AncaIO

An update: it seems the Vimeo embeds continue to fail randomly even with https:// . Any ideas why this is happening?

If you know your way around code, you could use the custom fields in WordPress.

You could define a new custom field – for example game_name, then make a custom query that would retrieve all the posts having that key.

$args = array(
	'post_type'  => 'post',
       'orderby' => 'meta_value',
       'meta_key' => 'game_name',
       'order' => 'ASC' //for A-Z
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

This snippet is just a starter example for a custom query and assumes your games are regular posts. It is untested and definitely needs refinement. Don’t paste it anywhere just yet, especially if you’re not familiar with WP coding.

You would then need to modify the loop to use this query. This implies that you have made your site using a child-theme or a custom theme that you can edit without losing your changes on the next update.

Providing answers to the following questions might enable us to give you more helpful answers. You seem to have quite a few games listed, so you definitely are in need of some automatic solution to this problem.

Is the games page a category page or a custom template in a child theme?
How are you getting the games in the page? Is there any code you can provide?
Are you publishing new games as posts (from the Posts -> Add new menu) or is it a custom post type?

With a custom query solution, while using custom fields, you would not have to change the URLs or post names, just add the name of the game as a custom field value.

Hi,

I am assuming you want to install WordPress on your computer in order to learn/develop/play with?

If so, I am not sure that walkthrough is the best. Digital Ocean is a hosting company and Ubuntu 14.04 is one of the servers they offer for VPS (virtual private server) instances. I think the tutorial you followed is for that and in that environment, the Apache and MySQL and so on would be on after any required restarts, whereas, on your machine, you’d have to start/stop them, install all components, etc.

What you appear to be needing is a local machine installation – on your laptop or desktop computer – since you’re trying to access it via localhost. I am not very familiar with Ubuntu (I only used it in the early days of 12.something), so I can’t help you troubleshoot the installation – since visiting the localhost url doesn’t display anything, there could be a lot of things that went wrong with the installation process – from servers to components.

If you’re not determined to do this the hard way, see this link for LAMP. and this for a WordPress stack.

If you want to troubleshoot what you just did, try searching for a DESKTOP installation of WordPress. This is a desktop installation. See if there’s something you might have missed when compared to the tutorial you followed.

A few videos on YouTube might also help out.

I hope this helps.

Will mark as resolved since I just noticed that the plugin is no longer supported.

Hi,

WordPress can be installed in several ways. I have tried the plugin on two kinds of installations: the root of the website (yourdomain.com/ for instance) and in a sub-directory in the root of the site (yourdomain.com/something/).

I developed a site on a test environment (not local machine installation, just a domain where I develop sites), where WordPress was installed in a sub-directory and the plugin did not work.

I then tested on another site (same server), where WordPress was installed in the root of the site and it worked.

I then again tried to use it in my new project (the one I was developing on a sub-directory WordPress installation), but this time on the live version of the site, where WP was installed in the root of the site and a different server entirely, and again it did not work.

Without input from the developer of the plugin, I did not have the time to figure out why the behavior of the plugin was so inconsistent… It could be the server setup, my own code, or something else entirely that prevented the plugin from working correctly for me.

As I said in my first post, I needed to redirect from

%day%-%monthnum%-%year%-%postname%/

to

%postname%/

To solve my problem I used the plugin Safe Redirect Manager, with a regex redirect rule:

/([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{4})-([^/]+)

to

https://www.thedomain.com/4$

@respectyoda: Sure. No harm was intended in this, to the contrary. It’s one of those nightmare situations, really, no matter what kind of website or blog it is, it’s a shame to lose the content.

Basically goafrica has file backups but did not have a database backup, at least not one from before the loss of posts. In such situations, without some old sql dump from before the troubles, or some WP posts export file lost somewhere on the hard drive there’s little to do about it, other than talking to the host.

From what I understood, the host did not have their own backup of goafrica’s DB. What a bummer!

Well, in this case, there was no support to give because the database or the posts in it were removed completely and there’s no backup of the sql file.

We needed to verify that on an actual, live cPanel and we couldn’t exchange that kind of information on a public forum. I’m afraid there was no other way. And since there is no solution to share, no one benefits from this info…

Sorry if we broke any rules :/

PS: If there’s any knowledge to take from this it’s that regular backups of files and databases are lifesavers. Oh yeah, and don’t count on your hosting service for backups.

