Visual Editor in WordPress is Missing or Broken
Visual Button Disappeared from the Word Press Blog Editor
I setup another blog for a friend this weekend. This installation went almost perfect except for one small nagging issue.
Problem Description
When we installed WordPress onto his host and logged in for the first time we noticed the “Visual” button was missing from the WordPress Editor. It only gave him the option to write his posts as HTML, and all the buttons that are associated with Visual Editor were missing as well.
Troubleshooting
We thought it might have been a problem with how the files had been uploaded to his host. His hosting service has a very poor FTP system which errored out three times while we were upgrading to the latest version of WordPress.
We uploaded the files again to make sure nothing was corrupt. Once we had done this we deactivated any plugins that were running to make sure they were not causing issues either.
After looking on the WordPress forums and realizing other people were running into this issue, we checked around for people’s recommendations.
A lot of the advice on the forums was that it was some sort of bug in WordPress, or that you needed to install TinyMCE or TinyMCE Advanced. Unfortunately none of these answers were the “True” answer.
It turns out the problem is much easier to fix than most people think.
Solution
This may vary depending on your situation but what we found was that this was actually an option that needed to be toggled within WordPress itself.
There is a setting in Word Press that allows users to disabled the Visual editor if they choose not to use it.
To turn the Visual editor back on and get your “Kitchen Sink” back you need to go into:
Users > “Your Username” > Visual Editor (At the top of the screen)
Because this was a new installation of WordPress this option had apparently never been enabled (although it is usually on by default). When I create user accounts, it is usually just to give someone access to an existing blog and this has never been an issue.
Near the Visual Editor Option make sure there is a check mark in the box next to “Use the visual editor when writing”.
Once this is done scroll to the buttom of the screen and click the “Update Profile” button. WordPress will now save your user settings and you should now have access to the Visual Editor once again.
Detailed .HTACCESS Setup Information for WordPress Blogs
Today’s guide is going to cover creating and setting up an .HTACCESS file for your web server and blog. This will allow you to create custom rules for how traffic and server requests to your site are handled.
I have broke the guide into sections based on questions I had when going through this project and learning how to configure the .htaccess file myself. You can follow the entire guide if you would like a detailed overview or read the title of each section to find the information you need.
(WARNING: Always backup your HTACCESS file before making any changes. This way if a change you make affects rules that are already in use they can be restored.)
01. What is HTACCESS and what does it do?
The .htaccess file is the default name of a configuration file that specifies rules for the way in which requests to a web server are handled. This can be something as simple as a 301 redirect from an old page to a new page (in the case that the old page has been removed or renamed) to something as complex as changing the format in which permalinks are displayed on your site.
It can also cover advanced functions like blocking specific IP addresses, or specifying file permissions on the web server.
02. How can I create and setup an .htaccess file
To setup an .htaccess file you need to first create the file itself. To create the .htaccess file, “right click” on your desktop and select the “New” > “Text Document” option.
Once you have created this file name it “htaccess.txt”. We will be changing this later but you need to do this to create a file we can edit. If you try to add the period before the file name (which is needed when the file is on your server) you will get a Windows error message that states.
** Rename ** You must type a file name
The reason this happens is because Windows will not handle files that start with a period, but unix and linux systems will. The htaccess file is a common component found on Apache web servers which are usually loaded on these types of systems.
To get around this we will make our changes to htaccess.txt in Windows, and then upload this file to the web server where we will rename it to .htaccess
To create a basic rule set for your .htaccess file you will need to copy the following code into the top of your text file.
RewriteEngine on
Followed by whatever rules you would like to assign for how your webserver should handle various requests. For our example lets assume you have an old website with a bunch of articles that you have converted into a blog.
To redirect traffic from existing links that point toward old HTML files, and send them through to the main page of your new site you could use the following command in your .htaccess file.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-z]+).html$ /directory/newpage.html [R,NC,L]
Where /directory/newpage.html would be the location where you would like to send this traffic.
In the above example the carrot ^ designates that the base directory of your site is where the .htaccess file is located. (example www.yoursite.com). The .htaccess file must be located in the root directory of your website to work properly.
