Add Tax Filing links!

Date February 4, 2010

Janelle Mercer, our good friend at the Southwest Kansas Library System (and their Assistant Technology Consultant and Trainer), created these colorful step-by-step instructions (.pdf) for adding some timely Tax Filing links to a WordPress 2.9 site (using the Stanton County Library as the example).

You, too, can have a Kansas WebFile link and button!

Image for stealing:

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Update 2.9.1 available, please update

Date January 28, 2010

I cried. I’ll admit it. 2.9.1 came out the day after I upgraded all of your sites to 2.9.

You all  have the ability to update your sites yourself, so if you see the message above (2.9.1 is available, Please Update Now.), click the link, and then click “Upgrade Automatically.”

This update is trivial, it’s basically a back-end update that doesn’t affect much of what you see. It is a security release as well, and as we all know those are important, so please do it when you have 30 seconds to spare.

As a FYI, watch this site or the email list for notifications of new updates, and what they entail. We will do a quick rundown of changes and “Oh my, this won’t work anymore” situations before we tell you to do updates. Our goal is to not lag behind more than a couple of weeks on minor updates, and a month on major updates.

Thanks a ton for your cooperation and assistance.

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Plugins We Like

Date January 20, 2010

Image Widget 3.2.1
Wordpress Easy Uploader
FileBrowser (very powerful, for advanced users ONLY.)

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Image Cropping/Editing Quirkiness

Date January 15, 2010

We were doing training today and noticed a few quirks with the image editor:

  • If the image is very small, it will not let you crop it. Solution: Use something like picnik.com to edit the photo prior to uploading.
  • The theme you are using may have functions that mess up the image editor. If you happen to run into a particular theme that has a problem please report it to Liz (lrea@nekls.org)
  • If you find other issues, please let us know.

Thanks!

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Adding Custom Header Images to Atahualpa theme on KLOW

Date January 13, 2010

The basic skeleton of the process is as follows:
  1. Install the wp easy uploader plugin
  2. Activate the wp easy uploader plugin
  3. Click Tools
  4. Click Upload Files
  5. Select “Manual Path” and put the path to the header directory in there: /wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/header/
  6. click Upload
  7. Deactivate the wp easy uploader plugin. It should only be active while you are trying to upload images.
Detailed process:
  1. Click Plugins
  2. Click Add New
  3. Search for wp easy uploader.
  4. The plugin you want will be the first on the list. Click Install on the right hand side, then click the red “Install Now” button. The plugin will download and install.
  5. Use the plugin to upload your header images, see the following screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/MWM4MjIyZW. WP will tell you that the file is uploaded successfully. Repeat step 5 until all of the files you want are uploaded.Deactivate the plugin: Click Plugins
  6. Scroll down until you see wp easy uploader
  7. Click Deactivate.
  8. (optional) Click Delete to remove the plugin (it’s a very powerful upload plugin. Should someone you don’t like get access to your site they could do a lot of damage to your site with it. It’s fine to use it in situations like this, but please *at least* deactivate it when you’re not using it. For ultimate security you will want to delete it as well.)

Note: You can use this same process for uploading to any folder in wp-content on your site, so concieveably if you can determine the directory a specific theme keeps it’s header files in, you can overwrite them with your own and have custom header images on almost any theme. If you need help with this please let us know.

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Can’t log in? Clear your cookies and Cache

Date January 13, 2010

Some particularly active sites have had an issue where they cannot log in, even with the correct password. These sites need to clear the cache and cookies on their browser and try logging in again.

For instructions on how to do that, see this link:

http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache

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Custom Default Theme Changes Not Preserved After Update

Date January 11, 2010

Something we just stumbled across: Updating wordpress using the integrated automatic installer may not preserve any custom changes you have made to the DEFAULT THEME using the Theme Editor. This affects the DEFAULT THEME only.

As part of the upgrade process the Default Theme is updated along with the rest of the WordPress core files, overwriting any changes you have made to the files using the Theme Editor. What you can consider doing is copy/pasting any custom coding out of the theme editor and into text documents on your computer before attempting an update, upgrading wordpress, then pasting your custom code back in after the update.

Another option is to not use the Default Theme, as other themes are not part of the WordPress Core package and do not suffer this limitation.

An example of a custom change one might make to the default theme, editing the header. All paths are custom to every site, so this is only an example:

.  

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First Steps after the breakdown

Date January 8, 2010

I can’t log in, my theme is funny, and all my widgets are gone! What do I do?!

It’s easy, watch this video to learn the first steps to take with the new and improved KLOW websites.

First steps after the breakdown:

  1. Log in — the passwords have been reset, please contact system technical support staff for the default password.
  2. Set your email address
  3. Set a more secure password. Keep trying until it says “STRONG”
  4. Check out the new themes, activate one if you like
  5. Take a look at the inactive widgets to determine if any you want are still available to you.

We hope this little video helps you out.

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Oh no, I can’t upload files!

Date January 6, 2010

So you go to upload a picture, a theme, or a plugin, and you see something similar to the following:

graphic depicting upload error message

Don’t panic! It’s easy to fix!

This is caused by some legacy settings in the databases we brought over from the old server. Some sites have the problem, some don’t, and I can’t really predict which will and which won’t. Fortunately, it’s about 5 clicks to fix. Here’s how:

  1. Since you are already logged in, click the “Settings” link
  2. Click “Miscellaneous”
  3. Follow this screenshot:

1. change "store uploads in this folder" to wp-content/uploads 2. uncheck the box next to "Organize my uploads" and 3. Click "Save Changes"Try your upload again. It should now work!

There may be other similar messages that this same set of steps work on, different paths in the “Store uploads in this folder” text box that are incorrect. Resetting it to the default settings (wp-content/uploads) and making sure Organization is off should fix your issue.

Still having problems? Let us know!

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Sites are restored… but I still can’t see it!

Date January 6, 2010

All of the library sites have now been restored. Please contact your system KLOW trainer for login information, as all librarian passwords have been reset to their default. You should also have an email from when your site was first created documenting this default password.

If you still cannot see your site, we will be happy to investigate the cause for you, but please first try flushing the DNS cache on your computer. This can most easily be accomplished by rebooting the computer, but if you would rather not reboot Tech-FAQ has a good description on how to flush the DNS cache on common operating systems.

Please feel free to report any issues, though we think we have gotten the performance kinks worked out.

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