Category: grayblog.co.uk

Thanks to Gordon, I seem to have kicked the .htaccess generation into gear on my WP installation, by CHMODing to 777 then back to 666. I shouldn’t need to do that, but there you go.
Naturally, all this has done is reveal a whole bunch of other problems. If I modify the permalink structure, .htaccess updates, then I get an internal server error if I go to the home page or the WP admin pages. So, apologies to those people who have been trying to look here today and have had error messages.

I’ve taken a look in my server error logs and I notice two things – firstly, when .htaccess updates, the following error is generated:

[Fri Apr 8 11:48:45 2005] [error] mod_gzip: TRANSMIT_ERROR:32

Secondly, when I try to call a page, the internal server error caused is as follows:

[Fri Apr 8 11:52:37 2005] [alert] [client 81.130.49.105] /var/www/vhosts/grayblog.co.uk/httpdocs/.htaccess: RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression '^?p=category/(.+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$'\n

So, these leads to the following questions:

1. what is a transmit error:32?
2. what causes it?
3. how do I prevent it?
4. is it related to the server’s inability to compile the .htaccess file?
5. is there something I can do to make the file compile even with the transmit error?

There is nothing in the WP Codex on this (at least, nothing that I can find) and nobody seems to have raised a similar problem in the forums – so I have opened a discussion here. One user states that he/she had the same problem with the compile error and resolved this by deleting the permalink entry from the database via their server’s database admin, and then going to the admin page and resetting it on the permalinks screen. I’ve tried that, but it does not solve the problem.
I’m out of my depth on this problem, I must admit. And my tax return has arrived through the post this morning (joy of joys!), so my mood is not great at the moment. Time for coffee and toast, I think, before I get back to the PFE accounts.

Use WP? Post links to Amazon (UK, US or any of the others, for that matter)? Then you need this plugin.

• comment notification doesn’t work. It’ll send the notification to any address other than graybo@grayblog.co.uk – totally mystified by that one
• monthly archives not working – totally mystified. This is, in my estimation, the most serious fault. If I can’t remedy it, I may look at an alternative CMS. Ugh. May be related to the next problem.
• pretty permalinks not working. Related: .htaccess not updating, in spite of being CHMOD 666. Totally mystified.
• still haven’t figured out how to get previous and next page links at the foot of the index page and, by extension, the archive pages. This is due to me not knowing enough/any php.

Bah.

I’m stumped. I want to put "next page" and "previous page" links at the foot of each page. I know I should be using posts_nav_link. Where should I put it? My current code looks like this:
[the main body of the grayblog page]
</div>

<div class="sidebar">
[the sidebar part of the page]
Help?

Incidentally, I’ve turned off the anti-spam plugin that I was using because it was generating false positives. Fingers crossed.

I’m told that all these posts about my WP woes are boring. Sorry.
Anyway, following advice and suggestions received, I’ve employed a plugin and some new code to fix the category archive pages so that they now display 500 posts (setting it to 999 posts caused a server timeout). I’ve also added links to the previous and next posts, as well as the home page, to each individual post page, which should make Gert and Brian happy.
Now I have to add some code so that when you get to the foot of each page of 500 posts in the category archives, you can click a link to view the next 500 (yes, a couple of my categories have that many posts!).
I have also yet to resolve the non-functioning date archives. Suggestions on that one would be very welcome.

I’ve found a new problem – the category archives only show the most recent posts when called, and not the entire history of posts in that category.
UPDATE: that’s due to some missing PHP from my index.php file, code that was not required under the old version. Bad update instructions, methinks. I’ll need to figure out what code is required and add it, but it needs to generate "next page" and "previous page" links.
No solutions to any of the other problems yet, and I’m getting increasingly fed up. I’ve asked 34sp.com to check the status of the AllowOverride in my httpd.conf file, but I’ve not yet had a reply from them.

The only outstanding issue is related to the archive links not functioning. I think this may be related to .htaccess not being updated by WP, even though it is CHMOD=666 and mod_rewrite is available. As a result, I can’t use fancy permalinks. Others have the exact same problem. I think that this might be caused AllowOverride being disabled in the httpd.conf file, but I don’t have access to that file on 34sp.com in order to check. I’m also concerned that setting AllowOverride to all would create a security hole (although I’m happy to be corrected in my assumptions by anyone that knows more than me).
Suggestions?

I’ve fixed the problem with the categories links not working.
The categories link list is still in the wrong order, though I believe that I’m using the correct PHP script to call them in alphabetical order.
The month archive links are still broken.

Well, the latest is this – the comments are working and the style sheet now shows up on the individual pages. Good-o.
However, the list of categories in the sidebar is no longer in alphabetical order.
Moreover, the links to the categories or archives only take you to the front page, although the URI displayed is correct.
And I still have to insert index.php/ in every URI, in spite of having mod_rewrite on 34sp. I’m confused and tired and more than a bit fed up. Suggestions would be very welcome.

I’ve just done the WordPress upgrade to 1.5. Things are a bit weird – please be patient and I’ll try and resume normal service soon.
UPDATE: comments are down. This, I know for sure, is due to the fact that I have separate style sheets for the main pages and for the comments pages, and now they use a single template – or something. Either way, something is borked. If you want to talk to me, then email.
FURTHER UPDATE: No, I was wrong about the cause. The problem is to do with the permalinks. Now to fix it…
FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE: Comments are still not working. There was a problem with permalinks that now seems to be resolved (I’ve had to prefix all the page links with index.php/ – surely that can’t be right??), but the comments are still not working, even though I’m using the two php scripts supplied with the classic theme (a recommendation made in the forums). I’m feeling mildly frustrated.