The $ indicates the closing of the rule or function you are specifying in your file.
You will see these used in other rules that can be used in the .htaccess file. For a comprehensive list of these commands and rules check the following link:
HTACCESS Configuration, Rules and Settings
The web server I was working on was a friend’s website which is hosted by Netfirms. If you are working with an htaccess file on a Netfirms account refer to the following documentation for examples of htaccess commands.
Netfirms HTACESS Command Examples
03. Windows will not let me create a file beginning with a period? What do I do?
As I mentioned above this is not a problem. The way to get around this is to take the htaccess.txt file we created and to copy it to the root directory of your web server via FTP. (of however you transfer your files.) Once the file has been transferred to your webserver it can be renamed to “.htaccess” because it is no longer on a Windows system.
Make sure that if you have an existing .htaccess file on your web server that you back it up. You don’t want to lose the file by overwriting it as it may already be specifying rules that are in use on your server. This is almost definitely the case if you are running a blog.
04. When I uploaded my .htaccess file the links to articles on my blog stopped working!?! HELP!
Uh oh! It sounds like you overwrote the existing htaccess file on your web server. Not to worry…
WordPress will create an htaccess file on your web server by default when you specify any custom permalink structures for your blog. This means if you have gone with the /%postname%/ option a lot of authors recommend, WordPress will have written a custom htaccess file to implement this permalink structure throughout your site.
To resolve this issue you need to recreate this file so the article links will work again. This can be done by going into your blogs admin panel, and selecting the “Settings” > “Permalinks” and clicking “Save Changes”. This should recreate your WordPress htaccess file and restore your broken links.
05. WordPress is overwriting my .htaccess file?
Yes. WordPress will overwrite your custom htaccess file if you upload one to your server and then change anything in the permalink options within WordPress, or load a plugin that utilizes these features.
This will cause your htaccess file to be overwritten and you will lose any changes you have made.
06. I need to use custom rules in the .htaccess file in addition to the changes WordPress makes. How can this be done?
You can actually edit the htaccess file that WordPress creates and add your own custom rules to it. This is very helpful if you are maintaining a large site or are converting old HTML documents to a blog format and need to redirect old links.
To do this you first need to generate the WordPress htaccess file. This can be done by following the steps in part #4 of this guide.
(Go into “Settings” > “Permalinks” > and click “Save Changes”)
Once you have done this, you should see an htaccess file appear in the root directory of your webserver. Copy this file to your computer via FTP so that you can edit it on your local machine.
You will notice that since you have copied the file from the web server, it has a file name that starts with a period and Windows will allow you to modify and save this file. (even though it wouldn’t allow us to name the file like this before.)
Open your file in a text editor so that we can make the necessary changes and apply your custom rules.
We are looking for an area in the file that looks like this:
# BEGIN wordpress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
rewriteEngine On
rewriteBase /
rewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f
rewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
rewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
# END wordpress
If your code looks different than this it is most likely because your looking at the file in notepad. We will actually need to use a proper text editor to modify this file correctly. If you do not already have one read sections #7 and #8 for a good free PHP editor.
Once you see the block of code I referenced above you will need to make the following change. Add this block of code above the “# BEGIN wordpress” section in the file:
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
CUSTOM RULES ARE ADDED HERE
</ifmodule>
Once you have done this your file should look similar to the example below:
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
redirect 301 /olddirectory/oldpage.htm http://www.newsite.com/
</ifmodule>
# BEGIN wordpress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
rewriteEngine On
rewriteBase /
rewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f
rewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
rewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
# END wordpress
The rule above is just an example. For more information on htaccess rules refer to section #2 and the links provided for the proper use of different rules and functions.
Now that you have made the listed changes you can upload the htaccess file back to your web server and overwrite the old one. (As mentioned before always backup the old htaccess file incase something goes wrong.)
The file should now utilize your custom rules in addition to allowing WordPress to update the file as needed without overwriting the changes you made.
