FiddyP

I tried to respond to a comment on my CommentLuv plugin page this morning, and I was greeted with this error,
500 Error — Internal Server Error. There has been an internal server error
oh noes!! The site was working fine for the main index page but single posts kept on throwing up a 500 error

I had a quick search of the Wordpress forums and found a variety of posts from people experiencing the same problem, each one with a different solution. I went through each solution until I revived the site back to it’s normal functionality.. here’s what I did..

1. .htaccess
   Some people had the problem because their htaccess file was not writable or their server had mod_rewrite disabled. I tried deleting the htaccess file and then going back to ‘options/permalinks’ and updating the permalink structure. The update went through with no problems (sometimes it will say “could not update htaccess” which means it is not writable by the server). The problem still persisted though..
2. wp-cache
   I thought it might be a cache problem seeing as the CommentLuv page gets so many visitors (it has a pr5 too!), I disabled the cache plugin.
   still no joy…
3. php.ini - only 8m of memory?
   I thought it might be too much memory used (I was close) so I edited php.ini in the root of my hosting folder and put this line in.
   memory_limit=16M
   Not successful
4. Too much content?
   I tried browsing to the CommentLuv page on my mobile phone once and it crashed with “out of memory” error and considering it has (atm) 199 responses, I thought that might be something to do with it. I know my stats sometimes give me a 500 internal server error when it takes a long time to load so that looked to be the problem.
   I downloaded a plugin called ‘paged-comments‘ and installed it, I particularly like the way you can stop it from paging every post and only choose which posts need paged comments by adding a custom field to the post editing screen.

   Sorted that out and tried to view the page, it loaded partly! almost there!

5. Plugin memory hog.
   On the nearly loaded page there was an out of memory error relating to sh-autolink (a plugin which automatically makes certain words in to html links) so I disabled that and SUCCESS!
   It all works fine now.

A combination of too many comments and a plugin that scans the whole text for keywords led to my 500 internal server error for Wordpress, it’s now fixed with a neat plugin and a quick removal of another. phew!

The CommentLuv plugin page is now up and working fine again, I never realized that it would get so much attention when I first drafted it. Thanks everyone for using CommentLuv!

Popularity: 3% [?]

I have been tinkering with the idea of a professional redesign for some time now, I am capable of doing one myself but I’m too lazybusy! I think it would take me a lot longer than would be healthy anyway! so I am committed to spending up to 400 USD for a new design of FiddyP… You can help even if you’re not a designer yourself and get a $25 gift certificate to spend where you like!

I’ve seen quite a few designs that I like the look of so I thought I would share some with you and get some feedback!

My definite wants are:

• 3 columns
• 2.0 colours but not clinical
• unique sidebars that can be widget enabled
• incorporate my own 50p logo somewhere
• easy to read text
• a full 1024 wide theme, maybe with the main content resizable for bigger screens
• space for a promotion box or featured product
• all the files required for a 2.3 wordpress theme folder like 404.php and sitemap etc

This is the style of boxes that I like

Here’s a mocked up from an existing template in photoshop, the double span box on the top part of the sidebar should be repeated below the two widget enabled sidebars and a big footer to show other things like blogroll, archives etc. It looks like this:

A cross between the two would be perfect! What do you think? is my budget enough?

Here’s how you can help..

If you know a theme designer that does this type of thing, ask them to take a look at these two pictures and the needs of the site and give me a quote, either by commenting here or using the contact me page.

Get them to mention that you sent them here and if I go with that person, you get a 25USD gift certificate for an online store like Amazon or even one local to you.

It’s almost like a contest because you can get paid for participating even if it’s not you that does the designing! You’ll also get a chance to help out someone you know if they are a designer. I get a new site, they get paid and so do you. win win win

just some testing of AJAX here to see if I can grab a last post from an author url while the user is still on the page..it’s a prelude to me adding some AJAX functionality to commentluv, below is a test version of the comment form once the comment authors site has been entered and they go to the next form field, the ajax should call a php file to find the title of the authors last post and put it in the pink box.

now all I have to do is find a way to make an event listener for the actual comment form author url field without adjusting the comments.php file….

