Tag-Archive for » wordpress «

August

There was a bit of an issue when I was trying to change my WordPress theme, the preview was just blank. I thought maybe the fault was with the theme? Maybe WordPress preview doesn’t show the theme but it’ll still work? I thought wrong.

Thinking it was a mistake on my part, I re-uploaded all the relevant files only to see no changes. It was when I tried to change to some of my other WordPress themes, that I realised the problem was bigger than I thought…

Thankfully it didn’t take that long to solve, all I did was upgrade fantastico.

Login to cpanel
Under “Software/Services“, click on Fantastico
Under “WordPress” find the relevant location and click on the Upgrade Link

Chinese Characters in WordPress 2.7

January

Selina Lai

Every single time I have to upgrade WordPress, it messes with my Chinese characters! The characters (be it Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai etc) show up as question marks ‘??? ‘or funny symbols ‘æ‰€‘. It’s not too much of a difference to me since 99% of my posts are in English, but it still bugs me if I don’t have the choice to write with Chinese characters.

As you can imagine, I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and the upgrade messed with my Chinese characters again. And again, I forget how I fixed the problem…

I thought I better write this post for my own sanity. And hopefully it’ll save me a whole lot of time and tinkering!

As per usual, I went to WordPress > Support to look up the … erm, I had trouble with logging in because I forgot my password again (but you can still view the topics without logging in). I could also write up another rant about how crappy (navigation-wise) WordPress Support Forum is, but I’ll leave that for another day.

This time around I stumbled across a blog post, by boringest, detailing the steps I should take to fix this problem. um… it didn’t take me long to give up and realise it wasn’t working the way I wanted. I think this post is about changing the admin dashboard into Chinese characters (I’m not sure because I gave up when I couldn’t differentiate between my brother’s database and mine …)

Anyway, the easiest and only effective way which I found time and time again (I did exactly the same thing the other times) is to:

Find your wordpressconfig.php file
Open it up (to edit it)
Find and delete:
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8?); define('DB_COLLATE'=, ");
Save

It’s probably one of the most common things that happens, and I don’t understand why WordPress doesn’t just leave those lines out? Then again, everyone probably already has the answer to this problem, and I’m the only one complaining because I’m just too much of a noob…

Category: Observations, Reviews Tags: chinese characters, Reviews, wordpress 11 Comments

WP theme Vs Youtube

April

Selina Lai

My previous WordPress theme, Flush, looked good but didn’t function very well . I had trouble with trying to get rid of the hover function on certain links, the width was not fixed (php is foreign to me bummed ) and most importantly IT WOUDLN’T EMBED YOUTUBE VIDEOS!! I was at the point of frustration trying to work out the problem smackdown stupid theme -mumbles-

Flush screenshot

And as we all know, when it comes right down to it, we would all rather be able to embed YouTube videos than to have a pretty looking page. So I had to surf around for a decent looking theme for my WordPress blog …. like it?? kawaii … I’ve obviously customised it to suit me (I definately prefer it over those ducks!)

So anyhow, for anyone who has trouble with embedding YouTube on their WordPress blog, the support forum has many many posts on this problem and the solution is always the same…

Check that you have TURNED OFF your rich text editor aka visual editor aka wysiwyg etc etc.
- To do this, go to your Dashboard (www.[insert your webaddress].com/wp-admin)
- Next click on the “Users” tab. Then click on “Your Profile“
- And UNCHECK the little box at the top that says ‘use the visual editor when writing‘
Check if the problem is with your theme. For Example, If you are using Flush or similar non user-friendly themes.

That’s it!! If you have any other problems, it is possibly your browser or your computer illiteracy devious so just go to the WordPress support forum and have a browse around (don’t be lazy!)

Category: Reviews Tags: wordpress, youtube One Comment

Hello WordPress~

April

Selina Lai

Pitas -> Xanga -> Pitas -> Xanga -> Blogger – > Pitas -> Xanga … -> WORDPRESS!

Which Blog?

On the move … yet again

Pitas was my foundation, the one that helped me through that time in my life when I was learning what HTML really stood for. It’s very basic and well, easy to get bored of … Kind of like a Rubik’s Cube.

I moved on to Xanga when I found it harder and harder to find a free image host for Pitas with enough bandwidth for me! bummed Alas that isn’t the end of the story; after using Xanga for about a month, I became fed up with the stupid restrictions on the design of layouts as well as the inability to edit timestamps thumbs down !

After some time back at Pitas, real life (as opposed to virtual life) caught up with me and I just didn’t believe the time and effort I spent on the various layouts were worth it, so I packed up and moved back to Xanga! But I still had my doubts about Xanga (first impressions last blee ), so I explored the world of Bloggers….

Let’s just say Blogger.com didn’t cut it for me, it felt as foreign to me as using a Mac! So I returned to Pitas to play around with designs and finally settled at Xanga when I got lazy. Xanga pretty much provides everything now (they’ve upgraded the site a whole heap! ). But I find that they’re a bit elitist in that you can only comment if you’re a Xangan, subscribe only to Xangan’s etc.

At a quick glance:
| 5 = Excellent || 0 = N/A |

Features	Blogger	Pitas	WordPress	Xanga
Blog Communities	2	0	?	5
Dashboard	5	2	5	2
Flexible Layout	?	5	4	3
Footprints	1	1	1	5
Group Blog	5	2	5	1
Multiple Blogs	5	0	0	0
Search Feature	5	1	5	5
Subscriptions	5	5	5	5
Video/Photo Blogs	5	1	5	5