KAPISH::Blog » Wordpress

Secure Your Wordpress Installation

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:50:28 +0000

Very nice presentation @ Wordcamp NYC this year on Wordpress Security.

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/williamsba/wordpress-security-updated

Video on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/7685380

Also upgrade your blog as soon as new version comes out.

Can we say now “Hack it if you can!”?

Wordpress MU Site Upgrade Bug: Your server may not be able to connect to blogs running on it

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:37:40 +0000

I was upgrading mu site to 2.8.4. I went to Site Admin -> Upgrade and hit Upgrade Site button. It worked for first 25 – 30 blogs and then died with message

Warning! Problem upgrading . Your server may not be able to connect to blogs running on it.

Error message: 200: Operation timed out after 3 seconds with 0 bytes received

This is what I did to fix my problem

I opened wp-admin/wpmu-upgrade-site.php and wp-includes/http.php

function &_getTransport( $args = array() ) {

on line number 94 of wp-includes/http.php, wordpress tests different http request methods exist on your server during upgrade.

1st test was the culprit on my server which uses http_request method built into PHP. I guess this method was taking long time to resolve DNS and so it was timing out.

if ( true === WP_Http_ExtHttp::test($args) ) {

				$working_transport['exthttp'] = new WP_Http_ExtHttp();

				$blocking_transport[] = &$working_transport['exthttp'];

			}

I did comment out this test and let Wordpress start with next one.

if ( true === WP_Http_Curl::test($args) ) {

				$working_transport['curl'] = new WP_Http_Curl();

				$blocking_transport[] = &$working_transport['curl'];

			}

And guess what? All 150 blogs were updated in a few minutes without any problem.

If even curl does not work for you, you can comment it out and move on to the next until WP upgrade site works for you.

Good Luck!

Parent Child Theme – Easiest Way!

Jaymin Patel — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:46:10 +0000

This solution will work for you if you want your child theme have fewer templates and if any template is missing, it should not break your blog but should go to parent theme and load it.

And a few important things to set,
1) parent theme folder name
2) child theme folder name
3) Template set in child theme style.css must match parent theme folder name

Because child theme name and Template set in child theme style.css are stored in options table.

So I started looking into wordpress core files

 wp-includes/template-loader.php

wp-includes/theme.php

These files load templates from active theme on your blog.

What parent theme must have
Your parent theme must have all template files necessary for any typical wordpress theme and parent style.css must have these lines

/*

Theme Name: Parent Theme

Theme URI: Your Blog URL

Description: My Parent Theme

Version: 0.1

Author: Your Name

Author URI: mailto:your_email_goes_here

*/

What child theme must have

style.css must have these lines where my_child_theme must be the name of child theme folder and my_parent_theme must be the name of parent theme folder.

/*

Theme Name: my_child_theme

Theme URI: Your Blog URL

Description: My Child Theme

Version: 0.1

Author: Your Name

Author URI: mailto:your_email_goes_here

Template: my_parent_theme

*/

and screenshot.png and functions.php

functions.php should add_filter to ‘home_template’

add_filter('home_template', 'load_child_home_template');

I am going to take home/index template as an example here. Lets say child theme is having these files. What does this mean? This means you want index.php/home.php loaded from child theme and everything else should come from parent theme.
1) style.css
2) screenshot.png
3) index.php or home.php
4) functions.php

wp-includes/theme.php has

function get_home_template() {

$template = '';

if ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . "/home.php") )

$template = TEMPLATEPATH . "/home.php";

elseif ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . "/index.php") )

$template = TEMPLATEPATH . "/index.php";

return apply_filters('home_template', $template);

}

Wordpress applies filters at the end and we are going to take advantage of it.

child theme functions.php must have this function as well

function load_child_home_template($template) {

if(empty($template)) {

$template = 'index.php'; /* if you have home.php, replace index.php with home.php */

}

return check_child_template($template);

}

function check_child_template($template) {

$template_file_name = basename($template);

$template_option = get_option('template'); /* has 'my_parent_theme' */

$current_theme_option = get_option('current_theme'); /* has 'my_child_theme' */

$theme_root = get_theme_root();

$child_template_root = $theme_root . '/' . $current_theme_option;

$child_template = $child_template_root . '/' . $template_file_name;

$parent_template_root = $theme_root . '/' . $template_option;

$parent_template = $parent_template_root . '/' . $template_file_name;

if(file_exists($child_template)) {

return $child_template; /* if child theme has index.php/home.php, load it */

}

else if(file_exists($parent_template)) { /* if child is missing index.php/home.php, load index.php/home.php from parent */

return $parent_template;

}

return $template;

}

You may want to put some html comments in parent theme index.php/home.php and child theme index.php/home.php to debug which theme is serving home page by looking into source code.

