Organize Series Options Do Not Load Properly, Core Files Location Incorrect

I’ve decided to play around with the Organize Series because it looks like it does what I need and so far, it’s great! Unfortunately, I’m hitting a bit of a road block.

When navigating to the Series Option page in Settings, the page stops loading after the following lines in the rendered code…

<div id="organize-series-feed" class="postbox">
	<div class="inside">
	<div id="orgseriesnews">

I thought maybe it was my browser, but it does the same thing in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. So, maybe I thought it was my development server, so I went ahead and loaded the plugin to my web host, but it does the same thing there.

Then I decided to check the PHP log on my development server, which states the following…

PHP Warning: require_once(/Users/Travis/Sites/www/2010-wordpress-3xx/wp-load.php) [<a href='function.require-once'>function.require-once</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Users/Travis/Sites/www/2010-wordpress-3xx/content/plugins/organize-series/orgSeries-feed.php on line 11

The way my WordPress site is set up, my WordPress core files aren’t located in the root (in this case, /Users/Travis/Sites/www/2010-wordpress-3xx/). They’re stored in a sub-directory (/Users/Travis/Sites/www/2010-wordpress-3xx/_ttn-201010-wp-core-3x_) as a security precaution. I then use the Site URL option in the General Settings of WordPress to point to the cloaked location for my site.

To make things more complicated, I don’t store my site’s content (images, plugins, themes, etc.) in the default wp-content folder. Using the WP_CONTENT_DIR and WP_CONTENT_URL settings in wp-config.php, I point WordPress to look for content in a location outside my WordPress fore files folder. (Again, as a security precaution.) As noted above, that content is stored locally at /Users/Travis/Sites/www/2010-wordpress-3xx/content/.

It’s looking like Organize Series isn’t noticing this option and trying to find the wp-load.php file in the root of the site instead of the real WordPress core files directory. So I took a look at orgSeries-feed.php and noticed it was using a variable of $root with a value set to dirname(dirname(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)))) while all the other files are called using ABSPATH, which is the variable used to find the the path of the WordPress core files folder. (I believe. Correct me if I’m wrong.) So I went ahead and changed require_once($root.'/wp-load.php'); to require_once( ABSPATH . '/wp-load.php'); and tada! Everything works!

Now I’m not sure if there’s a certain reason why that variable was set like that so my experience may actually cause problems. I don’t know. I just wanted to spread the word just in case anyone else had this issue.

For reference, my development server is running PHP 5.2.13 (via MAMP PRO for Mac OS X) while my web host is using PHP 5.2.12. Both are using WordPress 3.0.1 and using Organize Series 2.2.2.