Emmense Technologies, LLC - WordPress Consulting» wordpress

Facebook HipHop and WordPress

Aaron Brazell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:38:24 +0000

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

It is our intention, here at Emmense, to support the Facebook HipHop methodology where appropriate. We will be exploring the use and implementation of this technology in the days and weeks to come and will be working to build solutions that leverage it in the WordPress world for our clients. Where possible, our work will be conributed back to the WordPress core where appropriate.

While we expect that many more service providers will likely leverage this technology, we want to continue to lead in the WordPress community in an ever-open exchange of ideas between the PHP and WordPress communities.

Changing WordPress Upload Directory File Permissions

Aaron Brazell — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:04:30 +0000

Quick How-to here on folder permissions to allow for WordPress image uploading. Some have reported seeing an error similar to below.

This error is confusing for non-technical users. How to fix it?

Well, it turns out it’s pretty easy. First, you need to make sure you have an FTP client. This will allow you to manage files and folders directly on your server. Be aware of the dangers of FTP, however, and if you have the option, use Secure FTP (SFTP) or SSH instead.

For Mac users, I highly recommend Transmit from Panic software. Fetch is a solid second. Windows users can look at Filezilla.

Having done that, log into your server with your FTP credentials (ask your host if you don’t know this). Browse to your wp-content/ folder. Highlight the uploads/ folder. If it doesn’t exist, create it.

Right click or context click and look for an option to change permission or view information about the folder. In that dialog, there will likely be a setting for changing file permissions. Every FTP client is slightly different, so poke around a bit if it’s not readily obvious.

Once you find the permission settings, set the permission number to 777 (or Read, Write, Execute for User, Group and All). This is a very liberal permission setting and not to be used everywhere. Only on this directory!. You can apply the permission to all files and folders underneath this folder if you’d like.

If you want to login via SSH and apply the same permission setting, you can issue this command:

1	chmod -R 777 /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/uploads

For more information about using WordPress, setting permissions or FTP security, make sure you buy my book, the WordPress Bible.

WordPress Preset Options Plugin

Aaron Brazell — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:29:17 +0000

Late yesterday evening, my friend @immunity pointed me to Dan Gilmore’s post about hacking the database for WordPress MU to manually set options across a variety of blogs. @immunity figured there must be a better way and, indeed, there is.

In fact, I had written some code while at b5media which just did this. Because I am a persistent packrat, I still had that plugin and got the permission from b5media to release the very simple plugin publicly.

This plugin is perfect for WordPress MU administrators who want to exercise some control, whether for QA or otherwise, over the WordPress blogs on the system. Drop this plugin into the mu-plugins folder and it will be universally applied.

Couple things to think about… as for now, with this cleaned up but made-for-b5media plugin, there is no admin interface. You do have to edit the file manually to preset the options you want and you might have to comb your database options table to find the names of certain options, etc. This is not a braindead stupid plugin, but for those who are savvy enough to be administrators, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out via the example usage in the plugin.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Preset Options
Plugin URI: #
Description: A plugin created when I was working for b5media and released, with permission, under GPLv2. The plugin provides two functions that will set any blog option as defined and unchangeable. Perfect for WPMU.
Author: Aaron Brazell
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://technosailor.com
*/

/*
Example Usage:

Turn off Smilies across the board:
po_hardcode_option('use_smilies', '0');

Remove the lifestream plugin from the list of active plugins.
po_hardcore_option_serialized('active_plugins', array('lifestream/lifestream.php'), false, true );
*/

/**
* Function takes two arguments and is meant for setting a setting for a single string/boolean option. It is not meant for serialized data.
**/
function po_hardcode_option($name, $value) {
add_filter('pre_option_' . $name, create_function('$a', 'return "' . addslashes($value) . '";'));
}

/**
* Function takes two required arguments, the name of an option and an array of key/value array data. Two optional arguments are boolean
*/
function po_hardcode_option_serialized( $setting, $options = array(), $removekey = false, $removevalue = false )
{
if( !empty($options) )
{
if( $exist_options = get_option($setting) )
{
foreach( $options as $k => $v )
{
if( $removevalue )
{
$key = array_search( $v, $exist_options );
if( $key != null )
unset( $exist_options[$key] );
}
else if( array_key_exists( $k, $exist_options) && !is_int( $k ) )
{
if( $removekey )
unset( $exist_options[$k] );
else
$exist_options[$k] = $v;
}
}
add_filter('pre_option_' . $setting, change_option_array( $setting, $exist_options ) );
}
}
}

function change_option_array($setting, $array)
{
update_option($setting, $array);
}
?>

Download the plugin here.

So Dan, you would have just added the following line to the bottom of the plugin and would have been set.

1	po_hardcode_option('comment_registration', true);