tcervo

Alex,
I’ve done some testing on that front, and here’s what I’ve found:
If there are no posts in a category, but the category has sub-cats with posts, and you’re listing them as nested links (by setting the last flag to true, per TechGnome’s suggestion), AND you’re supressing empty categories…the sub-cats won’t show up. I tried this with a single post to a sub-category, but no posts to the parent category. I get “no categories” and nothing else.
If I don’t supress empty categories, then it lists EVERY category and sub-category, regardless of whether there are posts or not, and EVERY category and sub-category is a link.
If I go back and add the parent category to the post (and supress empty cats), then I get the category and sub-category…but again, the parent category is a link.
This also has the undesirable effect of listing both cat and sub-cat in the “Filed Under:” section.
To see what I mean…I have set up a new site with only 1 post, for testing. Once I get it working the way I want I will add style (and more content…)
Take a look here: https://www.cantboilwater.com/
Notice the single post has the following categorization:
difficulty: easy
food type: pasta
meal type: dinner
region: italian
I’d like the “filed under:” to only show the sub-cats. Ex:
Filed Under: easy, pasta, dinner, italian
Also, I’d like ONLY the sub-cats to be links…not the categories.
Make sense?
This is how I always envisioned sub-categories working…otherwise they’re just additional categories. Nothing “sub” about them.
-Tony

Ok, nevermind the problem with empty categories showing up. At first, when I changed the third from last parameter to true, I got “no categories”. When I tried, just for kicks, associated the post with the parent category *and* the sub-category, and making sure the third from last parameter in list_cats is true, I get just the cat/sub-cats that have posts.
I still don’t want the category to be a link, but I can live with it for now.
-Tony

TG,
Thanks…that’s getting closer. One problem now, though, is that empty categories (and sub-categories) are showing, which I don’t want. One solution would be to only ad a category or sub-category when I’m ready to add a post in that cat.
The other problem is that categories are showing up as links, which I don’t want since I’m never going to post in them. I wish there was a way to have this work like link categories…the category titles show up as headings (well, sort of…at least they’re not clickable), with the sub-categories as links underneath…
Oh well, I’ll tinker around and see if I can’t get the categories to not display as links.
Thanks,
Tony

Anon: some hosts refer to their MySQL server as the “database server” instead of host name. When I create a new db using the control panel for my host, they give me the name of the database server (in my case, it’s “mysql”). I got a similar message the very first time I tried to install WP, but once I changed “localhost” to “mysql”, it worked fine.
Another thing to check is make sure you’ve created a user for the database, and are using the username/password for the database user, *not* the username/password you use to log into your host.
Hope this helps,
Tony

Ok, after failing miserably to get the nightly build to install clean, I wiped the www directory clean and uploaded 0.72. It installed without a hitch. I then immediately wiped the www directory again, and uploaded the latest nightly build. I ran the upgrade.php script, and it worked like a charm.
So, for some reason there’s a problem getting the install script to work with my setup. The older version works fine, and the upgrade script works fine, so I was able to get where I wanted to go…but it would be nice if the latest version would install clean. If I was a complete newbie, I would have punted and moved on to another program…(Then again, if I was a newbie I probably wouldn’t be trying to install a nightly build, so never mind…)
All’s well that ends well…
-Tony

Is it really the same as sub-categories? (I haven’t installed the nightly builds, so I don’t know how they work…)
Seems like posts and links are sharing the same categories, and when you click on a category you get both the posts (articles) and links associated with that category.
There is some sub-categorization going on (Development -> Database ->MySQL, etc.), but the cooler function (IMO) is the way it’s combining post cats and link cats.
I also like the way the results are displayed…
-Tony

I’ve played around with
https://www.1976design.com/blog/”>Dunstan Orchard’sM php script, but haven’t implemented it yet. I’ve only done a test page that outputs the current temp and a little weather icon (cloudy, rainy, sunny, etc.) I plan to do something similar to Dunstan’s weatherific banner, but with photographs taken in and about town.
Once I get it done, I’ll post something here…

