Well, what is happening is this:

1. The older version of the shopping cart used shortcodes to display categories on a page or post if you used the shopping cart icon in the text editor when making pages/posts.

2. The newer versions of WP Ecommerce still use shortcodes, but not the same ones….hence the blank page or the “1″ in place of products.

What you want to do is edit the page(s)/post(s) that are using shortcodes. You will notice that the shortcodes looked something like this:

[wpsc_category=1,full]

You will need to replace that with the new shortcode. In the WordPress admin area, go to “Products–>Categories” and then click “Edit” on the category you want to display.

Over to the right, you will then see the new shortcode for that category, which will look something like this:

[wpsc_products category_url_name='example-category1']

So, repeat these steps for however many pages/posts you have that are using shortcodes and you will then see that it all starts working correctly!

Hope this helps, and until next time…

First off, there are many methods on how to do this, but the one I will walk you through is how I do it and it works for me, so here goes.

The first thing you will want to do is log into your existing server via FTP and locate your WordPress installation. There you will locate the “wp-content” directory and back it up to your local machine (PC/Mac, whatever)…just download it to your machine so that you have it for later.

After you have done that, then you will want to log into your SQL database. You can do this through your hosting control panel (CPanel, etc). Once in your database, you will want to export it. Locate the “Export” button for your database…it should look like this: (note: your database might not look exactly like this as I have other tables in place)

After you click “Export” you will see a screen that looks similar to this:

Make sure to “Select All” and that you have “SQL” selected as the export type. Then to the right, you want to check the boxes that say “Add Drop Table” and “Add If Not Exists”. What that does is make it so that if the tables already exist on your new server, it will overwrite them when you import your existing database there. We actually won’t do that with this demonstration, but it’s always a good idea to do so, just in case. After that, you will check the box toward the bottom that says “Save as File” and then click the “Go” button in bottom right. This will produce a download and you need to save that to your machine as well.

So at this point, we have our “wp-content” folder and the database backed up. That is everything you need from your existing site.

Next, you will go to your new server and set up a completely new WordPress installation. Once you have done that, log into the new site via FTP and locate the WordPress installation and find the “wp-content” directory for the new installation. You can do a copy/replace here, but what I always do, just to be safe is to delete that directory completely and then upload the one that you backed up earlier. So to recap here…delete the “wp-content” directory on new installation. Then upload the “wp-content” directory that you backed up earlier into the new WordPress installation.

Once you have done that, then you will want to log into the database for the new WordPress installation. When you get there you will want to check ALL of the existing tables and then choose to “Drop” them (there should be 10 tables on a default installation). That screen should look something like this:

After selecting “Drop” you will be prompted with a screen that looks like this:

You will select “Yes” to this action and all of the database tables will be deleted.

Next, you will want to import your database that you backed up earlier. So you will find the “Import” button up top:

After doing that, you will be prompted to “Browse” and find the SQL file you want to import. So click “Browse” and find the SQL file that you saved from your old site earlier. Click “Go” and that will import your database.

After the database has been imported, you will see all of the tables that were on your old site in the left column. What we want to do now is tell the database where your new site is located (the URL), otherwise the site will not work. So in the left column, you will want to click on “wp_options”.

After clicking on “wp_options” you will see the fields associated with that table. You will want to click on “Browse” in the top menu bar.

After clicking “Browse” in the top menu area, you will then see all of the keys that are associated. The first one is called “siteurl”. You will want to edit that key to enter your new URL. So you should see a pencil icon to the left like this:

Click the pencil icon to edit that key and it is there that you will put in the new URL for your new site. After you have done that, click “Go” at the bottom of the screen to save that action.

That will tell the database that your site has a new URL from what it did when you backed it up. Once back on the screen for “wp_options” if you will go to Page 2, you will see another key for “home”. Do the same thing for it. Edit it and replace the URL there as well with the URL for your new site. Click “Go” to save it.

Last but not least, you will want to look for the “upload path” field in the “wp_options” table as well. It’s usually on Page 2, but will look like this:

Click the pencil icon to edit, and make sure that the value in there is set to “wp-content/uploads”. Sometimes after the move, this will have a string of data pointing back to your old server and this can mess up all kinds of things like media uploads, plugins, etc. So you should have it set to look like this:

After you do that, click “Go” in bottom right to save your changes and you’re all done!

