Site changes

PCas — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:36:27 +0000

Bear with us as the site goes through a lot of changes. Please report any bugs and let us know if anything is broken. I’m going to be getting this all set and good to go over the day. Cheers! No related posts. No related posts.

Fix the SexyBookmarks Offset not contained in string error

PCas — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:39:09 +0000

Have you come across this error?

Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /YOUR-PLUGIN-DIRECTORY/sexybookmarks/includes/public.php on line XXX.

We ran across this SexyBookmarks bug in the preview screen. I understand that others have encountered it in the production end as well. If you are receiving that error, you can easily strip a piece of code without breaking the plugin.

Find

$isphp = false !== strpos($r['feed_permalink'],'.php', strlen($r['feed_permalink']) - 4);

Remove (OR replace with result below)

, strlen($r['feed_permalink']) - 4

Result

$isphp = false !== strpos($r['feed_permalink'],'.php');

If you have Notepad++ or another app that lets you see line numbers, follow the warning error to find it. Alternatively, you could use the find/replace function in Notepad++ or another good code editor.

Everything seems to work after removing that piece of code. So far, it doesn’t seem like the removal breaks anything. Give it a try.

X-Posted and edited from the original fix it post by me in the WordPress forums.

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The Dreaded WordPress Widget Fail

PCas — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:35:31 +0000

Why won’t my widgets work?

We faced the horrible WordPress problem of having inaccessible plugin menus and widgets we could not drag and drop. It is frustrating and seems to impact a lot of people across a wide variety of WordPress versions. Dragging widgets and opening menus is sort of essential to using the backend of WordPress.

Good info about broken widgets was hard to find

After looking around at various support forums and the WordPress site, I found most threads about the issue are not very helpful. However, there were a few really good suggestions to help puzzle it out. There are four main factors to the problem:

Server configuration
Multiple domains
JavaScript compression
Plugin and theme coding

A quick note about the WordPress menus and widgets problem

It is all about JQuery. Something is breaking the JavaScript that WordPress uses to drag widgets, open backend menus, and so on. The root of the problem always comes back to JQuery issues. That is not to say it is the fault of the package itself. It is simply the breaking point. You need to know where the code is falling down in order to pick it up and patch it up.

NOTE: The first step is to make sure that your WordPress installation, plugins and themes are all up to date. Fixing the problem may be as simple as updating.

Server configuration

This is the part I figured out the least about. It seems sort of random. Both dedicated and shared hosts have problems. Shared hosting seems to come up more often, but that’s not much of a indicator. After all, shared hosting for WordPress installations is far, far more common than dedi hosting.

WAMP machines seems to come up the most. If you’re on a Windows host, it seems like you’re a little more likely to run into the widgets and menu problems. Why it seems to happen a little more often there, I’m not sure.

Indeed, I can’t figure out a common thread for the problems. If you encounter this issue, please leave a comment with your server setup. Let’s see if we can figure it out together.

Multiple domains

CDN, or cloud networks, seem to be the most common culprit. If you have any performance or cloud computing plugins active, try disabling them first. Alternatively, if you can just disable AJAX, JQuery, and/or Javascript options do that. Some plugins allow you to exclude the admin backend, while still using cloud functions for your public site.

This problems impacts both public CDN services, like Google and Amazon, as well as private clouds. If you are using a second server or subdomains to help balance your server loads, you may run into the same problem. There does not seems to be a good solution, except for disabling the offsite libraries. If you have a better solution, please leave a comment. I will edit this post with any improved solutions.

JavaScript compression

If the problem is not offsite or cloud servers, the next most common issue appears to be JavaScript compression (called concatenation). Many performance plugins rely on compressing JavaScript and JQuery to improve speed and reduce file size. If you use anything that does that, try disabling that feature. It has solved the issue for many people.

If a plugin or performance service is not your issue and you do not use off-site servers, a theme or one of your plugins may be conflicting with JavaScript concatenation. Add the following to your wp-config.php file:

define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);

Plugin and themes coding

Here’s the thing about a plugin heavy, community developed platform like WordPress: People have many different ways of coding the same functions. Take a look over a set of plugins providing similar functions. If you check the source code, you will see that there are some major differences between them. When you account for the fact there’s a plugin for everything under the sun, the chances for conflicts and misalignment are high.

Plugins and themes are the root of the broken widgets panel problem

Something about the way a particular plugin or theme is coded can break the backend JavaScript. Sometimes, it is caused by a conflict between plugins. Sometimes, that bit falls out of date compared to WordPress and JQuery. Sometimes, only the gods of coding have any idea what is going on. In the end, the culprit is almost always some extension added to the install.

You can try disabling your plugins and re-enabling them one at a time, in order of importance to your site. Check the widget panel after each plugin reactivation. It may help narrow down the cause. If you are using any JavaScript heavy themes, you may wish to try disabling them as well.

If all else fails, use ‘Screen Options’ on the affected screen. You can find the tab at the upper right. Click on it and enable accessibility.

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