JSON and Wordpress

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:54:46 +0000

If you want to encode/decode JSON within/using wordpress, you can take a look at

/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php

This file has Moxiecode_JSON class which can do that for you.

Sample code

require_once(ABSPATH."/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php");

$json_obj = new Moxiecode_JSON();

/* encode */

$json = $json_obj->encode(array("key1"=>"value1","key2"=>"value2"));

//$json should have {"key1":"value1","key2":"value2"}

/* decode */

$json_array = $json_obj->decode($json);

//$json_array will be an array("key1"=>"value1","key2"=>"value2")

Comments Pagination – Wordpress – Bug Fixed!

Jaymin Patel — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:09:09 +0000

Actually, I did not create a plugin but I wrote a code snippet that did this job for me.

Add these lines to comments.php in your active theme folder.

$comments_per_page = 5;

global $post;

$total = $post->comment_count;

if($total > 0) {

$apage=isset($_GET['apage']) ? intval($_GET['apage']) : 1;

$comments=array_slice($comments, intval(($apage-1)*$comments_per_page),intval($comments_per_page));

}

Insert this code right after if ($comments) statement

$commentCounter = (($apage-1)*$comments_per_page);

$from_page = $commentCounter+1;

if($apage == 1) {

$to_page = $comments_per_page;

if($total < $to_page) {

$to_page = $total;

}

}

else {

$to_page = $from_page + $comments_per_page - 1;

if($to_page > $total) {

$to_page = $total;

}

}

Insert this line where you want page links to appear in comments.php.


'base' => add_query_arg( 'apage', '%#%#comments' ),

'format' => '',

'total' => ceil($total / intval($comments_per_page)),

'current' => $apage

));

I think this is it. It should work. Give it a try and share your feedback via comments.

Google Shared Items in post using shortcode

Jaymin Patel — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:07:58 +0000

New in WordPress 2.5 is the Shortcode API, a simple set of functions for creating macro codes for use in post content. I thought let me see how it works! I am showing my google reader shared items within a post using shortcode.

Do You Know How Slow Your Web Page Is?
From: Google Code: News

Incredible Services and Products
From: Nettuts+

Javascript Driven HTML5 Video Player: Dplayer
From: Greepit

50 Useful Tools and Resources For Web Designers
From: Smashing Magazine Feed

20 Steps to a Flexible and Secure WordPress Installation
From: Nettuts+

Wordpress 2.5 RC1

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:38:03 +0000

Trying a WP 2.5 stable version (2.5-RC1). It’s awesome!

Joomla or Wordpress?

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:55:38 +0000

Joomla is primed to be the next favorite Open Source Software, or that it already is? More on WordpressGarage.com

Migrate Tags from UTW Tags to Wordpress 2.3 Terms

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:45:36 +0000

I was running wordpress 2.0.5 since 2 years and did not get time to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3.

So I decided last week to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3 and I did. I upgrade the same way how wordpress advice us here.

After installation, I did notice it has migrated my categories tables to wordpress 2.3 Terms tables but nothing migrated from Tags tables. I was surprised! Did I make any mistake? Then it comes into my mind, it is Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, which has created those tables for me not Wordpress.

Now I had to migrate those tags from Tags table to Terms tables. So I wrote a script that does that job for me. I thought let me make that available to you, if someone would like to extend the script and build a smart plugin!

I would like you to read this before you use this script:

Take backup of your database. It is not going to delete anything in the database though.
Make sure you have Tags tables from Ultimate Tag Warrior in your database.
Since Unique index created on slug column in Terms table, this script will add ‘2′ add the end of tag if any duplicate key/slug found in the Terms table.
Set MySQL Connection parameters in this file.
Upload it to your server and run it. Just run it once!
Do no forget to share your feedback via comments!

If you would like to look at it and review/install, please download PHP Code here.

Wordpress Database Schema

Jaymin Patel — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:29:20 +0000

Wordpress 3.0 Database Schema is up on Wordpress site.

Take a look at the following older versions.

KAPISH::Blog » Wordpress

Secure Your Wordpress Installation

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Wordpress MU Site Upgrade Bug: Your server may not be able to connect to blogs running on it

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Parent Child Theme – Easiest Way!

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JSON and Wordpress

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Comments Pagination – Wordpress – Bug Fixed!

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Google Shared Items in post using shortcode

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Wordpress 2.5 RC1

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Migrate Tags from UTW Tags to Wordpress 2.3 Terms

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