I was getting this very vague error message on a new installation of BuddyPress when attempting to create new Forum topics – There was an error when creating the topic.

FIX:
After trying various proposed fixes I realised that my Groups had been created before the Forum was installed so I checked the database and there were no forums relating to my groups on the table wp_bb_forums. The solution is simple! Just go to group page > Admin > Group Settings  and uncheck the option “enable discussion forum“  the save changes then check “enable discussion forum” and save the changes again. This will create a Forum entry on the database for that specific Group.

Hope this helps anyone struggling with this same error.

Technorati Tags: bbPress, BuddyPress, Forum error

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Here are the steps for creating a simple Plugin for a Random Ad Widget . This is also a good startup script for those (like me) wanting to learn how to create Plugins and Widgets for WordPress.

The idea here is to create an Ad delivery widget that will show a random ad on every visited page. Firstly I will show you the whole code, for those who know what they are doing and just want to diss my code and style. Then it will be broken into pieces with detailed explanation for those interested.  If you want to skip it all just download the source code here.

For the sake of this exercise I will call the file random_ads.php but feel free to call it whatever you like. Here we go…

This is the code for the plugin currently (Nov/Dec 2010) used on the sidebar of this site, if you refresh this page you should see a different ad appear on the sidebar.

Let’s break it down…

1 – The plugin header
Contains all the information about the plugin, this information is shown at the Plugins page in your WordPress admin area.

2 – the Function & the Widget enclosure

echo $before_widget;   opens the widget

echo $bafter_widget;   closes the widget

3 – The PHP random and variables (where the ads go).

The $random_deal[] are the arrays that hold the information to be shown, each array stars with $random_deal[] = and the HTML to be output goes inside the single quotation marks ‘ ‘ and the whole statement ends with semicolons ; . Each array contains the HTML a single ad and will be picked at random by the PHP function rand() and shown on the page by the command print(). Note that double quotation marks are allowed inside the single speech marks but if you have a single quotation mark or an apostrophe inside the HTML you must add a slash before it. E.g: alt=”Today’s deals” should be alt=”today\’s deals” .

You can have as many arrays as you want.

4 – Register the widget.

Now you need to call the widget to be added to WordPress. This is a native WordPress function called register_sidebar_widget(); the argument  ‘Random Ads’ is the title of the Widget and ‘widget_random_ads’ is the name of the function above.

5 – Installation.

Upload your random_ads.php file to \wp-content\plugins (preferably create a folder called random_ads and put it inside it) via FTP. Then Go to your WordPress plugin administration and activate the plugin.  Now you can drag and drop the widget into your side bar on the Widget admin area under Appearance.

Download random_ads.zip with source code

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WordPress and WordPress-MU have given me the HTTP error in the various installations I have performed and each time there’s a different cause. This post is nothing more than a personal notation for future reference but I hope it’s helpful to someone.

Error: when trying to upload media using the WordPress Flash uploader it get the message HTTP Error

Disclaimer: before messing with your .htaccess file, make sure you have a backup copy of it in case it causes a 500 Server configuration error. If this happens just replace the .htaccess file with the back up version. Check your code for any mistakes and try again.

Possible causes:

• mod_security – basically all Apache servers will have it turned on, so you may need to turn it off for the async-upload.php file using .htaccess. The newer versions of WP have added this code already, but in case you mess up your htaccess file, here it is.  Just add the following lines to the bottom of your .htaccess file in the root folder of your WP or WP-MU installation. 

• Access Denied Error 403/ Permission issue – another typical problem. Make sure that the upload folder is writeable by the server, you can set the permission to 754 and it should work fine. In WordPress the upload folder sits under /wp-content/  in WP-MU it sits under /blogs.dir/”blog number”/files  (default site blog number is 1 and the other blogs are numbered in ascending order of creation)

• PHP Upload limit – check you PHP.ini settings for the settings upload_max_filesize and post_max_size. You can change these directly in your PHP.ini if you have access to it or you can change it by adding a php.ini file to you root directory with the following code. The default is normally 2M but you can change it to anything at your own risk, you should not need more then 8M.)

• Authentication Failed Error 401- I checked my server log and noticed that WordPress was trying to access the 401.shtml error template every time I got the HTTP error during a media upload attempt. This normally occours if you are using password protection for the WordPress root folder or the folder where your uploads should reside. You should disable the password protection on the folder i norder for the uploader to work.

Hope it helps. Please leave your contributions and bug reports so others can benefit from it.

