jon
Forum Replies Created
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Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Install WordPress to temporary folder while building the site?Yes, with one addition: when you want your new WordPress site to take over as home page for the domain name, you will likely have to rename your index.html or whatever file name you have for your current web site’s home page. That is because WordPress uses index.php, which most web servers do not check for before displaying an index.html or one of several other names.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Install WordPress to temporary folder while building the site?Actually, I’ve used that approach many times, with one exception: you don’t actually need to move anything from /temporary:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory#Using_a_pre-existing_subdirectory_installOnly other suggestion is to call the folder something other than /temporary/ as visitors will see that name in links to images, etc. And users, of course, when they login.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Can't log in after many inactive yearsThis pretty well covers all the possibilities:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Resetting_Your_PasswordThere is a link at the bottom for another method when you don’t know user name or password.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: installing wp in its own directoryThe section “Using a pre-existing subdirectory install” is what I do:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory#Using_a_pre-existing_subdirectory_installInstalling in a directory is more about reducing the chance of error by avoiding the mixing of WordPress and non-WordPress files as would usually be the case if you installed WordPress in the root of the domain. Than it is about Security.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Private Site plugin always causes redirectOne last issue occurred to me after I wrote my previous post: your Browser. Browsers do a lot of Page Caching of their own, plus Browsers are the ones that store the Cookies that WordPress needs to know if you are logged in or not.
The easy way to start is to use a different browser and see if the behaviour is the same. Then there is flushing the Page Cache, and checking the Cookie settings, especially refusing Cookies.
Here is the complete set of ways to reset a password:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Resetting_Your_PasswordForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Error establishing database connection problemNo other ideas, so best I can suggest is going through the official documentation in the Codex on the subject:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Common_WordPress_Errors#Error_Establishing_Database_ConnectionForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Error establishing database connection problemMost common error I’ve seen is not realizing that the user/password required is the MySQL database user, not the Linux user or the Control Panel user or the WordPress user.
Most sites are localhost, but some are not, so you should check that out with your web host’s documentation.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Password reset at login page! ETA???I’ll let David respond directly to this, but I thought I would echo what he has said in other support threads for his plugins. He had been sidelined for many months because of a family crisis, and just “returned to work” in the very recent past.
In short, his plugins are alive and well and serving thousands of happy webmasters of WordPress sites. David’s first priority for the plugins is to investigate compatibility with the latest version of WordPress.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Protect all files from hotlinking and direct urlIn case you are interested, I did come up with an interesting solution to your problem, at least for PDF files and anything else where your users would not mind seeing a download message box come up.
See Example #1 on this page: http://php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php
But use an full path instead of a relative path (monkey.gif in the code example shown).
If your web hosting allows it, you could store your PDF files in locations that are not accessible with a URL. For example, my host has a /private/ folder in the same /www/ folder that holds the /public_html/ folder, the root of the domain.
It would take a plugin in WordPress, or a stand-alone .php file to implement this, as the HTML gets generated before the <body> tag.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Protect all files from hotlinking and direct urlSorry! I’ll leave it for David.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Protect all files from hotlinking and direct urlI’m the original author and am not able to support the plugin myself anymore — David has adopted this plugin and provides support — but I should state that my reference to “protecting a folder” was referring to the ability to stop visitors from listing the names of the files within a folder. That still wouldn’t prevent someone from accessing a PDF file directly with a URL if they knew the file name and folder name.
I have not really explored all the options for protecting individual files. I believe that Adobe still allows PDF files to be password-protected, but that is pretty user-unfriendly.
The only other thing that I can think of is what some web hosts call “Hot Link Protection”. The concept is that files from your site can only be accessed from web pages on your site. Hackers could likely trick the mechanism, however. If you are interested, you should do some research on the subject, and explore your web hosting control panel and/or talk to your web host’s support folks.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: XAMPP / MySQL WorkBench / Existing Client site / utf8mb4Two years is an eternity in the life of WordPress, but this article is the best I could find to discuss the issue: http://wptavern.com/wordpress-multi-environment-config-work-seamlessly-between-development-staging-and-production-sites
I recommend spending the time with your favourite search engine, and reading the newer (since the above article was written) articles. You’ll undoubtedly find better search words, but I think a good place to start is by searching: wordpress production development staging
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: XAMPP / MySQL WorkBench / Existing Client site / utf8mb4I like Duplicator. But when it works, it is perfect. When it doesn’t, better just to throw up your hands and carefully use this documentation: https://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
I never moved objects back and forth, other than plugins, themes, shortcodes and widgets. Maybe my world is too different from yours to be applicable.
I had a Test environment for building things. And a Development environment that would eventually go Live when it was “just right”. This describes what I did for Development: https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory#Using_a_pre-existing_subdirectory_install
Each Live WordPress installation began as a Development environment in a subdirectory. So, every installation is in a subdirectory. Then it is just less than a 60 second outage to switch out Live Production and replace it with Development, which is the new Live Production. Switch out meaning: changing where the root points, changing the URL in Settings, and search/replace all the links.
WordPress Import/Export works pretty well from what I’ve seen, especially for Pages and Posts. But, as I say, I don’t normally use it.
When I get a chance, in the next few hours, I’ll look around as I thought I recently saw some newer, more comprehensive ways to handle WordPress Development and Production environments from a Developer’s point of view.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [My Private Site] Private Site plugin always causes redirectThe plugin has been adopted by David, as I was no longer able to provide Support, so David should be able to provide more help, but a couple of quick comments might help get you going in a hurry. Or at least help David analyze your problem.
In theory, Page Caching could create the problem you describe. Check if any of your other plugins Cache. I was surprised to find how many plugins built for other things also provide Page Caching. If you are unsure, simply disable all your plugins except My Private Site and see if the problem still exists.
There is also a very small chance that you have a Redirect Loop issue, though I’ve never seen one act this way. Check out the first item in the FAQ: https://wordpress.org/plugins/jonradio-private-site/faq/
Mainly for David’s benefit, please list the setting you’ve chosen in the My Private Site plugin, especially the non-default settings.
And, of course, confirm that you are using the current version of the plugin: 2.14
Finally, I will be the first one to admit that testing in IIS environments has been minimal.