exploremarsgreg

Another bug:

There’s a problem with the parsing of escaped characters (\’ and \” for example)

When you edit, the posted string is the parsed, not the original, so when you add a slide to a slideshow, you get “double escaping”:

“Devil’s Fire Wheel” becomes \\\”Devil\\\’s Fire Wheel\\\”

I did get it working: syntax error on my part. The command parameter options are impressive, though the versatility comes at the expense of clarity and simplicity, maybe code to auto-gen the code would be useful?

<?php if (function_exists(‘slideshow’)) { slideshow($output = true, $gallery_id = “1”); } ?>

Best regards,
Greg
(ExploreMars.org social media editor/network admin)

… and opacity/transparency is solved. It’s a float specifying alpha “(background:rgba(0,0,0,0.3);” – the 0.3 is opacity.

I think I’m left with needing a conditional check for blank text and we’ll be golden.

I’ve answered my own questions above and have more:

The HTML code to embed should be viewable from the editor and explained clearly in the help in many areas, I had to hunt. It’s:
<?php easyrotator_display_rotator(‘erc_00_000000000’); ?>
(12 digit code changed in above example)

Fading is a premium option, we’ll purchase a license.

New questions:
1) Is the connection to remy.github.com yours? Are there any other connections it depends on?

2) How do I control the level of transparency for the text (template #’s 3 and 4)?

3) If there’s no title or no description, we want only the image to appear. It’s still rendering a single dark blank line. How do we fix this?

Best,
Greg

You rock, RML.

I’m waiting to get the advertising specifics from our management team.

Cheers,
Greg[ Signature moderated. ]

Yes, I was surprised how much was actually imported by the import plugin, it even fetched the uploaded Media db and referenced content. I’ve not done much for a couple of days, had my hands full with other issues.

I think I’ll be OK, if not, I’ll write back. I’ll probably have other questions for others among the www.remarpro.com community, especially for apps such as RTMS video server, audio content server, image gallery, adding a forum, etc.

Thanks again, Jason, you rock.

…the problems I was having could be related to my “downgrading” the 3.3.2 to 2.9.2. I was working on the theory that it shouldn’t matter, but it appears it might.

I’ve done nothing at this point: I wiped and reinstalled BitNami and just have its default blog. The live site has 2.9.2 with “SuperClean” theme – https://exploremars.org

I previously copied the filesystem and the database, and modified “wp-config.php” such that it uses the local database. I’m open to suggestions. What I would like is a local 3.3.2 install with existing users, pages, posts, calendar entries, etc. I can develop a new theme on, and when the time comes to go live I can put it on the live site as seamlessly as possible. I’m not concerned about moving existing plugins to the 3.3.2 install, I’d like a fresh configuration of the ones I plan to keep and new ones for sponsors/ads, SEO, sharing, etc.

I’d like to develop a theme with similar style and functionality of space.com and nasa.gov, the latter of which won two Webby awards about a week ago, but it’s desirable to keep the existing theme as an option in case our board prefers the old theme.

Again, I greatly appreciate this, Jason; I’m happy to return the favor via public thank you blog entry, some ad space, or something of the sort.

Greg

…and yes, I not only refreshed, but rebooted, just to be extra thorough since it’s just a VM.

yeah, I expect there are some theme problems, attempting to edit the home page produces an empty edit box entirely. It’s a mess I inherited with no documentation that I’ve been given.

I’m wondering if the hard-coded URL references might be due also to it being version 2.9.2, I read somewhere there were major changes with 3.0.

I’m leaning more toward exporting-importing the site into my BitNami 3.3.2 install as the safest course of action, I gather that is a theme-independent process?

What a baptism-by-fire method of learning WordPress!

OK, re-reading now, I had changed site_url in wp_options already. There is no “home” in the “option_name” column of “wp_options”.

I don’t know what a “codex” is, did you mean code documentation?

Now after re-importing the db it renders the page in plain text only, with large header fonts, etc, so something is broken. I didn’t get the time to spend on it tonight and it’s late, I’ll give it a whirl tomorrow.

It does seem like exporting/importing/moving a site should be a lot simpler than this, that this could be designed with far more automation and far fewer steps.

Thanks for the search and replace explanation – sounds like an encapsulation/modularization design failure on the part of WP. I’ll attack this later today and let you know my results. -Greg

Hi Jason,

Again I greatly appreciate your response and follow-up attention, such interaction is something many developers don’t value.

The error was “#1046 – No database selected” encountered when attempting to create the calendar table. It didn’t take long to learn that the database import doesn’t check for or perform the important prerequisite steps of creating the database and authorized user.

I did see the “Moving WordPress” guide. It has been helpful, though I found after a search/replace from our domain to “localhost/wordpress” something broke and I couldn’t load the page at all in my BitNami VM.

I must concede I am new to webdev, my background is console C++ mostly, and of course BASIC and 8-bit assembly way back when. I did some coursework in C#/MSSQL/ASP .NET in 2005 and a little bit of Oracle.

Because our current version is 2.9.2 and we’re looking at some significant design changes, I’m starting to think we’re better off to design the new site in 3.3.2 and import pages and posts… which takes my to my next question: Can you recommend a tutorial/video/etc. on compatibility issues are involved in a 2.9.2 export and 3.3.2 import? I understand 3.0 introduced a number of back-end changes.

Warm regards,
Greg

Hi Jason,

Greatly appreciate your reply. I was able to get the files extracted, and I understand now the PHP timeout. I couldn’t import the sql file on my local BitNami WP stack, it died trying to create the first table. I’m unsure as to why, but I’m guessing it’s due to settings (user or otherwise) that differ from the live web MySQL db. I ended up using wp-db-backup to export and successfully import the db.

A workaround for the process you described could be a redesign to decrypt the process “on the fly” and download it in smaller chunks to avoid the timeout.

I’ve since learned there’s a few things that need to be changed, since it seems to point to the live install still, but I made progress. I’m surprised the process is not more automated or better documented. It seems like such an important core process would be.

Best regards,

Greg

UPDATE #2: I am able to Decrypt the backup file on the local VM:

from:
.\wp-content\plugins\wponlinebackup\tmp\decrypt\WPOnlineBackup_Full.zip.enc

to:
.\wp-content\plugins\wponlinebackup\tmp\WPOnlineBackup_Full.zip.php

The plugin stopped there, and did nothing with the file nor provide a way to download it, but renaming from .zip.php to .zip allowed me to extract the file (I was only able to find the file in the first place by investigating a little.). There’s some problems with a few paths exceeding 260 characters, but nothing insurmountable that can’t be easily fixed by hand.

Hope this helps future development!

Greg