMyAdmin  (not a good place to play, really) with some Googling (even though my solution didn’t come from Google or the WordPress forums  it came from dumb logic…maybe I should change the user_login to my login), I finally got my login to work again. I have no idea what happened that made it stop working but now it works again! So we’re back in action and I don’t have to move right away!

I fixed it though! I ventured into the database and my blog didn’t break and I fixed it! Somehow. I’m pretty proud of myself.  (Considering my database management skills are kind of…nill.)

The Bad News
I can’t get my back up database (.sql) to work but that may be just me (the files may require some manual editing). It keeps bugging me about my comment tables and such with “#1046 – No database selected”. It seems to be a common problem but I am not versed enough (i.e. not at all) in PHP and MySQL to figure it out quickly.

Luckily there are other ways to restore a blog (though I would have to start with a new install…of everything…).