Rats: thanks to Chuck who noticed a problem with this new version which rather spoils the whole thing. If you use automatic update from the Wordpress backend then it DELETES the contents of the ‘wordbay’ directory first, which is a really annoying behaviour since that of course will delete the WordBay.css file, which is what I updated WordBay in order to prevent! Grrr… Until I find a way around this (there may not be one) there is not much point upgrading to this version, sorry… If you want to preserve your WordBay.css file in future upgrades then just do it manually I guess…
Finally, I have broken “radio silence” to announce an update to the WordBay plugin. As I keep pleading (it’s pathetic, I know), I have very little time in which to work on WordBay, and the summer months have been a particularly lazy time!
If you are expecting some kind of ground-breaking new version, SORRY! I hope to come up with such an update in the near future, but the priority has to be with improvements that are related to basic functionality.
This version (download from here, or use the automatic update function in your WordPress backend) corrects an annoying niggle whereby when you install a NEW version of the WordBay plugin, it overwrites your WordBay.css file, which you had lovingly customised, with a horrible default version, and you have to customise it all over again! In this new setup, there is no WordBay.css file - it is named WordBay.css.default so it will not overwrite your existing WordBay.css file. First-time users are warned in the back-end that they have no WordBay.css file (the plugin checks to see if it’s there) and that they need to rename WordBay.css.default to WordBay.css, the rest of us should not see this message and we can continue using WordBay with our old css stylesheet.
So this version actually only corrects a problem which will not arise again in new versions, thus there is no need to install it! Erm, dunno if that makes sense! What I am trying to say is, all future versions will function as this one, so there is no actual need to install this version - it is only for first-time users, except they don’t need it either, since they are installing it for the first time and don’t have a WordBay.css file to overwrite. Sigh… I guess what I am saying is, this release was superfluous and I could have waited until I put a new version out with some more major new functionality, but I wanted to get it out of the way.
There could be a small problem if I ever add any new style elements to the stylesheet (I dunno, rounded corners or something), but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!
OK, so here’s aiming for a more radical new version of WordBay in the near future - probably top priority is to introduce the ability to change parameters on a per-post basis, which everyone (including me!) has been howling for since Day One! However, this is no small task, so please be patient!
Posted on August 19th, 2009 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
“the rest of us should not see this message”…hmm..unless we, current WB users, use WP’s autoupdate then it removes ‘WordBay.css’…not quite what I expected to happen…but if this is the last time it will….it’s no biggy…
Woah, really?! No, that’s NOT supposed to happen. I must check into that - the WP update routine has no business deleting files just because they are not in the plugin package! However, that may be what it does - I did not use the automatic update when I tested this, it is true. If so, sorry… I will have to find a workaround for this…
Dagnabbit, you’re right - I just tried it too. Now that will be hard to work around - I don’t think there is anything I can do to prevent Wordpress deleting the contents of the plugin directory when using automatic installation… See the note I have added above.
I have an issue that has just come to my attention. I was reprimanded by my host for letting a WP database get way too big (apparently the databases are all in a shared environment). So, I pulled up a site that uses Wordbay for just about everything. I was shocked. The wp-options file had grown to 600+ megs. That’s just waaaay too big.
So, I started querying the file to see if I could figure it out. I determined that most of the records were specs put there by Magpie for eBay auctions. Apparently, it uses the wp-options file for caching purposes? Or, does WordBay use it that way? In any case, I need to get this fixed, and I’m not entirely sure where to turn.
Can you help? If WordBay is doing it, I need to get it to stop (or at least clean up after itself). If Magpie is doing it, then there is a huge problem that needs to be solved.
Thanks
Ha! Well, I guess I’m going to answer my own question. Yes, Magpie does “cache” stuff in the options table. Why, I have *no* idea. So, since Wordbay (and its RSS relatives) pull *a lot* of data fairly frequently, the table can grow rapidly.
I cleaned it up using an SQL delete (which I don’t recommend for inexperienced WP users). Then, I found this plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/clean-options/other_notes/ after visiting this site http://www.cybercoded.net/disable-magpie-cache-wordpress/.
It’s not a requirement, but I think an *outstanding* feature to add to WordBay would be a Magpie cache cleaner. Maybe set up a retain x number of days value and clean up everything prior to it each time WordBay runs (I doubt the cached values are useful for more than a week. We are talking auctions)?
By the way, how much did I clean up? The database dropped from 618 MB meg to 14 MB.
Last comment today, I promise!
Regarding the issue with the CSS, why not store the original CSS copy in the database where a user can edit it and then “deploy” it to the proper folder when the save button is clicked? Seems straight-forward to me (but then, I’m not the programmer
I’m not a programmer either, he he. Thanks for the suggestion - I think you are right, that would be the simplest solution (since this one failedI) although it’s going to take a little more work! I will have to get onto that fairly quickly, now that I have broken it…
I had clean forgotten about that Magpie issue - yes, Magpie does some kind of caching which does indeed build up to a huge database. I had the problem myself once. I guess it didn’t come up again and I forgot about it. This is something I will have to address too, as it will be a problem for inexperienced users to fix. In fact I think there is no point caching auction listings for more than a few hours, so I will have to see how to automate the cleaning process. Sigh… there’s always something
Thanks for the help!
I upgraded and got a
Fatal error:
Call to undefined function: file_put_contents() in /home/content/b/e/s/bestshop1/html/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/WordBay.php on line 548
I was going to go back to the old download but I had over written it.
Hi Eloise, you posted this query under the 1.1 post, but from the bug I assume you have installed the new 1.15 version.
Sorry, it never occurred to me - one of the functions I used in 1.15 (file_put_contents) is only available in PHP5, not in earlier versions of PHP. I would really recommend seeing with your host how to upgrade because it is likely you are running PHP4 (if not, let me know, though I can’t imagine what else the problem would be), which is definitely becoming obsolete - a lot of other stuff will stop working properly soon as people stop making their software back-compatible (like me)
If you don’t want to/can’t do that, then you can download a previous version of WordBay from the repository - I recommend v1.05: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordbay.1.05.zip and install it manually and you will be back in action.
However, you won’t be able to upgrade in future, not if you remain with PHP4 - sorry…
Thanks markowe,
Godaddy tech showed me how to upgrade to PHP5 and it working fine now. If I could just get some money coming in.
Oh, that’s a relief! I’m glad it was easily resolved!
As for the money, yeah, that’s the tricky bit
My advice, create one good blog and keep at it, make it interesting and informative - not like me, I keep starting new ones up and lose interest and they rarely do much (though it sort of adds up in the long run).