Not Found
The requested URL /~user/wordpress/category/sample/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.21 (Unix) DAV/2 PHP/5.3.10 with Suhosin-Patch Server at localhost Port 80

To fix this, create a file and name it <username>.conf, where username is your user account’s short name. Paste the text below within the file:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All AuthConfig
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Save the file and make sure it uses the .conf extension. Copy the file to this location (you may need to provide your credentials to overwrite the current one):

/etc/apache2/users/

Restart Apache to apply the changes by running the following in the Terminal:

sudo apachectl restart

Reapply your permalinks in the WordPress admin by choosing the default option and then setting it back to your desired format.

The post How to fix WordPress permalinks on Mac OS X’s localhost appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

First, include the file Mage.php from your Magento installation to your PHP file. Doing this will enable you to connect to your shop using the Mage object.

If you’re using Mage Enabler for WordPress, you may skip this part:

<?php
require_once ("/your/magento/app/Mage.php");
umask(0);

and here’s the rest of the code…

// Customer Information
$firstname = "John";
$lastname = "Smith";
$email = "johnsmith@localhost.local";
$password = "myverysecretpassword";

// Website and Store details
$websiteId = Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getId();
$store = Mage::app()->getStore();

$customer = Mage::getModel("customer/customer");
$customer->website_id = $websiteId;
$customer->setStore($store);

try {
	// If new, save customer information
	$customer->firstname = $firstname;
	$customer->lastname = $lastname;
	$customer->email = $email;
	$customer->password_hash = md5($password);
	if($customer->save()){
		echo $customer->firstname." ".$customer->lastname." information is saved!";
	}else{
		echo "An error occured while saving customer";
	}
}catch(Exception $e){
	// If customer already exists, initiate login
	if(preg_match('/Customer email already exists/', $e)){
		$customer->loadByEmail($email);

		$session = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session');
		$session->login($email, $password);

		echo $session->isLoggedIn() ? $session->getCustomer()->getName().' is online!' : 'not logged in';
	}
}

The above code tries to create a Magento customer account using the given parameters such as $firstname, $lastname, $email and $password. If the email doesn’t have a match in the database, the request proceeds. But if a match is found, it logs in the customer using the parameters $email and $password then checks if the customer is online or not logged in. There are actually more parameters that you can pass such as if you want to send confirmation message or not but these are the basic fields to help you get started.

I hope this will help you integrate the Magento registration to your external site

The post How to create a new Magento customer account from an external site? appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

What I need to do is to suppress the display of the function output onscreen, pass it to a variable then do a split of the variable to separate the message and author in an array. See the code below on how I did it

<?php 
if (function_exists('stray_random_quote')) 
// turn on output buffer
ob_start(); 
// run the function of the plugin
stray_random_quote('feedback',false,'',true,1,0,'Category','ASC',false,''); 
// get the content from the buffer
$string = ob_get_contents(); 
ob_end_clean();
// split the output and remove unnecessary HTML tags
$feedback = split('by',strip_tags($string));
// access the message
echo trim($feedback[0]);
// access the author
echo trim($feedback[1]);

Pretty easy!

The post Separating message and author in ‘Stray Random Quotes’ WordPress plugin appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

plugin-a.zip

plugin-a-folder
---- plugin-a-main-file.php
---- plugin-a-readme.txt

plugin-b.zip

plugin-b-folder
---- plugin-b-subfolder
-------- plugin-b-main-file.php
-------- plugin-b-readme.txt

There are two ways to install a plugin. Option 1 is to unzip the file and upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/ directory. Option 2 is to use the Add New -> Upload option found in the left panel bar of the administrative page of WordPress. Let’s assume the two plugins went through the two installation options.

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 1

1. Unzip the file
2. Upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/
3. Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Installed.
4. Locate plugin and click Activate link.
5. Result:
   Plugin activated.

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 2

1. Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
2. Locate the file plugin-a.zip by clicking the Browse button.
3. Click Install Now button.
4. Result:
   Unpacking the package?
   Installing the plugin?
   Plugin installed successfully.
5. Click Activate Plugin link.
6. Result:
   Plugin activated.