Popularity: 3% [?]

My blog is 2 months old today and I woke up this morning to see a Google pagerank of 5 applying to this site!

This is the first site I have built that didn’t have the whole PR thing predominant in it’s construction, I just wanted to have some fun for a change and along with my wordpress plugins and prolific commenting, I get a PR of 5 and an Alexa rank up to 223,600.

In that time, my online counter says over 16000 unique visitors came here, my page hits on my other stats says an awful lot more but 16000 is a good enough number to say!

The busiest day always seems to be Tuesday and a peak of traffic comes in at around 4 o’clock in the afternoon (UK time), Stumbleupon has been the biggest traffic source with the weblog tools collection site and the official Wordpress plugins page for CommentLuv coming in second and third.

Google itself has only accounted for about 1000 of the entire hits, it’ll be interesting to see if those go up now it’s a PR 5 here.

I haven’t even got any monetization going on here, apart from a small link in the sidebar to a pre-release affiliate program, I may go the monetization route later in the year. First, I want a professional redesign of this place. More 2.0 colour scheme and a rounded corner look and a little bit of tidying up on the sidebar and then I’ll start thinking about some flyby advertising to see if can get my PR down a little

Sooo, who’s up for a free paid review? lol

Popularity: 4% [?]

Here’s a great way to add a shopping cart to your Wordpress blog so you can sell products directly from your site without the user having to go to an external site. If you offer products for sale on your blog, it’s much nicer for your customers to stay on the same site that they see the products on.

This plugin is simple and powerful, it uses AJAX for some parts of it and it seems to work just dandily on the blog I have installed it on. Here’s how you do it…

[expert instructions]
Download plugin, upload to plugins directory, activate it.
Visit the ecommerce tab and set options for country and currency, edit categories, edit checkout options, edit gateway options, add products.
sell!
[/ expert instructions]

[Hand hold instructions]
First, get yourself a copy of the WP Shopping Cart plugin and upload it to your plugins directory, go to you plugins page and activate it :

(more…)

Popularity: 8% [?]

I got tagged by Antibarbie for this meme, I don’t think I’ve ever been properly tagged yet and so this one pops my cherry (oo-er!)

I’ve seen lots of meme type posts on blogs I surf by on and never really got it but, when you’re in one it’s different so like it or not, here it comes…

the rules
Each player starts with some random facts/habits about himself/herself. As you are tagged you need to post the rules and your responses on your own blog. At the end of your post, you need to choose some people to tag, list their names and, of course, leave them a comment, telling they have been tagged and they need to read your blog for more information.

1. is for Andy, my name and I like it (luckily)
2. is for Bailey, my second name - phew, this is easy so far…
3. is for Cats. I like cats, they is has funeez
4. is for Dharma. Life’s like that
5. is for Entropy. Life ends and starts with it (huh?)
6. is for Fantastic. Like life can be
7. is for Goal. as in to have one
8. is for Harrowing. my childhood
9. is for Indecision, it must be stopped! ..but when? and why? etc
10. is for Juxtaposition. I like to throw words like this in to conversation
11. is for Kilobyte. exactly 1024 bytes
12. is for Love. It’s all you need, apparently
13. is for Madness, it happens when you fall in love
14. is for Navy, I was in it once
15. is for Objects, I like them. The more the merrier
16. is for Programming. Like a rocking chair to my mind
17. is for Questions. I have too many
18. is for Result. Good or bad, you always get one
19. is for Sex, it’s better than .. um..
20. is for Touch. reach out and..
21. is for Ubiquitous. beep w00t
22. is for Verbose. why use 1 word when you can use 10?
23. is for Whatever, like, totally!
24. is for Xavier, a name almost as good as Andy
25. is for Yet. I’m not a millionaire..
26. is for Zed, it’s how you say the letter Z

Here’s my tags…
Bobby @ Revellian.com , Pelf @ chenpn.com, Chessnoid @ totalnoid.com

did you say, “zee” or “zed” for the last one?

Popularity: 5% [?]