You can now navigate to your new site’s admin area, login and make sure that the correct theme is selected and all plugins are active.

After that, you’re ready to go….your WordPress installation has been moved to a new server and you don’t have to jump off of a bridge, because it wasn’t that hard at all!

So, until next time…

First, what you will want to do is locate your “index.php” file from your theme. Copy that to your desktop (or wherever you’d like) and rename it to “blog_page.php” (or whatever name you would like). Then you will want to edit that file, and place the following code at the very beginning of the file:

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<?php
/*
Template Name: Blog Page
*/
?>

That will let WordPress know that this file is a “Template” file. I used the default Kubrick theme for this demonstration, so the entire code for the new “Blog Page” php file would look like this:

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<?php
/*
Template Name: Blog Page
*/
?>
 
 
<?php
/**
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Default_Theme
 */
 
get_header(); ?>
 
	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
 
	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
 
		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 
			<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
				<h2><a href="<?php&phpMyAdmin=7FErtFP1sUzlru8bAWwYQNZEag7 the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
 
				<div class="entry">
					<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
				</div>
 
				<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
			</div>
 
		<?php endwhile; ?>
 
		<div class="navigation">
			<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Older Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries &raquo;') ?></div>
		</div>
 
	<?php else : ?>
 
		<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
		<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</p>
		<?php get_search_form(); ?>
 
	<?php endif; ?>
 
	</div>
 
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Next you will want to upload that file back into your theme directory on your server. Once you’ve done that, then go to your WordPress dashboard and create a new Page.

Title the page whatever you’d like. In this example, I’m going to name it “Blog”. Don’t put any content in the page, just title it and then from the “Attributes” area, where you can select the “Page Template” you will now see your new page template listed titled “Blog Page” and it should look like this:

So now, select that and save your new page.

Next, you will go to “Settings–>Reading” and select your new page for your “Posts” page like this:

Once you do that save, you should then see your new “Blog” page show up in your navigation and it should display all of your latest blog posts.

That’s it!

So, until next time…

]]> http://www.wordpressme.org/2009/04/make-a-wordpress-blog-page/feed/ 12 http://www.wordpressme.org/2009/04/make-a-wordpress-blog-page/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wpme/~3/0yBuSj_hTQ8/ http://www.wordpressme.org/2009/03/featured-content-gallery-wp-ecommerce/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:14:06 +0000 shayne http://www.wordpressme.org/?p=340 So if you’re using the WP Ecommerce plugin for WordPress and happen to have a theme that uses Featured Content Gallery, you’ll notice there are some problems. The javascript for each of the plugins conflict and cause the Featured Content Gallery not to function if you have WP Ecommerce installed and activated.

This can be very frustrating being that both plugins are very nice to have running. Although I don’t have a “fix” for this issue, I do have a workaround. It’s called “D13 SlideShow” and it’s a plugin for WordPress that will accomplish the same affect as what Featured Content Gallery will do…but it works well with WP Ecommerce.

The first thing you’ll want to do is log into your WordPress dashboard and go to your Featured Content Gallery settings area and note the “width” and “height” settings that you have in place, as you will need these later. After you note what those values are, then you can deactivate the Featured Content Gallery plugin.

Next, you will want to download the D13 SlideShow plugin here. Then upload it to “wp-content/plugins” and activate it through your dashboard. Once you have done that, then you will want to navigate to your theme’s directory on your server (or you can access this by going to “Appearance–>Editor”). You will want to remove the call for Featured Content Gallery from your theme. It’s most likely going to be located in “home.php” or “index.php” depending on your theme. The code you will look for should look something like this:

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<?php /*Check for the 'gallery_styles' function. if it's there, then include it. If not, do nothing*/ ?>
            <?php if (function_exists('gallery_styles')) : ?>
            <div id="fcg">
                <?php include (ABSPATH . '/wp-content/plugins/featured-content-gallery/gallery.php'); ?>
            </div>
            <?php endif; ?>

Replace that with this code:

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<?php d13slideshow(); ?>

Now that you’ve done that, you can go to “Settings–>D13SlideShow” and configure it to your needs. You will see a screen like this:

It’s pretty self explanatory, but you’ll see the area up top where it asks for the location of the 2 javascript files. You can leave this empty to start with and see if it works, but if it does not, just put in the values you see in the image above. Next, you will take the width and height settings you saved from your Featured Content Gallery settings and input them. Next, you can set the fade color, transition timing, and so on.