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 1

1. Unzip the file
2. Upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/
3. Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Installed.
4. Locate plugin and click Activate link.
5. Error: Plugin does not exists in the list.

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 2

1. Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
2. Locate the file plugin-b.zip by clicking the Browse button.
3. Click Install Now button.
4. Result:
   Unpacking the package?
   Installing the plugin?
   Plugin installed successfully.
5. Click Activate Plugin link.
6. WordPress ? Error
   The plugin does not have a valid header.

Based on our testing, plugin-b.zip seems to fail on both methods of installation. To find out what is causing the error, we have to understand how the plugin installation works. Upon checking the core files I found this excerpt in get_plugins() function:

* WordPress only supports plugin files in the base plugins directory
* (wp-content/plugins) and in one directory above the plugins directory
* (wp-content/plugins/my-plugin). The file it looks for has the plugin data and
* must be found in those two locations. It is recommended that do keep your
* plugin files in directories.

The plugin data that the function is looking for can be found below:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Name Of The Plugin
Plugin URI: http://URI_Of_Page_Describing_Plugin_and_Updates
Description: A brief description of the Plugin.
Version: The Plugin's Version Number, e.g.: 1.0
Author: Name Of The Plugin Author
Author URI: http://URI_Of_The_Plugin_Author
License: A "Slug" license name e.g. GPL2
*/
?>

So in order to properly install and activate a plugin, the following two conditions must be satisfied:

• that a plugin main file (.php) must be placed in plugins root folder or in first-level subdirectory within plugins folder
• and it should contain the necessary plugin data for identification/validation purposes

In the case of plugin-b.zip, although the main PHP file contains the needed plugin data, the validate_plugin() function returned an error since neither the file can be found or check if it contains the plugin data because it is placed in the second level subdirectory, a directory location in which the function is not designed to scan the content.

To fix the plugin-b.zip file, it needs to have the following content structure:

plugin-b.zip

plugin-b-folder
---- plugin-b-main-file.php
---- plugin-b-readme.txt

I hope this post will enlighten WordPress users who wants to maximize their blog’s potential

The post How to fix the ‘The plugin does not have a valid header’ error when activating a WordPress plugin appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

I’m soooo happy to see my very first plugin to be released for everyone to use. I hope it will help a lot of Magento and WordPress users!

Click! click! click!

The post Mage Enabler is now available for download in the Official WordPress Plugin repository! appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

Update (May 12, 2010): Mage Enabler is now available in the Official WordPress Plugin repository. Get it here!

It’s been a while since I posted my tweak that allows Mage object to be utilized within any WordPress installation. The tweak requires the blog owner to modify functions.php as stated in my post. I’m inspired by the feedback of the readers who used the tweak so I decided that a plugin that does the same thing should be made to prevent modifying the WordPress core files thus preventing the tweak to cause inconsistencies when an upgrade is necessary.

It is my pleasure to introduce to you, Mage Enabler plugin. Just copy the whole code snippet below and save it as mage-enabler.php. Place it inside a folder named mage-enabler together with the readme.txt available right after the code block. Please take time to read and follow the readme.txt instruction on how to install the plugin in your WordPress setup.

How to use the plugin?

To show you how the plugin works, I’ve decided to convert my example in my previous post by providing a single login page for both WordPress (subscriber) and Magento (customer). This setup assumes that the account credentials (subcriber/customer) in both database are the same and that the function collision problem between WordPress and Magento has been fixed. If you followed the functions.php update in that post, remove the block of code added at line 4123 to 4138.

