Archive for March, 2008

Audio player plugin not working in WordPress 2.5?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 31/3/2008
in Podcasting
. 13 Comments

I use the Audio Player plugin on a number of sites where I publish podcasts, principally PodLeaders.com

The main reason I use it is to simply populate the posts with a Flash player for any podcasts which I post so people can listen to them onscreen.

However, since upgrading PodLeaders to WordPress to 2.5 the plugin has stopped working :-( It simply displays a blank where the Flash player should be.

I tried switching to the Default WordPress theme to see if the problem was theme related but it appears not to be as the problem also happened in that theme.

I downloaded another plugin, called Podcasting which is supposed to work with WordPress 2.5 but that didn’t seem to work either.

Does anyone have any idea where the problem might lie and what I’ll need to do to fix it?

UPDATE: Problem solved. Pete reminded me in the comments of this post to check my folder structure for the Audio Player plugin and sure enough when updating from 1.2.2 to 1.2.3 I had inadvertently uploaded the plugin folder instead of simply the contents of the plugin folder! Fixed now and working once more. Thanks Pete.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_register_sidebar_widget() in…

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 31/3/2008
in WordPress
. 54 Comments

Beware if you update to WordPress 2.5 and are using the very popular K2 theme.

If you are using K2 and you do update to 2.5, you will receive the following error on trying to browse to your WordPress dashboard:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_register_sidebar_widget() in /path-to-blog/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 31

A bit of research told me that this is because K2 turns off WordPress widgets in favour of its own widget manager and as 2.5 has started to widgetize the Dashboard, you get this error.

To fix the error:
navigate to your K2 folder -> app -> includes
edit the file widgets-removal.php as below

Change the contents of the file from:

< ?php
if (get_option('k2sidebarmanager') == '1') {
	remove_action('plugins_loaded', 'wp_maybe_load_widgets', 0);
}
?>

to

< ?php
if (get_option('k2sidebarmanager') == '1') {
	remove_action('plugins_loaded', 'wp_maybe_load_widgets', 0);
  if( is_admin() )
	{global $pagenow; if( $pagenow == 'index.php' ) wp_maybe_load_widgets();
}
}
?>

Your dashboard should now be browsable once more!

I knew I should have held off on updating longer. I blame Donncha!

Live Maps Bird’s Eye now includes (some) Irish towns

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/3/2008
in Microsoft and maps
. 3 Comments

Via Clare Dillon the Virtual Earth blog and Martha Rotter on Twitter I spotted that Microsoft’s Live Maps now includes images of Cork, Galway, Carlow, Limerick, Navan & Wexford - cool!

The Bird’s Eye button becomes active when you are over an area that Microsoft has detailed aerial imagery of.

The image below is of Cork City Hall. You can rotate and zoom to see it from other angles and sizes! Way cool.

Live Maps Bird's Eye view of Cork City Hall

According to Clare’s blog post, Dublin will be up soon as well.

Get off your high horse Ed!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/3/2008
in Browsers, Microsoft and apple
. 25 Comments

There was a big bruhaha on the intertubes over the weekend when Apple ran its software update on Windows and offered the Safari 3.1 browser download as the default selected option.

Now I am not for a second condoning this kind of behaviour. I believe opt-in is the only way to do optional updates, especially when you are adding applications to a users machine.

However, I had to laugh when I saw Ed Bott get all up on his high horse about this. Ed is a Microsoft guy so it was all the more hilarious that he try to grab the moral highground here. In his post he said:

I think Apple is dead wrong in the way it’s gone about using its iPod monopoly to expand its share in another market. Ironically, an excellent model for how this update program should work already exists. It’s called Windows Update, and it embodies all the principles that Apple should follow… The right way to do it involves these four principles

* Opt-in is the only way. The update process should be completely opt-in. The option to deliver software should never be preselected for the user.
* Offer full disclosure. The software company has a responsibility to fully disclose what its software does, and the customer should make the opt-in decision only after being given complete details about how the update process works.
* Offer updates only. Updates should be just that. They should apply only to software that the customer has already chosen to install.
* Don’t mix updates. Updates that are not critical should be delivered through a separate mechanism.

They are good principles, I have no argument with them however Ed offers these principles up as if Microsoft lived by them! Ed, you are dreaming. Microsoft are just as guilty of breaching these principles as Apple. I don’t use Microsoft software much but the last time I tried to update Windows Live Writer my default search engine was changed to Live Search, and I had to opt out or I would have had Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live OneCare installed on my laptop.

Pot kettle black Ed.

WordPress 2.5 RC1 released

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/3/2008
in WordPress
. 8 Comments

I read Matt’s post about the release of a beta version of WordPress 2.5 this morning with great excitement (sad aren’t I?) and immediately downloaded it.

The screenshots Matt put up look great and I can’t wait to try it out.

However, then I had a rare moment of clarity. Waaaait a sec Tom. Let’s not go breaking the site just yet.

Often blog software updates break plugins and occasionally themes. I certainly had difficulties with this site the last time I upgraded.

Let’s not repeat that again in a hurry.

SO if anyone has tried out WordPress 2.5, how is it looking, what are the gotchas and how soon will a painless upgrade be viable?

Del.icio.us rolls out new (Yawn) features!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 14/3/2008
in social bookmarking
. 0 Comments

Del.icio.us, the original Social Bookmarking site is now starting to look long in the tooth and distinctly jaded beside newcomers such as Ma.gnolia.

However, all is not lost. Despite it seeming that all the innovation was sucked out of Del.icio.us when it was purchased by Yahoo! (what new functionality have they rolled out since the acquisition?), it now appears that Del.icio.us is about to launch a new look to the website and do away with the full-stops!

Seriously though, a site re-design and getting rid of the full-stops is the best they can come up with in terms of feature add? Oh dear!

Ma.gnolia, Del.icio.us has just confirmed that I made the right decision to move to you (and use your import tool to bring my Del.icio.us bookmarks with me!).

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!