Technorati Tags: .htaccess, Apache mod_security, HTTP Error, php.ini, swfupload, WordPress, WordPress-MU

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Any webmaster and marketer will know how important it is to keep track of their website ranking, keyword positioning, visits, ROI and so on…  There are a lot of interesting tools out there to help us. 

• Google Analytics – Visitor tracking, keyword positioning, goal setting, demographics and more…
• http://www.alexa.com – web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more… 
• Google Webmaster Tools – detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google
• Yahoo Site Explorer – detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Yahoo
• Bling Webmaster Center – detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Bling (former LiveSearch)
• Keyword Spy – Research and track keywords in 3 search engines and 30+ countries.
• KPMRS – website rank monitoring services on various search engines
  for multiple keywords.
• XML-Sitemaps – Generate sitemaps online. Up to 500 urls Free.
• WP Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.

These are just a few tools I use the most, please share yours.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Bing, Google, Keyword lookup, KPMRS, ROI, Search, SEO, Site Explorer, Sitemaps, Visitor tracking, webmaster tools, WordPress, Yahoo

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Offline Blogging Tools let you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog.  I personally like the easy to use Scribefire, a Firefox addon, but there are many others our there.  Here is a shortlist…

Scribefire

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

This is an addon for Firefox so you need to be using Firefox (clearly)

BlogDesk

Platform: Windows

BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.

BlogGTK

Platform: Linux

BloGTK is a weblog client that allows you to post to your weblog from GNOME without the need for a separate browser window. BloGTK allows you to connect with many weblog systems such as Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, and more.

Windows Live Writer (by Microsoft)

Platform: Windows

WLW is a desktop application for publishing to blogs and works with almost any blog provider in the world including Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress and more.

Qumana

Platform: Mac, Windows

Great for bloggers on the move. Qumana features include easy text formatting and image insertion, simple Technorati tagging, advertising insertion with Q Ads and more.

Technorati Tags: Blog, BlogDesk, BloGTK, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, Linux, Mac, MovableType, Qumana, Scribfire, Serendipity, Windows, Windows Live Writer, WordPress

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Optimise your WordPress blog or site for search with a couple of plugins and the web tools provided by Google, Yahoo and LiveSearch. The All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress will let you manipulate the specific SEO content of your blog like page title, meta data and description. Defaults can be set in the admin area of the plugin on your dashboard and specific settings can be tweaked as you create or edit a post.

The other important plugin is the Google XML Sitemap Generator, which creates a nice sitemap for you. After installing this plugin you need to create the sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files in the root folder of your blog and change their permissions CHMOD  666. The easiest is to right-click on the files in your FTP client and change permissions under properties, 666 stands for Read and Write permission for Owner / Group / Others.  For more information see the README.txt included with the plugin. 

After installation go to the Admin area of the plugin on your Dashboard (Settings>>XML-Sitemap) and if the sitemap has not been generated yet click on the link Generate sitemap.

Search Engine Webmaster tools. (there are links to them on the XML-Sitemap admin)

1. Google webmaster tools – add your site and sitemap url, Google requires that you add a verification to your site either by adding some code to your home page or by uploading a html file to your root folder.
2. Yahoo Explorer – add you site url and upload a verification file to your root folder.
3. LiveSearch Webmaster Center – add you site url and upload a verification file to your root folder.
4. Google Analytics – create a profile for your site, doesn’t influence ranking but is  a great stats provider.
5. Google adsense, Scribefire QuickAds and TextLink – You can use these to place pay-per-click ads on your site (also does not influence rankings)

Constantly check these webmaster tools for stats on your site as they will tell you the errors you need to fix to make sure your site gets good search rankings with them.  By doing all this you have covered the basics and have a site that could rank well with search engines. There’s although a lot more to Search Optimization, a good source of information is the book  SEO Search Engine Optimization with PHP

Technorati Tags: Google, Live Search, Marketing, Search, SEO, Sitemap, WordPress, Yahoo

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WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” has been released with a complete new interface, new features. Over 150 people have contributed code directly to this new release.  Some of the new features are the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop , QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

ITechLog.com is now using WP 2.7, it’s easy and very fast to use. The menu system has been redesigned and has been moved to the left hand side. It does have a Mac(ish) feel to it, but well no one is perfect… ;) The quick edit function is a great improvement, I had a plugin that did that before but to have it a built in out of the “zip” box is a great plus.  Upgrading form the previous 2.6… was painless and my template works with no problems. Well done WordPress, another great release!

Check out the intro video on the official WordPress Blog.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Wordress 2.7

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