The custom rules need to be listed outside of the “# BEGIN wordpress” tag and need to come before this function to avoid being overwritten by WordPress.
You should now be able to test your custom rules by trying to access old files on your server. If run into an issue triple check your rule syntax to make sure it is correct as this could cause a problem.
(Keep in mind that you cannot easily test custom rules by overwriting your WordPress htaccess file with one you created in Windows, because any permalink structures you reference will be destroyed when you overwrite the WordPress generated htaccess file on the server.)
From here any issues you might be running into will most likely need to be researched in Apache help for htaccess or on various forums. Good luck!
The following sections provide additional information on other issues that may come up during the process I outlined, or questions people may have that were not covered in the previous sections.
07. When I open the .htaccess file created by WordPress it is garbled, and shows carriage return characters. (Squares)
It sounds like you are looking at the file right through notepad. To display the information correctly you need to download a proper editor. Since we are working with PHP files for most things with our blog we should download a PHP editor to use with our files.
08. Where can I get free PHP editor software for editing my files?
When I was working on this issue the other day I came across a great free editor called “Arisesoft Winsyntax”. It is a very small download, does everything I need it to do, is easy to use, and is completely free to use.
You can download it from the authors homepage here:
09. I have seen the custom .htaccess code created by WordPress mentioned on other blogs but no one has told me where I need to go to find and edit this code.
The code be located in the custom .htaccess file that WordPress creates on your web server. Follow the steps outlined in section #4 of this guide to create the file.
Once the file appears on your web server in your root directory you will need to download this file to your computer so you can edit it. Open this file in a text editor (as outline in sections #7 and #8 and you will see the code people have been referring to.
10. I am trying to create some custom rules for an old site that I am converting over to blog format, but some of the pages I am trying to redirect are not working. It seems like .htaccess is ignoring these files?
Hmm. It could be a number of things. The main cause I found for this issue is that the file you are trying to reference in your .htaccess file is using characters that are not “web friendly”.
In my friends case they had created file names like index[new].html and new page title.htm
.htaccess really seemed to take issue with the fact that they were using strange chacters like ] [ and spaces in the file names. Always make sure you are using web friendly file names and urls to help minimize potential problems down the road.
Overview
I hope this guide has helped answer some of the questions people may have about creating and setting up the .htacess file. This information can be used for a standard server also, but a lot of the situations I outlined pertain specifically to WordPress blogs.
If you have any questions of comments please feel free to post, and I will try to answer them if I can. I am not an .htaccess guru by any means. I am just outlining the pitfalls I ran into to help others avoid these problems.
Thanks for checking out Pseudorant. We appreciate the support!
Too Many Business Requirements from End Users
An ambitious project using MSFA failed due to demand-overload
My company started an ambitious project to run our entire ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system as a web application, and they were prepared to throw a lot of time and resources at the project to make it work.
We hired a consultant who had experience managing large scale projects and also had an extensive background with writing web applications. We even hired additional staff solely for this project. Despite all of our efforts, the project still ended up as a costly failure.
Now, there were a number of reasons why the project failed, but I would like to focus on what I believe to be the most significant problem: “too much, too fast.”
First, let me provide a little background on the software that we are currently using for our ERP. It is approximately 10 years old, and extremely limited in what it can do. Although it supports some standards such as SQL (a given for any database application) it has a number of bugs that prevent these features from being usable, meaning complex workarounds are necessary for almost every facet of our business.
There are upgrades for the software that fix these bugs and expand functionality, but since it is an “off the shelf” retail application upgrading all of our existing systems is prohibitively expensive. Especially considering that the most recent version would not satisfy all of our business needs and would only be viable as a temporary solution anyway.
We have done pretty well with what we have available, but it is just not enough. Admittedly, many of the problems we have are not with the software itself but with how we use it (and abuse it).
This project, which we started in november of 2007, was not the first attempt to migrate from our disfunctional ERP system, however it was the first attempt we had made using a proven methodology instead of just “winging it”.
You may have heard of Microsoft Foundations for Agile Software Development (MSFA) before, which is the methodology recommended to us by our consultant.
