by George on September 11, 2008
I ran into an annoying problem with Wordpress recently. The problem was with the author for each of my posts. I wrote several posts with no troubles; the posts were showing me as the author as expected. However, after adding a new user account to the blog, all my posts started showing up with the new user as the author of my posts. I’m currently running 2.6.1, but I’ve heard others talk about this with previous versions as well. To get around this bug, I would go into the data base and update the post_author field in the wp_posts table. This worked but was frustrating to have to do this for every post.
So, here’s what I did to fix it. While logged into my account, I changed the new user to a role of subscriber then changed them back to the role I wanted them to be. Now when I write my posts the author tag is correct again.
After further investigation, I found that the error may have something to do with the wp_usermeta table. There was a record in this table for the new user with a meta_key of wp_user_level and meta_value of 1. After changing this other user account to subscriber then back again, this record was removed. I’m not sure if other changes were made in the process, but you may be able to solve this by simply deleting that record as well.
I hope that helps anyone else out there frustrated by this issue.
UPDATE (09/23/2008) – I ran into this same problem on a different Wordpress installation today. This time, the above solution did not work. The problem was that my admin account was missing the entry in the wp_usermeta table all together. I corrected this by inserting the value for my account with the following SQL:
insert into wp_usermeta VALUES(null, 1, 'wp_user_level', '10')
Where 1 is the id of my account. You can determine the correct id by looking at the wp_users table.
by George on September 8, 2008
We really had a great time at the Lone Star Ruby Conference this past weekend. I’ve been to a number of conferences in the past for other technologies or programming languages, but this one really stands out for a number of reasons. It was not over-commercialized with tons of vendors trying to sell you something every time you turn around. Also, some of the biggest names in the Ruby world were there. And not just there, but they were hanging out with the group just like any other conference attendee. I love that these guys who are revered by most are just normal guys; they don’t put themselves up on a pedestal and have big egos.
There were several great talks but my favorites were:
- James Edward Gray II discussed lesser known Ruby gems, some of which I will definitely be using shortly.
- Evan Phoenix gave a fun and informative commentary on the past and current state of Ruby and the Ruby community.
- Yukihiro Matsumoto, the creator and still guardian of Ruby, gave a great keynote.
- Gregg Pollack & Jason Seifer gave a whirlwind run through of innovative happenings and tools from the past year.
- Yehuda Katz demonstrated using screw-unit which is a nice BDD test framework for Javascript. I’m really excited about testing this one out on my own. We’ve all suffered through the countless hours debuging with firebug. I love that tool, but I look forward to not needing it as much.
- Glenn Vanderburg gave a great talk on tactical design where he layed out a compelling argument for teaching good design using a few simple and easy to remember principles.
All around, this was a great conference. The more I get involved with the Ruby community, the more I enjoy it. I even had the chance to catch up with some old friends. Here’s a picture of myself and Todd, one of my old co-workers from San Antonio.
After this weekend, we’ve been inspired to get started on a Ruby project that we’ve been talking about for some time. We have a large PHP application that has been growing for almost 3 years. It’s not the cleanest of designs and is built on top of an out-dated CMS. The trouble is that fixing it up with another PHP CMS or migrating to a PHP framework like Cake would involve a lot of time, and maintaining it as is has become very complicated. So, we’ve decided to re-write it from the ground up using Ruby on Rails. I plan to catalogue the experience here so stay tuned.
by George on September 1, 2008
Shannon and I are getting pretty excited about the upcoming conference this weekend. We’re both fairly new to Ruby and look forward to the learning opportunities. We hope to meet some new friends there who are just as excited about Ruby as we are.
If you were at the conference as well and reading this afterward, please let us know you stopped by.
by George on August 27, 2008
Look what the FedEx guy brought today. Updated business cards with our new logo. My talented sister-in-law took our logo and made this nice design. We’re quite pleased with the look.
by George on August 27, 2008
Technology used:
- PHP
- SQL – (MySQL database)
- Linux CRON for scheduling email notifications
- Smarty template engine for page views (www.smarty.net)
- Selenium for testing
- HTML, CSS, Javascript for presentation
- Subversion version control system
The client, Little Giant Steps, wanted to adapt their web training application. The original application was for clients who had received a personal evaluation and had an individualized program created for them. The goal for this project was to provide a new training site where clients who had not been evaluated would receive a more standardized training program. There were new features required like gathering survey data and pre-screening clients to ensure that the training would fit their needs. Access needed to be restricted so that only clients who passed the pre-screening would be allowed to sign up for the training and a survey was required prior to beginning training. After 5 months the system needed to send email notifications to clients requesting they return to the web site to take another survey. This would allow the administrators, as well as the clients, to evaluate the progress that had been achieved.
by George on August 26, 2008
Technology used:
- PHP
- SQL – (MySQL database)
- Smarty template engine for page views (www.smarty.net)
- Selenium for testing
- HTML, CSS, Javascript for presentation
- Subversion version control system
This organization, Little Giant Steps, wanted to create an online training site for the parents of the children they work with. The concept was to create a customized training program for each user which would include streaming videos and downloadable materials. Each client would have a limited amount of time where they could log in to a secure site to view their training information. An administrative site was also needed to manage the bank of training exercises and vast number of online videos (over 1,000 videos as of 08/01/2008). The trainers needed to be able to log in and create the custom training programs, check on client status, and view reports. We were able to create this application with all these features and more. The project is running on a Linux/Apache/PHP server with a MySQL database (standard LAMP configuration).
by George on August 25, 2008
Technology used:
- PHP
- HTML
- SQL – (MySQL database)
Back in 2001, before Picasa and Flickr were around, we wanted to have a way to easily share our photos with family and friends. We created an application that would allow users to create albums and chapters, add photos to chapters, re-order the photos, add descriptions to photos and chapters, and theme support. We’re no longer keeping this application up to date as there are many more options available now, but at it’s peak usage there were 8 different sites using this album.
by George on July 23, 2008
We’re working on a whole new look for our site. As a web application developer I spend a whole lot of time working on web sites for other folks but often end up neglecting my own. So we’re trying to spruce things up a bit for you.
