Comments for Philip Oakley's blog

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Greg Loesch

Greg Loesch — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:22:39 +0000

Over a year later, and it’s still useful. Thanks so much! I’m in the process of trying to host my own wordpress site, and this was driving me crazy.

Comment on Speaker Profile by Stuart Walton

Stuart Walton — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:04:09 +0000

I have seen Phil speak a number of times in the last two years on E-commerce, Social Media and maximising your on-line reputation with Business Link, UKITA and Staffordshire Marketing Academy. Phil is truly knowledgeable individual in his field and speaks with warmth, humour and authority to all types of audience. At the inaugural Staffordshire Marketing Academy “Action For Live” event in May 2011, he came in a very close second (in delivering the best spot) to the excellent superstar guest speaker Rob Brown, a true achievement. If you get a chance to hear Phil speak and meet him, just DO it.

Stuart Walton, Director – Conspicuous CBM Ltd

Comment on Online Reputaton – E-Reputation by Stuart Walton

Stuart Walton — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:56:58 +0000

Hi Phil

Fantastic presentation which my wife & I have already discussed with our 11 year-old daughter on how she needs to think hard on what she does on-line for the future. Social Media is a fantastic tool for everyone to use, and this presentation explores the really positive ways young people can use it to go forward to University & Work using the tools to enhance their reputation and give them an edge in a competitive market.

Very best wishes

STUART

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by John

John — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:21:06 +0000

Thanks for this… Ive been trying every trick in the book to get this working and this is the first post that I found that actually worked…

Thanks for your help.

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Christopher

Christopher — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:55:56 +0000

Just want to say THANK YOU. I quite searched for a couple of hours and could not find any solution to my problem.. it was already driving me nuts.. until I found your posting.
Again, thank you very much for sharing this important notice.

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Permalinks on Ubuntu with Wordpress « Core Research

Permalinks on Ubuntu with Wordpress « Core Research — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:40:06 +0000

[...] get it to work (this isn’t Windows after all ). After searching around, I found out from this site that there is one config file that needed to be changed. In /etc/apache2/sites-enabled, I found my [...]

Comment on About by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:03:18 +0000

Hi Philip (in Scotland)
Great to hear from another Philip Oakley. I do not have a lot experience of git although I think there’s quite a learning curve – so best of luck.
Regards
Phil

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Diana Eftaiha

Diana Eftaiha — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:56:32 +0000

hi. thanks for the article. i have a problem cause i dont want to put wordpress permalink rules in .htaccess file. i want them to go directly in apace2.conf config file. everything goes well and pages display as supposed to. only problem is with files that have a .css or .php extension (which are basically the style sheets, images, and the comment post php file). what can i do to correct the problem

heres what i have inside the block :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

any suggestions?

Comment on About by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:48:20 +0000

Hi, another Philip Oakley.

I’m in Scotland, but hail from Yorkshire, and I’m a broad based systems engineer [hardware/software/optics/...], so there is some overlap. I currently trying to get ‘git’ implemented on a project I’m on.

regards
Philip

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by james

james — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:31:31 +0000

yes i am also using /etc/init.d/apache2 restart to restart the apache.

Comment on Extending Magento ecommerce for SEO and Social Media by Iwalon

Iwalon — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:58:36 +0000

I’ve tried the Facebook connect Magento module, but it’s not supported anymore. I’ve lost lots of time on these guys
I’ve switched to the Facebook integration bundle with lot more latest features and answering support:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/MagePlace/extension/7073/facebook_integration_bundle

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Sahus Pilwal

Sahus Pilwal — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:47:05 +0000

Thanks “AllowOverride All” worked a treat however I did this on the sites-available > default file instead of sites-enabled > 000-default.

Does anyone know if there are any implications in doing this? What’s the difference between “sites available” & “sites-enabled”?? Thanks

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Marvin

Marvin — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:08:24 +0000

Thanks, this trick saved me some time searching the internet…!

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Stephan Miller

Stephan Miller — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:27:57 +0000

Thanks man! Just went through backing up an exploded WP multisite database and repairing what I could from a raw file backup, rebuilding the sitemeta table from scratch because it was gone and moving everything to a new server and ran into this weird issue, but you saved my site.