Part of this process involved defining Business Rules (what the current software does now), Business Requirements (what the new software would be required to do), and Use Cases (examples of how the current software is used).
All of this is intended to give a very clear definition of what functionality in the old system needs to be preserved in the new system, and what it will be expected to do better.
So if we allocated plenty of resources for the project, followed a proven methodology, and had experience from failed projects in the past, then why did this project fail? I believe the reason that had the largest impact was the fact that the end users both defined the business requirements and approved them.
Needless to say, this is a recipe for disaster since end users are focused on entirely different problems than developers are. I’d hate to use a car analogy, but if we were building a car, the end users would be more worried about leather seats and air conditioning, while we the developers are just trying to get the engine and transmission to work together so that we can move forward.
Now don’t get me wrong here, nobody knows more about what a system should do than the end users, since they are the ones who have to put up with it.
Ideally, they could provide a wish list of things they want the system to do and the developers could prioritize them based on how feasible they are. Unfortunately, there were several people at each development team meeting that probably should not have been, prioritizing power windows as more important than having a windshield.
Although this project left a bitter taste in my mouth, I learned a lot from it.
As of today I have been told that the project “isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping”, suggesting that we will pick it up again sometime when there is less going on.
Fortunately, I’m not that naive and I can see that the project as we envisioned it this time around is not only no longer reasonable, but should not even be considered desirable.
What we need is to get back to the source of the problems we are having now, and carefully work out as much of the details as we can before we start hiring additional resources to help.
How to Install Apache, MySQL, and PHP on your Linux Box
Putting the AMP in your LAMP server
Hello and welcome! This is my first article / guide, so let’s get right into it.
This is intended as a guide for web developers who are new to Linux (namely Kubuntu) and wish to setup a local LAMP server on their machine. For those of you who don’t know, LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl / Python / PHP, although in this case the ‘P’ is for PHP only. When all four of these are installed on a machine, it is a full-blown web-server capable of running complex web applications.
In my case, I have installed Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on my machine using the standard desktop installation, which does not come with Apache, MySQL, or PHP. To be specific, we will be using the following applications:
* Apache2
* MySQL 5
* PHP 5
All of these applications are available through the Adept Package Manager,which is a fast and convenient way to install and uninstall applications in Debian-based Linux systems. Click on the link above for a guide on how this works.
For simplicity, I will assume you know how to operate Adept and have installed at least one package before. Click on the K-Menu, go to ‘System‘, and select ‘Adept Manager - Manage Packages‘ from the list. When prompted, enter your root password and you will see Adept’s package manager interface.
Now, in the search bar, type ‘apache‘. After a short moment, you should see a list of packages. The very first one should be ‘apache2‘. Click on the arrow next to it and select ‘Request Install‘. Now, type into the search bar ‘mysql‘ and this time you will need to scroll down a ways to find the package you are looking for: ‘mysql-server‘. Click on the arrow and select ‘Request Install‘ again. I would also recommend selecting the package ‘mysql-admin‘ for a convenient GUI for managing MySQL server, but that is purely optional. Finally, type ‘php‘ into the search bar and scroll a ways down to find ‘php5‘. Once again, click the arrow and choose ‘Request Install‘.
After selecting these 3-4 packages (depending on whether or not you installed the MySQL Admin GUI), select ‘Apply Changes‘ at the top of Adept to install the packages. This may take a while, so now is an excellent time to take a break and get a drink.
After the installation is complete there is a couple of very important steps to take in order to save yourself a lot of frustration. The first and foremost, is to clear your browser cache! I’m not entirely sure why this is so important, but trust me, it is. If you are running Mozilla Firefox, go to the ‘Tools‘ menu, select ‘Clear Private Data‘, and uncheck everything except for the ‘cache‘ checkbox. You can clear out other information as well, but make sure cache is selected.
The other important step to take is to make sure that php files are parsing correctly. Go to your System Menu (the one next to the K Menu) and select anything, for example, ‘Home‘. The root folder is not in this menu, so you will have to navigate to the right folder anyways. For simplicity, select the ‘Home‘ folder from this menu.
