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.
Wordpress Stats Plugin is not Working or Gathering Information
WP Stats is not displaying any information for my blog!
If you are a blogger then you probably use the WordPress Stats plugin. For those who don’t, it is a plugin that gathers various statistics from hits to your blog. It gathers information on the number of page views, the most popular posts, search terms people use to find your blog, what sites send send you traffic, and lot of other great stuff.
Now imagine how lost you would be without this information. I recently ran into a situation where this was the case, and after a little research I was able to find out why WP Stats was not working on this particular blog.
I was helping a friend get their blog setup, and we ran into quiet a few issues. They were transferring an old website they barely maintained over to a blog format to make it easier to update and manage the information they already had.
During all the troubleshooting involved in switching the old site over to a blog, I noticed the WordPress Stats plugin was not gathering data. I tried several things to fix this, deactivating and restarting the plugin, re-entering the API key, checking settings in the admin panel and on WordPress.com, uninstalling and reinstalling the plugin, updating the plugin. None of this seemed to work.
Then I came across a post on the WordPress.com forums talking about this issue. Apparently on some themes there is a function that is left out of the footer that is needed for WP Stats to work correctly. If this is the case with your theme, that is probably what is causing the problem. To fix this you need to go into the “footer.php” file in your theme editor.
In the footer.php file scan to the bottom and look for the “</body>” tag [without the “ “]. Once you have found the tag you will need to insert this line of code above it:
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
Once that is done update (save) the file and then test WordPress Stats to see if it is working.
You may want to do this by logging out of your blog admin panel, and them clearing your cookies and temporary internet files. Once you have done this go back to your website and browse through a couple pages and this should generate a couple page views in WP Stats.
You need to make sure you are logged out of admin, and to clear your temp files or else your blog will not count hits from you because it will think you are the admin.
Hopefully your WP Stats plugin should be working now, and you will see your test page views showing up in the stats. If you see those page views WordPress Stats should now be working correctly.
Thanks for checking out Pseudorant. We appreciate the support!
How to tell what Font a website is using
How can I figure out what Font a website is using
The other day my fiancée was working on her website and she was looking at other sites for inspiration. She came across a site that she really liked and they were using two different fonts that she thought would look wonderful on her site.
She was messing around with the default fonts that were available to her through WordPress and her style sheet and she told me that she couldn’t find the right ones. I told her there was a trick she could use to figure out what fonts a website was using if she would to like to use them on her website.
The first method I recommended to her, which is the easiest way goes as follows:
Method #1
1. Copy a line of text that uses the font you like from the website you are looking at.
2. Once you have copied the font, use Open Office (or MS Word) or any other program that retains formatting when you paste text into it.
3. Paste the copied text into the word program and highlight it.
4. Go into your text options in the word program, and the font that the program has defaulted to should be the text that is being used on the site you are looking at.
You may want to compare a sample of the text using that font on your site and see if it has the look you desired. If the text matches then you know you have determined the correct font.
There may be some cases where the fonts do not match if the person is using a special font. By default most browsers will display any common fonts but if the website is using a strange font the browser will default to a font that is similar to the one being used.
The other method which requires a little more digging around but can be quicker if you are familiar with HTML. It can be utilized by doing the following:
Method #2
1. “Right Click” on the web page and choose the “View Source” option from the menu.
2. Once you have done this a text editor will open with the HTML from the website being displayed.
3. Click “CTRL+F” to open the “FIND” window in the text program.
4. Type in “FONT” and then click “Search”
5. The text program will now locate every instance of the Font tag in the HTML. This will allow you to determine what types of fonts are being used throughout the page.
Take a general look at all the fonts to get an idea for what font is being used most. Most designers will usually not use more than two types of fonts so it should be easy to figure out which one is being used most.
Although email marketing is just another advertising way used in internet marketing, it is totally dependent on web site hosting.
In some cases the site may rely heavily on a style sheet for setting the font. This is a common practice now a days. Even if this is the case the author or designer will sometimes specify fonts manually for certain areas of the page so the “FIND > Font” method is still a good trick to use.
This can come in handy when people are redesigning their site or trying something new on their blog. It’s really amazing how much fonts can affect the look and feel of a site and choosing the right font can really help you improve the overall appearance of your website.
Thanks for checking out Pseudorant. We appreciate the support.
New WordPress Theme & Logos – Revolution Hacked
New Logos Compliments of Aaron Gilmore
As many of you have probably noticed, Pseudorant has under gone a major change. That’s right! We have a new theme. The theme we are using is a modified version of the “Revolution” theme by Brian Gardner.
After collaboration between me and Joe we decided this theme would best suit the needs of the site in the coming months. We have been planning a lot of major upgrades and additions to the site so we are trying to get a good infrastructure in place ahead of time.
Areas to note in the new theme are the RSS Subscription Icon and FeedBurner Widget which Joe incorporated into the sidebar menu. The addition of 125px sponsor slots and EntreCard widgets. A Top Posts Widget which is currently under going some repairs, and much more!
For those who have been to the site in the past 20 hours you have probably noticed things breaking and being fixed. We apologize for the inconvenience. The bug search is ongoing and just when we have one thing fixed we come across something else that needs to be reworked. If you come across anything on the site that seems broken please let us know. (Email – Paul | Joe)
NEW LOGOS!
The biggest point of interest on the site is our new custom-made Logos! Pseudorant’s new Logos were designed by Aaron Gilmore.
He has an extensive background in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, traditional illustration techniques and classic art styles.
He accepts commissions for all of his work, and quotes very affordable prices so anyone can afford to have their site look better than the competition!
If you are looking for an amazing artist that you can afford to work with, I would highly recommend contacting Aaron for any of your project needs.
For more information check out Aaron’s website at:
As always thanks for checking out Pseudorant! We appreciate the support. Please bear with us through the new transition and you will be happy with the future updates we will be bringing you!
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.
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