Hi, got it, sent you a reply.

@ ronitko: I agree with catacaustic. There are simply too many things that could trigger this, including bad queries (as in, not closed/reset queries).

There is also the issue of what you updated/changed recently (other than actual content). Did you install a plugin? Change your theme? Customised any of your theme code? Updated a plugin or theme?

You should also figure out what your current memory allocation is. I believe godaddy has a default memory of 64MB. If that’s what you’re running on, even a theme installation and activation could go above that. See if you can temporarily get a 256MB memory. See how your site is running. If it’s still slow or returning errors, in the little time it’s up, try disabling your plugins one by one. If none of the plugins are the cause, try switching to the default theme.

You can put your site under a “Coming soon” screen while you do this. The Seedprod Coming Soon plugin is good for that and there are a few other similar plugins out there.

If the problems persist, with plugins deactivate and switched theme…. well, then, I think that would be a hosting problem or a cron job that’s not being removed/deactivated on plugin deactivation.

Hi,

How exactly did you install WordPress? In the root of your site? In a sub-directory?

But I can’t actually log in or start creating pages. I’m really confused. Can you help asap please? Not a 5 minute install at all!

This could also mean you installed WordPress in a sub-directory?

In this case, just deleting the index.html will not suffice. So check your folder structure, and see if the WP files are directly in the root of your site or in a directory. But then again, if you are able to access the login link that may not be the case.

So… In order to get help, we need a little more information.

Did you re-name the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php? Moreover, looking at this link – https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Installing_WordPress which installation method did you use and are you sure you followed each step correctly?

Hi ermphd,

Did you turn on WP_DEBUG to see what kind of php errors you’re getting? It would be prudent to do that first, then move on to more drastic steps.

Hi goafrica,

You say you made a copy of your data via the cPanel. Is this a database export? Or did you just download your files?

Now, on to the database connection problem. There are several steps you should take for diagnosing:

1. Go to your wordpress directory. Download a copy of the wp-config.php file.
2. Open the file with a code-editor like Sublime 2(you can download a free trial).
3. In that file, look at the following lines:

define('DB_NAME', 'something_here');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'something_here');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'something_here');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'something_here');

4. Now go back to your cPanel. Find and click on a link to phpMyAdmin (if you have cpanel maybe it looks like in this image: https://www.artofblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/cpanel-fantastico.jpg)
5. Once you’re in, check that a database with the name in the DB_NAME line exists
6. If the database exists, open it and check that the prefix of the tables in it matches $table_prefix = ‘something_’; in your wp-config.php
7. Also try and see what the users associated with the database are and if the username matches what’s in your wp-config.php in the DB_USER line. This would probably be easier to look at from the MySql Databases interface in your cPanel.

Other than these, it could be a change of password for the user, or a change for the DB_HOST that prevents WordPress from connecting, or the absence of your database. Or a corrupted database.

But first things, first… Do the above and let us know what’s going on. Don’t give out any sensitive info like those in your wp-config file in your reply.

Good luck,
Anca

@ bewa: Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been swamped by other concerns. From your question, I am assuming you have no WP programming experience. If I am wrong, don’t take my answer the wrong way ??

You should put this code in your theme’s functions.php file.

However, be careful with it, the smallest error can bring down your site.

Before putting any new code in it, make a site backup, so that you can restore your site to the previous state if anything goes wrong or download the functions.php via FTP (if you have access to it). If you make a backup, make sure the backup includes your files not just your database. Please note, that if you make a mistake in functions.php it can make your site inaccessible in both front end and admin, so without FTP access or some other form of access to your wordpress and theme files, you will probably not be able to correct the mistake.

If the instructions above are not something you are familiar with, than it’s probably best you don’t do it yourself and hire someone with more experience to help you out.

Let me know how it went for you.

I think the problem comes from about the installation being in a subdirectory?

So from

mysite.com/subdir/%day%-%monthnum%-%year%-%postname%/

to

mysite.com/subdir/%postname%/

does not work.

Yet on another site, installed and served from the main directory it appears to work fine.

Is this a limitation of the plugin?