On the left-hand side you should have a column labeled Bookmarks, with an option for Root. Select that, then click on the folder for ‘etc‘. Right-click on the folder named ‘apache2‘ and select from the ‘Action’ menu ‘Open as root‘. Enter your password to continue.
In this folder, select the folder ‘mods-available‘ and look for the file named ‘php5.conf‘. Right-click on this file and select ‘Edit as root‘ and make sure the second line says something like
‘ AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html .php .phtml .php3‘
In my case, all I had to do here was add ‘.htm .html ‘ before the ‘.php’ section. This is so that if you have PHP code inside an htm or html file, it will be parsed instead of showing the raw code.
Save your changes, and depending on which editor you used, you might want to delete the temporary ‘~php5.conf‘ file that it creates as a backup. It should not hurt anything to leave it there, but I like to delete the extra backup files to prevent clutter.
In any case, make sure to restart your computer at this point to make sure that the apache web server picks up the configuration changes. You can probably accomplish the same effect by just restarting the apache service, however I haven’t done that yet and restarting the system seemed like a simpler approach.
Alright, now we’re getting to the fun part! Open your favorite web browser and type in the address bar ‘http://localhost‘ to see if apache is running properly. If it is not, you can blame me and probably find some help on the official Ubuntu/Kubuntu forums, however if it is running, it should show the words ‘It Works!‘ in your web browser. We’re almost done now…
All web files will be hosted from ‘/var/www‘. To make sure php is working properly, we will need to first navigate to that folder. Select ‘System Menu‘ -> ‘Home‘, and then select ‘Root‘ from the bookmarks section on the left. Click on the ‘var‘ folder to open it and then right click on ‘www‘ and choose ‘Action‘ -> ‘Open as root‘.
In here, right-click on ‘index.html‘ and choose ‘Action‘ -> ‘Edit as root‘. Add this line right before the closing tag for the body (body tag > added line of code | below):
Save your changes, and refresh your browser window. You may want to clear your browser cache again, just to be sure. You should see ‘It Works!‘ followed by a neatly formatted table showing all of the current settings for PHP. If it did not, right-click on the page from your browser and click ‘view source‘ or whatever the option is called for your browser to see the HTML code directly.
If the output from view source shows the “?PHP” part of the code, then something is wrong. PHP code should never be sent to the browser without being parsed. If you haven’t already, try restarting your PC again, otherwise you are on your own (along with the thousands of others with similar problems). Again, I recommend checking the official forums for Ubuntu / Kubuntu.
Hopefully, all went well and you saw the neatly formatted PHP text. To make sure that MySQL is working correctly, I will assume you have the GUI installed. I said it was optional, and it is, but it’s the easiest way I know of for verifying that everything installed correctly. Go to the K-Menu, select the ‘Development‘ menu and choose ‘MySQL Administrator‘.
For the server hostname, choose ‘localhost‘. The login name will be ‘root‘, and the password is the root password for your machine. If you can connect OK, then all is well. If not, fall back on the official forums or google to find a solution, but I suspect that this will work right off the bat.
That’s all I have for this guide for now. There is a mountain of information for all three applications mentioned here, and this guide barely scrapes the surface of any of them. Expect some guides in the future for configuring Apache, MySQL, or PHP.
How to Install Programs in Kubuntu Linux
Installing Applications on Kubuntu Linux – The “Easy” Way!
Hey all. Today’s guide is going to cover how to install programs in Kubuntu Linux. This is very important for someone who is new to the Linux operating system because it allows you to install the programs you need to work on your computer.
As I have mentioned before I am gearing this series of articles towards people who are new to Linux and need guides on how to perform basic functions. There are a lot of guides out there that cover the advanced features of Linux but not many that will walk people through the basic things they need to know to get started.
(This guide pertains to using Adept Manager in KDE on Kubuntu, this information will not apply to all versions of Linux)
For this guide we are going to be working with a program called “Adept Manager”. Now if you are new to Linux (like me) and you are coming over from a Windows System (like me) you are probably used to working with EXE setup packages and the “Add / Remove Programs” manager in control panel.