Comment on QR Code Plugins for WordPress by Noita QR Code

Noita QR Code — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:53:57 +0000

Thanks for sharing this WPplugins for QR codes, I’m doing some research about it and I heard its very popular, I found a blog too talking about it its called SayDotCom they explained it well all the articles there especially about QR codes…

Comment on I want one… by Stuart Walton

Stuart Walton — Sat, 21 May 2011 11:31:58 +0000

No you don’t!

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Sat, 21 May 2011 11:22:07 +0000

Hi Sharani
Many thanks for your comment and apologies as I initially missed your comment as it got stuck in my spam filter. I do not have a lot of experience of IIS but I would think a lot of the issues could relate any to any server as file permissions and FTP access is generic across web servers. Where I could not help is with a solution as the commands I used were specifically for Linux. I really hope you have found a solution to your problem especially as you posted some time ago.
Kind regards
Phil

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Suleiman Leadbitter

Suleiman Leadbitter — Fri, 13 May 2011 09:05:31 +0000

I was having so much trouble with this and tried so many different methods. Thank you it works superb now.

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Sharani

Sharani — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:20:17 +0000

Our website is hosted by a Windows Server (not Apache) and we have been getting the cannot remove old plugin when trying to use the automatic plugin upgrade since several versions ago of WordPress. Like you I keep reading about it in the support forums and researching it on the Web and do not find any definitive solution. I already tried the permissions fix and that didn’t do it. Do you think your advice could translate to an IIS host somehow?

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Pat Hann

Pat Hann — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 03:50:39 +0000

This worked like a charm. I have been trying to figure it out to no avail. I think I will post a link to this page on mine. Just Great!!

Comment on Great Presentations by Santosh Randive

Santosh Randive — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 11:15:50 +0000

Really great presentation, taking away few learnings like to be simpler, story telling, ne yourself, effective use of hands, first analog slides and then converting into computer slides…

thanks for all the wonderful tips.
Santosh Randive
Pune, India

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Corey

Corey — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:20:05 +0000

Philip, you’ve beaten the issue I have been struggling with for a few days. I had figured out a way around it by giving elevated permissions to particular files/folders that would remain permanent. I knew this was incorrect as my personal host uses the default perms. Everything works great on my host. I absolutely knew it had to do with either users or group perms. It turns out that I was right but not the first to figure it out.

Fortunately, I take meticulous notes of everything I do. This way, I can recreate, or undo, what I have done. I have since returned all permissions to their defaults and have chown’d the web directory to the ‘apache’ user (running CentOS). I feel much more secure with your wonderful write-up.

Thank you,

Corey…

Comment on Contact and Links by Chris

Chris — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:41:45 +0000

Hey Phil,

Maybe I missed it somewhere but did you ever announce the winner of the digital download of the magento 1.4 themes design book by richard carter? I think I’m the only one who saw the post and commented to enter in the contest… Anyway let me know..
Thanks

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by MKO

MKO — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:00:37 +0000

Thank you very much.

Damn you “AllowOverride None”

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Themes Design Book by Chris

Chris — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:49:08 +0000

Magento is a really cool system and an elaborate one at that. It seems however there are not many books on it and I have not been able to see any books at the local bookstores to at least skim over before purchasing. Thinking about purchasing the Development Cookbook for 1.4 , it sounds like the best one out.. I have heard some of the books out for Magento are very lacking. I have been personally using Magento’s site and Googling for my information on how to use Magento but it would really be nice to get a decent book. Philip, I appreciate you time to give some opinions on these books, as I think I will be purchasing the Development Cookbook. Hope to win a download of this book that would be kewl!!!

Comment on Review of Magento 1.4 Themes Design by Richard Carter by Richard Carter

Richard Carter — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 12:01:07 +0000

Thanks for your kind words, Philip! As you say, I’ve written a few books for Packt now (all on theming) – one cookbook and 3 ‘normal’ format books – and I think the normal format books allow for a more in-depth look at the topic, though I can see the use in the cookbook format for more advanced users just looking for pointers for a particular task.

