WordPress 2.7 Admin Color Scheme

WordPress 2.5 already provide two types of color schemes for dashboard. They are “Classic” and “Fresh“. By default, you will have the “Fresh” color scheme. It’s light shades of blue. If you like the darker blue, you can switch to it by choosing the “Classic” style. If you haven’t touch this area, this setting can be found on your profile page. Just click your name on the top right navigation.

wp26-scheme

In WordPress 2.7, we can do the same. The color schemes available to choose are “Blue” and “Gray” (default).

wp27-scheme

Right now, I choose the “Blue” scheme. Look at these picture for color scheme comparison. Continue reading »

How’s your wp-config.php file?

WordPress relies on wp-config.php file to connect to database. Here, there are some basic settings about our WordPress installation like database-related information and language interface. When we upgrade our WordPress installation to new release, we can have our WordPress blog running without problem, even without touching wp-config.php file.

But, in some release, there are some new settings that should be — well, I’d rather say ‘recommended’ — added. For example, WordPress 2.5 introduced a new setting called SECRET_KEY. Read more about this new at Ryan Boren’s blog or WordPress Codex.

Do you have those setting in your wp-config.php? If not, it’s time to add it.

For the next release, there will be another new settings that can be added. So far, there will be WP_POST_REVISIONS. It’s related to Post Revisions feature that will be introduced in WordPress 2.6. Since I have taken the decision not to use that feature, I will turn this feature off for my coming upgrade. So, right now — I’m still using WordPress 2.5.1 — I added a setting to disable Post Revisions feature in my wp-config.php.

It’s always a good idea to have wp-config.php has the recommended settings, according to WordPress version we’re using. It’s never too late to fix your configuration file.

‘cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode’ error on WP-DownloadManager

I am currently working on a WordPress-powered site. One of its features is a download section. After comparing some WordPress plugins, I decided to use Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan‘s WP-DownloadManager.

When I use that plugin on WordPress 2.5.1, I got an error. It’s something like this:

Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /home/.../wp-downloadmanager.php on line 308

Is it a bug? It seems that I got this error message because this plugin needs PHP 5 (I still use PHP 4). Since many hosts having PHP 5-enabled (even it does not always installed as the default version), it should not be that difficult to solve this issue. All I need to do is making all .php files are treated as PHP 5 files. Okey, this is a straight forward solution: add a new line in your .htaccess file. You should find it in your WordPress directory, if not, just add this line:

AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php

And, the problem solved.

Update: Put AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php in the first line in .htaccess file. Here is mine:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

After that, create a new php file e.g. myphpinfo.php and include this line:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

This will display about PHP version (affected by .htaccess).

WP-SpamFree, a great plugin to deal with blog spams

When I jumped to WordPress from Movable Type, my first must-have plugin was Akismet. Those who use WordPress must be familiar with this plugin. Besides Akismet, there are many plugins and methods available like Spam Karma, Defensio, Bad Behavior, and many more.

Then, I found another plugin besides Akismet. It’s WP-SpamFree (official site) And, it seems that it works much better than Akismet. When using Akismet, the spam comments (and trackbacks) are moderated, so they are there in our dashboard. WP-SpamFree has a different methods. It blocks the spammers before sending any information through comment post form (and trackback). And, I have to say that I almost have a zero spams in my dashboard. No more “x comments in moderation”.
Continue reading »

Oh My Grid, free WordPress Theme

Today, I released a WordPress theme. This theme is called Oh My Grid. I designed this theme based on theme I use for my blog. If you run WordPress 2.5, you should find no problems — if you found one, let me know so that I can fix it.

For more detail, go to Oh My Grid project page. (theme demo).

Pimp your WordPress 2.5 Dashboard

One of the gret improvements offered by WordPress 2.5 is on the dashboard interface. Collaborating with Happy Cog studio, WordPress offers some great improvements. One of them is about managable widgets for dashboard. It means, we can manage what kind of ‘widgets’ should be presented on the dashboard.

Also, we can create a new admin interface theme. There are already some admin themes available like WP Tiger, Spotmilk, or Fluency. If we want to customize or creating our own admin theme, we can do it too. WordPress 2.5 introduces another option to have per user admin color scheme. The idea is “call another stylesheet into the dashboard”. And, it’s per user basis. So, every person in the system can have their own theme. Nice, eh? Read more about this if you want to create one. Anyway, by default we will have two color schemes. It’s Classic and Fresh.
Continue reading »

Modifying WordPress custom database error connection page

Database connection has a big role when we build using a dynamic webpage. To be more spesific, if we’re using WordPress it’s always a good thing to have our database connection alive. But, for some technical situation, database connection might be dropped. Like or not, this is the situation we might have.

To deal with high-traffic website, there is a WordPress plugin (note: we’re talking about WordPress here) called WP Super Cache. This plugin will help your WordPress installation to deal with major traffic, to keep our site alive e.g. when our site got a massive traffic from site like Digg or Slashdot. When there is a failure on MySQL database connection, there will be a page presented informing about problem on establishing database connection. A page that we want to avoid. The worst thing is that when this ‘temporary’ page is indexed by search engines.

Continue reading »

What you will see in WordPress 2.5?

WordPress 2.5 was delayed from the release scheduled. But, it’s more about giving better features for everyone. I have been following this 2.5 branch (2.4 was skipped) by upgrading from the subversion for my other blog.

wp25_dashboard.jpg

Today, WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1 was released. I did not wait any longer to upgrade, everything seems nice! You can see some new features offered by the coming 2.5 version at WordPress Development Blog.

There are some nice features come to my attention. What are they?

Continue reading »

Administration Panel Preview for WordPress 2.4

You probably have heard that WordPress 2.4 will be released on January 24, 2007. The mnjor changes is probably on the administration panel interface. According to Codex, here are some changes that will be applied on the next release:

  • Redesigned administration panel
  • Widget-based elements for Dashboard — Something like having custom elements in the dashboard using WordPress widgets? Sounds good.
  • Undo for comment editing — So, we can revert to the original comments posted(?)
  • Search to posts and pages.
  • And some other new features and improvements I believe…

I was curious about the new admin interface. And since I also use WordPress (not here, but for my other blog), I took the risk to upgrade my WordPress from the Subversion. The upgrade process went smoothly, and finally I can see the new admin interface. Well, because it’s still in the development process, we can not have whole features yet. Here are some screenshots if you want to see how the new admin area interface looks like.

Continue reading »

Hello World!

No.. no, I am not switching to WordPress. I just setup another blog for myself. You can visit my another blog at http://thomas.or.id. That’s right, it’s powered by WordPress. Why not using Movable Type? Well, why not using WordPress? :)

I will write in Bahasa Indonesia there, and the topic will not be too serious. Well, I think I speak Bahasa Indonesia better than English. Another reason is that I want to have place to experiment with WordPress. I do maintain some WP-powered sites like Asia Blogging, FD, 3GWeek, and also Yusril Ihza Mahendra’s. But I do not have my own playground to play with WordPress.

Anyway, if you’re Indonesian WordPress users, you probably want to join wp-indonesia discussion list. It’s a list to discuss about WordPress in Bahasa Indonesia. There are many experienced WP users there. Right now, there are not many people joining. Why not joining and start discussion? See you there! Again, I am also available at http://thomas.or.id. :)

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