Adept Manager is similar to “Add / Remove Programs” in some respects and working with it can have the same feel, although Adept Manager actually gives you much more control over what applications you are installing or removing.
The first thing we need to do is open the program. It can be found by going to the following location:
K Menu > System > Adept Manager – Manage Packages
When you click on this program you will be prompted for your root password. Go ahead and enter your password and the program will open.
Once the program opens you will see a list of available software you can install onto your system. A really nice feature of Adept Manager is that is allows you to search for a program name, so instead of needing to scroll through the list you can use the “Search” feature at the top of the list.
For our example let’s install a program called “GIMP”. Gimp is an image manipulation program similar to Photoshop that allows to create and edit graphical image files on your system. This can be very handy for designing images for websites, editing digital camera pictures and just passing the time when you are bored.
Now let’s type “Gimp” into the search window at the top of Adept Manager. Once you have typed the program name Adept Manager is going to bring back any instance of the keyword in program titles and descriptions.
When Adept Manager is done searching you should see a list of several programs. The GIMP installer should be close to the top of this list of programs.
If you are unsure of what each item is your can check over to the right column where it will give you a description of what you are installing. In this case we are going to select the package that just says “Gimp” and you can see by reading the description that this is “The GNU Image Manipulation Program”
Once you click on the package name you will see two buttons, “Request Install” and “Details”. To install GIMP you will want to choose the “Request Install” button and then you will notice the information in the “Requested” column change, letting you know this program is going to be installed once you apply the changes.
Now would also be a good time to look at other packages and their descriptions to decide if you need install anything else that will go along with this program. For the sake of our example you should be okay by just selecting Gimp.
Once you have your programs selected you will want to go to the top of Adept Manager and choose the “Apply Changes” button. (with the green check mark)
When you click on the “Apply Changes” button you will see Adept Manager connect to the internet and download the program/s you requested. Once the files have downloaded Adept Manager will proceed to install them on your system. If you would like to see exactly what it is doing you can click on the “Details” button for more information on what is going on in the background.
Once the files have been download and installed Adept Manager will take you back to the programs screen, and you should now see the status of the program you selected set to “Installed” (displayed in green). Anything that is not on your system will reflect the status “Not Installed” (displayed in blue)
Once Adept Manager has finished installing the program you can go to your K Menu and check out the new software you installed. It will usually be organized under the appropriate menu for the type of application you choose. In this case since we chose a graphics manipulation program we would want to check under “Graphics”
K Menu > Graphics > GIMP
Now you can see that when you click on Gimp, the application opens and you can now use your new software.
Congratulations! You now know how to install programs in Linux (Kubuntu). There are actually other ways to install program in Linux by downloading Linux based versions of programs, or using command line methods but for the sake of simplicity this is the method we are going to cover today.
Now let’s say you accidentally installed a program you don’t need? Not a problem. Go back into Adept Manager, and removing the program can be done is much the same way as installing an application.
In Adept Manager do a search for the name of the program you want to remove and you should see it come up on the list of applications. You can verify if the program is actually installed on your system or not by checking the “Status” column. If the status is “Installed” you know that you have found the correct program.
Now click on the package name as if you were going to install it and you should see that one of the buttons now says “Request Removal” and you will see the status of the “Request” column change to “Remove”.
Once this has been done click the “Apply Changes” button at the top of Adept Manager. Now once again you will see a prompt that looks very similar to the installation procedure except this time once it finishes, the unwanted software should be removed from your system
Grats! You should now have a much better understanding of the main purpose of Adept Manager and how to install and remove programs from your Kubuntu, Linux system.
In this guide we have really only covered the basic functions within Adept Manager so feel free to explore and check out other options and menus that it offers you. The best way to learn about something is by exploring it, and since the purpose of these guides is about learning Linux this will provide you the most benefit.
As always thanks for checking out Pseudorant and please recommend us to your friends! We appreciate the support and having readers motivates us to strive to improve the site for everyone. Thanks again!
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