Anonymous: I’m unclear on how an annotated default style sheet will hurt you. You’re going to just write you own anyway, right? So, why punish those not as worthy as your obviously elite self? Besides, just because you tried to make a point that WP is not aimed at newbies, does not make your point valid (particularly since “your” point is an anonymous one.)
-Tony

“I don’t see the point in the annotated CSS myself. People who need to be walked through a simple stylesheet shouldn’t be using WordPress.”
I disagree…Since the power users are going to write their own CSS files from the ground up anyway, having a helpful default file is a great way for CSS newbies to learn…The more folks that see the light, the better. An annotated CSS file would be a great way for a newbie to understand what’s going on, and may even give him/her the courage to experiment on their own.
-Tony

How “easy” is it to manipulate a list of items delineated with
tags, pipe symbols, or whatever? What if you want to change orientations? Make them appear as buttons? Give them graphical backgrounds? And the list goes on…
What’s easy is having structured content. If I want to change the list items inside a particular div, I can do whatever my heart desires in the CSS file, and it will change site-wide. Can’t do that with incorrect markup. Sorry, the easy to understand and manipulate argument isn’t holding water.
If I wanted to use MT, I would. I don’t think it’s a bad program, and it can be made to produce standard’s compliant code as well (I’ve seen plenty of MT sites that are valid, and they all mark up their navigation and sidebar links as lists). For me, WP is easier to modify and is *more* flexible. That’s just my opinion and my choice. WP vs. MT vs. Whatever has nothing to do with using standard’s compliant code.

It’s not redundant at all…it’s separation of content and style. A non-CSS aware browser doesn’t know or care about how we want it to look in a modern visual browser. To them, it’s a list. These include most version 4 and earlier browsers, text browsers such as Lynx (still used by a large population…particularly for reading text-based material such as blogs), screen readers, and search engine spiders.
The nice thing about doing it correctly (as an unordered list) is that I can change the look, orientation, whatever for my entire site just by changing the style sheet. The style sheet is cached, so it’s only loaded once, then read from cache for subsequent pages. That’s called efficiency. If I want to change my links to look like buttons…no problem. If I want to change them to act as a dropdown list…no problem. If I want to change their orientation from an inline horizontal list to a vertical orientation…no problem…All done with CSS, while keeping the underlying code sematically correct and lightweight.
As for the “most people would rather…” argument, I have no interest in debating a head-in-the-sand argument. Whether people know standards exist or not isn’t even close to being a lucid rationalization for coding incorrectly. I’m having a hard time understanding why doing something correctly, which also results in MUCH EASIER maintenance and site-makeovers in the future, is such a problem?
(beating my head against the wall)
-Tony

Well said, MDV…Web Standards aren’t some arbitrary set of ideas, being imposed on “poor old users.” We have standards for a reason. Just as you shouldn’t be able to decide whether to use punctuation (or capitalization) in your writing, you shouldn’t be able to decide not to use semantically correct coding. A list is a list is a list, whether it’s your grocery shopping list, list of favorite movies, or a list of navigational items. How you choose to display those lists is up to you, and there’s a nearly endless variety of options available using CSS. If you would like to use incorrect, invalid, inaccessible, and difficult to maintain code…pick up a copy of FrontPage and have at it. Just don’t be surprised when *your* site ends up in the latest web design book as an example of what not to do…

This should give you any option you desire:
https://us4.php.net/date
-Tony

antifuse,
Thanks for the info…I was going to modify the filenames, but thought I’d check first in case this functionality had been implemented in some other way…
Also, I like your idea of a function to ping a list of servers…
-Tony

I second MDV’s suggestion. Using variable names such as $days, $date, $today, etc. is not a good idea. I’m still not that familiar with PHP, or what variables WP is using, but I know that in other languages (ColdFusion for example), many of those listed are reserved…meaning you *can’t* use them as variable names.
-Tony