Under that, you’ll see where you have the option to show latest blog posts or pages. Whether you choose to show blog posts or pages, you will need to add custom fields to either the post or page in order for it to work with D13 SlideShow.

So when creating or editing a post or a page, you will add a new custom field with the name “promoimage” (no spaces and all lower case) and then for the value, you will put the absolute path to the image you’d like to show. Also, make sure the image is resized to the same size that you have input above in the “width” and “height” field. It should look something like this:

That should be it…check your site, and you should have a rotating image showcasing your posts or pages, and it will work with WP ECommerce!

So until next time….

The good news, is that past version 3.6.10 RC3 this issue has been resolved, but if you’re still using one of the above mentioned versions, here is the fix:

Locate the “shopping_cart.php” file in “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/shopping_cart.php”. Open that file to edit it and locate this area of code near the bottom of the file:

if ($_POST['coupon_num']) {
		$_SESSION['nzshpcrt_totalprice'] = $total_after_discount;
	} else {
		$_SESSION['nzshpcrt_totalprice'] = $total;
	}
 
	echo "
<h2>".TXT_WPSC_ENTERDETAILS."</h2>
";
	include('checkout.php');
} else {
	echo TXT_WPSC_NOITEMSINTHESHOPPINGCART;
}
?&gt;

What you will do to fix it, is add this code into it:

//This is the code changed to fix Google Checkout bug.
	$gateway_options = get_option('custom_gateway_options');
  if(array_search("google",(array)$gateway_options) !== false) {
  		if (get_option('google_button_size') == '0'){
			$google_button_size = 'BIG';
		} elseif(get_option('google_button_size') == '1') {
			$google_button_size = 'MEDIUM';
		} elseif(get_option('google_button_size') == '2') {
			$google_button_size = 'SMALL';
		}
		$google_cart = unserialize($_SESSION['google_shopping_cart']);
     echo $google_cart->CheckoutButtonCode($google_button_size);
  } else {

You’ll notice that there is a comment there notating where the fix is located. So you will then have a piece of code that looks like this at the end of your “shopping_cart.php” file:

if ($_POST['coupon_num']) {
		$_SESSION['nzshpcrt_totalprice'] = $total_after_discount;
	} else {
		$_SESSION['nzshpcrt_totalprice'] = $total;
	}
 
	//This is the code changed to fix Google Checkout bug.
	$gateway_options = get_option('custom_gateway_options');
  if(array_search("google",(array)$gateway_options) !== false) {
  		if (get_option('google_button_size') == '0'){
			$google_button_size = 'BIG';
		} elseif(get_option('google_button_size') == '1') {
			$google_button_size = 'MEDIUM';
		} elseif(get_option('google_button_size') == '2') {
			$google_button_size = 'SMALL';
		}
		$google_cart = unserialize($_SESSION['google_shopping_cart']);
     echo $google_cart->CheckoutButtonCode($google_button_size);
  } else {
		echo "
<h2>".TXT_WPSC_ENTERDETAILS."</h2>
";
		include('checkout.php');
	}
} else {
	echo TXT_WPSC_NOITEMSINTHESHOPPINGCART;
}
?&gt;

That’s it…problem solved.

Again, if you upgrade or have a newer version listed above, this fix is already incorporated.

So until next time…

Well, those days are over! The Tweet This plugin will solve that problem for you…given that the blog you’re reading is using it! But for your own site, you can now add this plugin and have a “Tweet This” icon show up on your blog post so that all your visitor has to do is click it and it will automatically create a TinyURL and post it to Twitter.

So what you do is:

1. Get the plugin here

2. Upload it to your plugins directory (wp-content/plugins) using your favorite FTP client (FireZilla, Flash FXP, Fire FTP)

3. Login to your WP admin area, and navigate to “Plugins” and activate it.

That’s it!

Next, you will want to look for “Tweet This” under your “Settings” tab. When you access that, you’ll see the settings area that looks like this:

Here, you have all the options associated with Tweet This. You can choose to have a text link or an image. You also have the ability to add buttons for Digg, Plurk and Ping.fm as well. You can choose to hide this option from pages, which I recommend, as most users will not want to Tweet your “About Me” page.