Thanks again for taking the time to review the book, much appreciated!

Comment on Review of Magento 1.4 Themes Design by Review of Magento 1.4 Themes Design | Philip Oakley's blog | Magento News

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:00:50 +0000

[...] Following from my review and competition for the Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook from PacktPub I am now reading Magento Themes Book and will be posting my.philipoakley.org/…/review-of-magento-1-4-themes-design/ [...]

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:27:59 +0000

Hi Mike
The command needs to be put into the terminal. Linux servers, which host 99+% of all WordPress installs, are administered using the terminal often referred to as the command line (looks similar to a Windows DOS screen). If you have a remote hosted server you would usually connect via SSH. Not all hosts give SSH and some you need to request SSH access. I appreciate this itself may sound very technical.

Some useful links:
Terminal – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal
SSH (ignoring the addresses as you would need your own from your host) http://compudoc.princeton.edu/compudocwiki/index.php/HowTos:Connect_to_login_servers_via_ssh

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by Mike

Mike — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:34:51 +0000

Ok I have no idea where to go to put in this:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

What file or where does that need to go?

Thanks

Comment on Review of Magento 1.4 Themes Design by Richard Carter

Richard Carter — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:22:42 +0000

Hope you find the book useful! Let me know how you get on with it.

Comment on links for 2011-02-03 by Activo / Ron Peled

Activo / Ron Peled — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:48:05 +0000

Yep, tracking eCommerce traffic AND transactions is crucial in understanding your online business. Good starting point there… used it many times.

Comment on Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook from Packt Publishing Reviewed by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:43:42 +0000

I think it is more aimed at people who want to extend and customise Magento rather than administer it. Probably worth looking at the full table of contents on the Packt Website:

https://www.packtpub.com/toc/magento-14-development-cookbook-table-contents

I’ve not read it but maybe this would be another book to look at:

https://www.packtpub.com/magento-1-3-sales-tactics-cookbook-table-of-content

Comment on Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook from Packt Publishing Reviewed by Activo / Ron Peled

Activo / Ron Peled — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:37:11 +0000

Would this book be suitable for a Magento developer? or is this more targeting the Magento Admin or User?

I’m looking for a book that will suit my customers. So, something that will help Magento Admins get the most out of Magento. Any ideas?

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Manish

Manish — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:16:05 +0000

Thanks! It did help me a LOT!

To make it more difficult for me, I am new to PHP+Apache as well.

Though I had enabled rewrite module by this – a2enmod rewrite
I had to modify “000-default” from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled to get this working as per your instructions here.

AllowOverride All –> That was all needed and finally find here. Thanks a lot for your post.

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by mr greenman

mr greenman — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:23:07 +0000

Thankyou so much ! I am very lucky.

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Shellintons

Shellintons — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:12:28 +0000

I’ll look forward to hearing what you have to say about it

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:49:21 +0000

Many thanks for all the great comments, I am just sorry I have not got an ebook for everyone but there can only be one winner.

I would also just like to to mention http://www.magento-forum.co.uk as that looks a great place to discuss Magento (thanks to edmondscommerce)

To make it fair the winner was picked at random from a hat (ok a bowl) and the winner was ‘mr greenman’. I will provide your email to Packt Publishing who will put the ebook into an account for you.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be writing a review of the Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook and will post on this blog. Hopefully people may want to read that also and leave any comments.

Thanks again.

Phil

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Steve

Steve — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 21:51:11 +0000

I have only been working with Magento for about two months, and I have to say it is one complex system. Since there aren’t many books out on the system, Google does become your best friend, and the people that blog about the system can be lifesavers.

There is still a lot for me to learn, so I hope this new book comes in handy.

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by rabmcnab

rabmcnab — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:19:25 +0000

The thing I find interesting about e-commerce is that it seems impossible to get a job where the client wants a configuration that can be provided for right out of the box. The various bigger e-commerce platforms provide a zillion backend options that should hopefully cater for all eventualities – but they never do, you always end up knee-deep in forums trying to get even a simple installation working as requested.

It sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m not – it’s all part of the fun, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it. At least that’s what I mutter over and over as I cry myself to sleep at night. Maybe this book will help me get a better sleep

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Brendan

Brendan — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:21:03 +0000

Have been developing on magento for approx 2 years now. Have read many books on magento to date, whilst most seem to be ok they tend to lack some more examples on creating custom modules.

So im hoping your review will help in my decision to purchase this book. That is if I miss out on a fee copy

brendan

Comment on The Pomodoro Technique by Shellintons

Shellintons — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:29:39 +0000

I shall certainly be having a go at this. As a ‘butterfly minded’ type, it may be just what I need as I do find the ‘Focus Hour’ a little bit long at times, if I am doing certain things.

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Shelly Kilford

Shelly Kilford — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:26:09 +0000

I am new to e-commerce for a sales point of view (bought lots online over the years) but I am planning to build an online shop for my illustrated books and their soft toy characters.

I have sent time researching this but it is a minefield and a book like this could help me realise my dream of a shop for my Tilly Flop dolls. I have heard good things about Magento and enjoyed coding and love the abilities of PHP.

I do hope this puts my name in the hat for this book. Thanks. I’m off to look through the rest of your blog now, looks interesting

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by edmondscommerce

edmondscommerce — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:52:34 +0000

would love a free ebook

also great to see another Magento book coming out, I hope they are keeping pace with development though!

as for interesting Magento related site – check out http://www.magento-forum.co.uk for a friendly unofficial Magento crowd

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by Mike Arney

Mike Arney — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:21:12 +0000

I am an aspiring Magento developer/designer. The website above is a tutorial that I created on adding product attributes within the backend.

Comment on Win a copy of Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook E-book by mr greenman

mr greenman — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:03:37 +0000

Im worked in magento,Joomla + virtuemart inside.
I like magento than because its very great.
I working on magento from 2008 until now.I started with magento 1.3.2
Some task of magento required more and more modify code.And special with magento enterprise.I have ever working on magento enterprise.Sometime,i have free time and learning magento coding.But i think my study still not enoughto build a big extention.
I have small team .We are three coder.
One Virtuemart,one WordPress and one Magento ( me).
I know my english very bad and some word wrong type or wrong grammar.
And best wish for you.
I like your blog.

Comment on WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error finally solved by WordPress Automatic Upgrades - pitfalls and error messages | Musings of ErisDS

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:43:53 +0000

[...] WordPress Plugin upgrade failed error [...]

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Eric P

Eric P — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:02:58 +0000

Ditto: AllowOverride All – solved everything. Thanks man, for taking the time to share !!

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by greywalk

greywalk — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:44:30 +0000

AllowOverride All – this solved everything =) thanks a lot for this post.

Comment on WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 – mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink by Nick

Nick — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 15:33:27 +0000

Brilliant, a perfect solution. Thanks

Comment on Essential WordPress Plugins by Philip Oakley

Philip Oakley — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 19:36:51 +0000

Hi
Yes it can be difficult to see which are the good plugins with so many available but I think unless you have a lot of time (and sites) to compare and contrast the safest bet is going for the most popular/recommended and see how they work for you. I would recommend picking only one plugin for each area as enabling more than one plugin could just cause conflicts and create confusion for the search engines therefore not improving your SEO at all.

Before I would look at plugins, and presuming you have good content, I would look at getting the right permalinks settings (there are many good posts on this just Google – wordpress permalinks seo)

SEO plugin – The all-in-one SEO plugin appears to be recommended by everyone and although I have no statistics I always install it on all of my sites. Sometimes themes can have inbuilt SEO optimisation options. I would just pick one solution and stick to it per site.

Sitemap creation – Having a good Sitemap should ensure that all your pages are found quickly to start them getting ranked. There are lots of good ones but the Google Site Map plugin works nicely (except on MU installs).

Caching – I have read that the speed a page loads is starting to affect possible ranking. Whether a caching plugin will affect Google type spiders I am not exactly sure but speeding up your site can not be a bad thing and WP Super Cache comes very well recommended

Those are the three areas I would look at, not forgetting permalinks. I hope that helps