My Monkey Do

A Log of Coding Solutions

cms

OSCommerce admin pages show 401

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Problem

The OSCommerce admin pages were working fine a couple months ago.  Now I go to it and it shows a 401 error.

Solution

The problem was that the htaccess file had a rewrite added to it to always include www to the address.  Apparently the SEO guy did this.  The solution is to update the OSCommerce configuration files.  Meaning add “www” to the address variables in

includes/configure.php
includes/admin/configure.php

 

source: http://forums.oscommerce.com/topic/341940-how-to-change-htaccess-to-rewrite-the-url-hard/
http://forums.jaguarpc.com/design-development/24039-just-installed-oscommerce-admin-links-giving-401-authentication-failed.html

keywords: oscommerce 401

get_permalink returning wrong link in excerpt

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Problem

In WordPress, the default theme, twenty_eleven, has a function called twentyeleven_continue_reading_link.  This method is supposed to return the permalink for the current excerpt.  However if you use setup_postdata() and call the_excerpt() the permalink will return the current page’s permalink, not the excerpt’s permalink.

 

Solution

The reason it returns the current page’s permalink is because get_permalink() gets the permalink for $post which is the current page.  To resolve this, I looked in setup_postdata to see what it is doing.  setup_postdata is setting a global $id variable each time you call it.  This means that same $id variable is the excerpts id.  Which means in the twentyeleven_continue_reading_link method, instead of calling get_permalink(), you can declare the global $id variable and call get_permalink($id).  See the updated method below.

 

function twentyeleven_continue_reading_link() {
        global $id;
        return ' ' . __( 'Continue reading →', 'twentyeleven' ) . '';
}

TinyMCE add Custom Characters

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Problem:

The Hawaiian language has the kahako but tinymce does not have these in their charmap.

 

Solution:

To add more characters to the custom character map in tinymce, find the file:

themes/advanced/js/charmap.js

If you are using wordpress that directory is located in wp-includes/js/tinymce/

Open that file and you’ll see a list of characters in the charmap.  The first parameter is the html code, the second is the unicode character, the third is whether to display or not, the fourth is a description.   The easiest way to do this is to first know how many characters you are adding.  Then comment out that many lines which are displayed (have “true” as the third parameter).  Then add you characters.  Below are the characters I added for Hawaiian.

 

	['Ā',     'Ā',  true,'A kahako'],
	['Ē',     'Ē',  true,'E kahako'],
	['Ī',     'Ī',  true,'I kahako'],
	['Ō',     'Ō',  true,'O kahako'],
	['Ū',     'Ū',  true,'U kahako'],

	['ā',     'ā',  true,'a kahako'],
	['ē',     'ē',  true,'e kahako'],
	['ī',     'ī',  true,'i kahako'],
	['ō',     'ō',  true,'o kahako'],
	['ū',     'ū',  true,'u kahako'],

 

 

For a full explanation to add characters or if you don’t want to comment out existing characters, visit:  http://www.patrickgmj.net/node/66

Which CMS to Use?

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I recently was asked the age old question “what CMS is the best?”.  So I asked back “What will the CMS be used for?”, and of course that wasn’t specifically known.  This post is not a complete post.  It is here to jot down findings and notes about CMS’s.  Wordpress and Exponent CMS are the only two CMS’ I have tried for more than 5 minutes.  I tried Exponent and WordPress in 2007 and have not given Exponent another chance.  Since then Joomla and Drupal have become the clear competition (in terms of popularity) for WordPress.  So these three will be reviewed.  At the time of this post creation, WordPress is beating both in terms of Google Searches.

In the following lists, “Users” are people who use the CMS to put out content.  “Developers” are people who set up and/or customize the CMS for someone else to use.   And if you haven’t noticed, these are only comparing PHP open source CMS’.

WordPress

Pros

  • Very easy to pick up and learn for new users.

Cons

  • Forums have many complaints from developers.

Drupal

Pros

  • Easy for developers to pick up and learn

Cons

  • Not user friendly.  Difficult for new users to pick up and learn.
  • No WYSIWYG editor.

Joomla

Pros

  • Easy to use for Developers, Designers, and Users

Cons

  • Not as User-Friendly as WordPress.
  • Not as powerful as Drupal.

Conclusion

In conclusion from the web, it seems that WordPress is best for clients you want to impress, Drupal is best if you have a website with many features, Joomla is best if … you need something easier to use than Drupal, but more customizable than WordPress? In my own narrow opinion, WordPress has a large community creating plugins to keep you from straying to Drupal.   These plugins offer calendars, embedded video, columns, galleries, etc.  One thing that I think I’ve seen in Drupal that WordPress does not natively support (and did not find a plugin yet) is to edit different parts of a page.  For example if you wanted to have a template where you needed to edit some text on the left sidebar, the top section, and the main content, you would have trouble doing this in WordPress. I’m still doing research on how easy it would be in Drupal or Joomla.  The problem for me is that the user interface of Joomla and Drupal looks like it’s meant for IT personnel.  However, the people I’m creating a CMS for are business and secretarial personnel.  Decide for yourself and try a demo of each one and more at opensourcecms.com.

Update

Below are the up-to-date trends… Joomla and Drupal?  what’s that?