Once you have the settings how you like them and save it, you’re done. The plugin will then place a Tweet This icon (or text link) at the bottom of your blog posts. If you’re happy with that, then you’re on your way.

I however, wanted to have the icon at the top of my blog post, as you can see on this post that you’re reading. So do accomplish this, I un-checked the “Automatically insert Tweet This links” in my settings area, which will not place the icon on my post. Next I opened my “single.php” file from my theme and placed the following template tag where I wanted the icon to appear on my page.

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<?php tweet_this_small(); ?>

That will place the Tweet This icon on your page where you have placed it, and you actually have more control over it this way as well as you could wrap it in a <div> if you would like to give it additional styling, etc.

So that’s it. Tweet This…really cool WordPress plugin!

So to start the new year off, I’m going to be going over some of the changes for WP Ecommerce 3.6.9. This will probably be a multi-part documentation and when completed, I will most likely do a screencast of everything I have gone over.

So to start with, we’re going to talk about “HomePage Products”.

You’ve probably noticed that this feature has been removed from the newest version of WP Ecommerce. It was available on older releases, and you would see a checkbox on your product editing screen like this:

You would select this box if you wanted that particular product to be made available on your homepage (or any page for that matter). You would then place this shortcode on your hompeage or whatever page you wanted these products to show up on.

[homepage_products]

Well, like I said, that feature has been removed in order to take more advantage of the “Groups” options.

So in order to acheive this in WP Ecommerce 3.6.9 (and future releases), you will do the following:

1. Make a new “Group” in “Ecommerce–>Groups” to display your “featured” or “homepage” products

2. Add the products you want displayed to this new group. They can also belong to other groups…just make sure they are part of this new group as well.

3. On your homepage, or any other page, just use the WP Ecommerce button in your text editor to place that new category into the page. You can also use the shortcode [ wpsc_category=1,full ] to display it. The #1 is the category ID. Also, the shortcode I used has a space after the first [ and before the last ], you’ll want to take those out. I had to do that so that my categories would not display here.

That’s it…so now you can have your featured products (or whatever you want to call them) on your homepage, or any other page on your site.

Again, this is the beginning of several walkthroughs of changes made to WP Ecommerce 3.6.9, so check back!

I will also be doing another screencast when the full version of 3.6.8 is released, so stay tuned!

]]> http://www.wordpressme.org/2008/11/robotstxt-its-pretty-easy-really/feed/ 1 http://www.wordpressme.org/2008/11/robotstxt-its-pretty-easy-really/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wpme/~3/TIAeYtAKdi8/ http://www.wordpressme.org/2008/11/variations-google-checkout/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:59:30 +0000 shayne http://www.stasticdesigns.com/?p=231 So, if any of you use the Wordpress shopping cart plugin WP Ecommerce, first of all you’ll notice that it is a superb ecommerce solution for a Wordpress site. With that being said, there are some bugs here and there, which is to be expected I think…after all the plugin is free!

So, what I would like to address today is one of those bugs – passing variations on to Google Checkout.

Within WP Ecommerce you can set up variation sets, like for example: Small, Medium and Large if you are selling T-Shirts. Here’s where the bug comes in. If you’re using Google Checkout as your payment gateway, you’ll notice that the variations don’t get passed on to the Google Checkout page which makes it very difficult to know what exactly your customer ordered, besides just the product itself.

So, what you will need to do is FTP into your site and in “wp-contents/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/shopping_cart_functions.php” find this chunk of code (which starts on line 168 of my version which is 3.6.8 RC1):

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if (array_search("google",get_option('custom_gateway_options')) !== false) {
				$google_item = new GoogleItem(utf8_decode($product['name']),utf8_decode($product['description']), $quantity, $google_unit_price);
				$google_item->SetMerchantItemId($product['id']);
 
				$google_cart->SetMerchantCalculations(get_option('siteurl'),"false","false","false");
				//echo serialize($cart_item->product_variations);
				$google_item->SetMerchantPrivateItemData("some variations");
				$google_cart->AddItem($google_item);
			}

The second line in that code is what you will want to change. Copy the code below and replace the second line in that chunk of code:

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$google_item = new GoogleItem(utf8_decode($product['name'].$variation_list),utf8_decode($product['description']), $quantity, $google_unit_price);

That’s it! Now your shopping cart should pass the variation sets over to Google Checkout and you’ll know what your customers ordered!! Good luck and happy coding.

Until next time…