Location of functions.php

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php

Let’s start by opening the index.php file of the WordPress theme Twenty Ten. I’m using version 3.0-beta1 of WordPress in this article. You can replicate the same code update to any WordPress version and theme you have.

wordpress_root\wp-content\themes\twentyten\index.php

Copy the necessary codes (lines 16-18 and 22-40) to make it similar below:

<?php

/**
 * The main template file
 *
 * This is the most generic template file in a WordPress theme
 * and one of the two required files for a theme (the other being style.css).
 * It is used to display a page when nothing more specific matches a query.
 * E.g., it puts together the home page when no home.php file exists.
 * Learn more: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty Ten
 * @since 3.0.0
 */
 if(class_exists('Mage')){
 	Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));
 }
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>
<!-- Magento's custom greeting -->
<div style="font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000; padding-bottom: 10px;">
<?php
if(class_exists('Mage')){
	$session = Mage::getSingleton("customer/session");
	$magento_message = "Welcome ";
	// Generate a personalize greeting
	if($session->isLoggedIn()){
		$magento_message .= $session->getCustomer()->getData('firstname').' ';
		$magento_message .= $session->getCustomer()->getData('lastname').'!';
	}else{
		$magento_message .= "Guest!";
	}

	echo $magento_message;
}
?>
</div>
<!-- End of Magento's custom greeting -->

The purpose of the code change above is to display a ?Welcome [customer name here]? when a customer is logged in, and show ?Welcome Guest? when they are not. Make sure that if you’re going to use any Magento related script in your code, always write it within the following if condition:

if(class_exists('Mage')){
	// Write your Magento codes here
}

This will prevent your page or theme files from breaking up if in case the plugin is deactivated, not working or if Mage.php can’t be found.

Open user.php file found at following address below:

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-includes/user.php

Locate the function wp_authenticate_username_password() and find the similar code below. I found mine at line 108.

	if ( !wp_check_password($password, $userdata->user_pass, $userdata->ID) )
		return new WP_Error('incorrect_password', sprintf(__('<strong>ERROR</strong>: Incorrect password. <a href="%s" title="Password Lost and Found">Lost your password</a>?'), site_url('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword', 'login')));

Right after the code above, add the following code starting at line 111 to make it similar to the code below. This update allows us to run the login request of Magento within WordPress:

	if ( !wp_check_password($password, $userdata->user_pass, $userdata->ID) )
		return new WP_Error('incorrect_password', sprintf(__('<strong>ERROR</strong>: Incorrect password. <a href="%s" title="Password Lost and Found">Lost your password</a>?'), site_url('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword', 'login')));
	// Start Magento
	if(class_exists('Mage')){
		Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));
		$session = Mage::getSingleton("customer/session");
		try{
			$login = $session->login($username, $password);
		}catch(Exception $e){
			// Do nothing
		}
	}

Finally, to call the Magento’s logout function, locate the file below and open it:

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-login.php

Find the switch case statement at line 352. Add the necessary code to make it similar to the code below and save it:

switch ($action) {

case 'logout' :
	check_admin_referer('log-out');
	// Start Magento
	if(class_exists('Mage')){
		Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));
		Mage::getSingleton("customer/session")->logout();
	}
	wp_logout();

Now test your WordPress by accessing the homepage at http://localhost/wordpress/. It should display the ‘Welcome Guest’ similar to the image below with a cookie named as ‘frontend’ in your Firebug cookie tab. That is your Magento cookie.

Clicking the login for WordPress redirects us to the login form like the one below while still showing the ‘frontend’ cookie. Since I have a customer with same credentials on both Magento (Customer) and WordPress (set as Subscriber), all I have to do is to use the username and password to login in the form below.

At this point, your Magento session should be running with an active customer session. To check if it does, go back to your homepage by clicking the top header text or going to http://localhost/wordpress/. It should display now the welcome message with your customer’s name.

For those who will use this plugin, let me know the version of WordPress and Magento you’re using so I can keep track of the list of versions in which this plugin is compatible. Until such time that the plugin is moved to the Official WordPress Plugin repository, I’ll accept and answer inquiries here thru comment/feedback form below. Mage Enabler is now available in the Official WordPress Plugin repository. Get it here!

The post Mage Enabler: A plugin to run Magento's session within WordPress appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress.

WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

It is scheduled on October 2 this year and they haven’t publish any details yet, but what the heck! I’m still going! So fellow WordPress bloggers, hop on to our mothership!

The post WordCamp Philippines on October 2010! appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

You have a free WordPress blog that has been online for sometime. You love its simple yet powerful way of managing your content so you’ve decided to have it hosted to a different provider in order to have a more granular control to its code and functionality. Eventually, you needed cash to support the hosting expenses so you decided to utilize your blog for e-commerce use. That’s when Magento comes in to the scene. You want to find a way to use Magento as your backend while pulling your catalog and customer information to be posted to WordPress site. This is what my article is for.

Since your WordPress will serve as the frontend, you don’t have to worry about where the database for Magento will be located as long as you have a local access to the Mage.php file in order to extend all Magento’s functionality to your WordPress pages. My current setup is still the same with the rest of my post here having ‘htdocs’ as my root directory, magento has its own subdirectory ‘htdocs/magento’ as well as wordpress in ‘htdocs/wordpress’. The goal here is to able to use Magento as if it is a native function within our WordPress installation.

Since there is an existing function collision between Magento and WordPress because both application has an existing translator function named __(), our first task is to automatically detect if the function already exists and disable it in Magento and run as usual if it doesn’t.

To do that, locate the file below in your Magento installation:
Copy the file functions.php below from your Magento core folder

path:to-your-htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/functions.php

and paste it in the Magento local folder which can be found below and open it for editing (create needed folders if it doesn’t exists):

path:to-your-htdocs/magento/app/code/local/Mage/Core/functions.php

Locate the function __() or go to line 93:

function __()
{
    return Mage::app()->getTranslator()->translate(func_get_args());
}

replace it with this:

if (!function_exists('__')) {
	function __()
	{
		return Mage::app()->getTranslator()->translate(func_get_args());
	}
}

Why did I choose to disable Magento’s translator function instead of WordPress’? It is because in Magento, it has already been marked as deprecated in version 1.3 and searching throughout the installation I didn’t see any file that uses that function.

Now that the function collision has been solved, let’s proceed in modifying WordPress to include our Mage.php file. Locate and open the WordPress file below:

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php

Scroll down to the end of the file. Add the codes below right after the last function statement which is after line 4122

Note: Mage Enabler plugin users don’t need to do this anymore.

/**
 * Run Magento's Mage.php within WordPress
 *
 * @author Richard Feraro <richardferaro@gmail.com>
 * @link http://mysillypointofview.richardferaro.com
 *
 * @return object
 */
function magento($name = "frontend") {
	// Include Magento application
	require_once ( "../magento/app/Mage.php" );
	umask(0);
	// Initialize Magento
	Mage::app("default");
	return Mage::getSingleton("core/session", array("name" => $name));
}

That’s it! I know it’s weird that it isn’t like the solution given by others that require modifying a lot of files. Nevertheless, I tested it and it does work. You just have to make sure that whenever you use the magento() function to any file within WordPress, always place it at the top most part of the code where there’s no header request or else you will get a similar error below:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at path:to-your-htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\themes\twentyten\index.php:19) in path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract\Varien.php on line 115' in path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\functions.php:245 Stack trace: #0 [internal function]: mageCoreErrorHandler(2, 'session_start()...', 'path:to-your-htdocs...', 115, Array) #1 path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract\Varien.php(115): session_start() #2 path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract\Varien.php(155): Mage_Core_Model_Session_Abstract_Varien->start('frontend') #3 path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract.php(84): Mage_Core_Model_Session_Abstract_Varien->init('core', 'frontend') #4 path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Ses in path:to-your-htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\functions.php  on line 245

An example of how to use this is to check whether a customer is logged in or not. To do this, open the index.php of WordPress’ default theme which is Twenty Ten 0.7:

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/themes/twentyten/index.php

Just below line 15, add the magento() function. It should look like the codes below:

<?php

/**
 * The main template file
 *
 * This is the most generic template file in a WordPress theme
 * and one of the two required files for a theme (the other being style.css).
 * It is used to display a page when nothing more specific matches a query.
 * E.g., it puts together the home page when no home.php file exists.
 * Learn more: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty Ten
 * @since 3.0.0
 */
 magento(); // Don't add this anymore if you're already using Mage Enabler

?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

Add the code below marked as Magento’s custom greeting right after the get_header() function of WordPress in the same file:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<!-- Magento's custom greeting -->
<div style="font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000; padding-bottom: 10px;">
<?php
	$session = Mage::getSingleton("customer/session");
	$magento_message = "Welcome ";
	// Generate a personalize greeting
	if($session->isLoggedIn()){
		$magento_message .= $session->getCustomer()->getData('firstname').' ';
		$magento_message .= $session->getCustomer()->getData('lastname').'!';
	}else{
		$magento_message .= "Guest!";
	}

	echo $magento_message;
	//echo "<br>";
	//print_r($session);
?>
</div>
<!-- End of Magento's custom greeting -->

The purpose of the code change above is to display a ‘Welcome [customer name here]’ when a customer is logged in, and show ‘Welcome Guest’ when they are not.

Next we have to edit the file below to allow us to use the default login page of WordPress as entry point for Magento also. We assumed here that both Magento and WordPress has the same list of user credentials. Your setup maybe different as to which user’s database to use so it’s up to you how to implement it.

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-includes/user.php

Locate the function wp_authenticate_username_password() and find the similar code below. I found mine at line 108.

	if ( !wp_check_password($password, $userdata->user_pass, $userdata->ID) )
		return new WP_Error('incorrect_password', sprintf(__('<strong>ERROR</strong>: Incorrect password. <a href="%s" title="Password Lost and Found">Lost your password</a>?'), site_url('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword', 'login')));

Right after the code above, add the following code starting at line 111 to make it similar to the code below. This update allows us to run the login request of Magento within WordPress:

	if ( !wp_check_password($password, $userdata->user_pass, $userdata->ID) )
		return new WP_Error('incorrect_password', sprintf(__('<strong>ERROR</strong>: Incorrect password. <a href="%s" title="Password Lost and Found">Lost your password</a>?'), site_url('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword', 'login')));
	// Start Magento
	magento(); // Don't add this anymore if you're already using Mage Enabler
	$session = Mage::getSingleton("customer/session");
	try{
		$login = $session->login($username, $password);
	}catch(Exception $e){
		// Do nothing
	}

Finally, to call the Magento’s logout function, locate the file below and open it:

path-to-your-root-htdocs/wordpress/wp-login.php

Find the switch case statement at line 352. Add the necessary code to make it similar to the code below and save it:

switch ($action) {

case 'logout' :
	check_admin_referer('log-out');
	// Start Magento
	magento(); // Don't add this anymore if you're already using Mage Enabler
	Mage::getSingleton("customer/session")->logout();
	wp_logout();

Now test your WordPress by accessing the homepage at http://localhost/wordpress/. It should display the ‘Welcome Guest’ similar to the image below with a cookie named as ‘frontend’ in your Firebug cookie tab. That is your Magento cookie.

Clicking the login for WordPress redirects us to the login form like the one below while still showing the ‘frontend’ cookie. Since I have a customer with same credentials on both Magento (Customer) and WordPress (set as Subscriber), all I have to do is to use the username and password to login in the form below.

At this point, your Magento session should be running with an active customer session. To check if it does, go back to your homepage by clicking the top header text or going to http://localhost/wordpress/. It should display now the welcome message with your customer’s name.

I hope this article will help you get started in using Magento’s functionality within WordPress.

The post How to use Magento’s session within WordPress appeared first on My Silly Point of View.

here’s a screenshot of my blog using safari browser of my ipod touch:

i used the iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme to run this feature on my blog. you can check out their site on how to use it also in your wordpress blog!

thanks to content.robot for this very useful plugin

The post a customized theme for ipod users! appeared first on My Silly Point of View.