geoffe

rwe121, your code on your wordpress page is:
<p><object width="550" height="400" align="middle" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="Slideshow"></p>

<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="Slideshow.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /></object>

If it was
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="550" height="400" id="Slideshow" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="Slideshow.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><embed src="Slideshow.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="550" height="400" name="Slideshow" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="https://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object> instead, like on your Slideshow.html example page, it would work.

Indeed, you need to be careful when using relative urls, particularly where WP will put your post in “yourdomain.xxx/archives/” so if your SSP file is going to be in the site root, you should specify things like <param name="movie" value="/Slideshow.swf" /> and <embed src="/Slideshow.swf" ..., which precedes the filename with /, so that the file is not relative to the current directory but to the site root.

And it is important to specify the filename for both the param name value and the embed src value, sadly.

Near the bottom of wp-settings.php you have a line for
define('TEMPLATEPATH', get_template_directory());

You might achieve something like what you want by replacing the above with:
if(isset($_GET['themechange']))
define('TEMPLATEPATH', ABSPATH . "wp-content/themes/yourthemefolder/");
else define('TEMPLATEPATH', get_template_directory());

Then, to see your special theme, you add ?themechange=1 (or &themechange=1) to the URI of your WordPress to activate the theme found in “yourthemefolder” that you specify in the above code.

And moshu, being a higher-up, can you tell me how I can communicate with someone about a security issue in WP?

I’m not getting any response from the above contact. Anyone intimately familiar with how these things operate?

Perhaps there’s some good reason why every page your server sends begins with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii" ?> invariably. I’m not familiar with what the reason is, but I’m confident that’s what is breaking WP for you.

My one thought is to find a forum for webserver help. There’s many people out there who might know why your server wants to send everything as an xml file, but this isn’t the place to expect to find one.

And setting up a subdomain on a different server would be tricky. I’m not sure you can or that it would be practical. You could of course just redirect or create a portal using a html page with frames. But to set your server to virtual host a site on another server? If it can be done I’d like to know how. I don’t think you can even pay for a domain registration on just a subdomain to give it a fresh nameserver. However, you could just register earthskyblog.org and you’re done.

I thought that had been done before?

goes something like:
<?php
if ( $recentposts =
$wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title, post_date, meta_value, guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ON $wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND meta_key='writer' AND meta_value='Dgold' ORDER BY meta_value, post_title DESC")) {
foreach ($recentposts as $post) {
echo "<a href="/wordpress/?p={$post->ID}" title="{$post->post_title}">{$post->post_title}</a> by {$post->meta_value}
<hr>
";
} } ?>

Although I find it simpler to create a new user account for every author. Then you can attach an image and profile information to the user, and that author/contributor can log in and edit the information, update the photo, edit the story, etc.

I hacked WordPress to fit a large scale Magazine site that would allow Subscribers to the print version of the mag log in and change their mailing information as well as update some profile data for the interest of advertisers. Then there are other hacks to do everything from creating a Subheadline field in the Write Post form and a corresponding column in the wp-posts table, to a form for adding a cover image to each category, which was renamed Issue (and Post was renamed Article). There’s a lot of details to port WP into a magazine CMS but anything’s possible. Although custom development I found to be the only answer.

can you verify that the htaccess files on the macbook fail to operate (or succeed), doing a test of some sort?

All these problems point to hosting on windows. It just won’t do things the way you’d hope.

I don’t expect your host will enable you to point 404 errors to your own file, which will be WordPress, and I’m not sure why WordPress 404s would still look like your index.php template if you have a 404 template.

I’m a bit confused why you have a Windows 404 at this page: https://www.sogroovynow.com/index.php?error=404

And thanks for the tip on the font. Much appreciated.

This comes up a lot, try this info: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/79092

Much depends on whether your site and your blog are hosted on the same server, if not the same domain.

It can be more practical, flexible and efficient to retrieve the text of your posts directly from your database, but it could be easier for you to retrieve the text from the rss feed that WordPress automagically generates.

To parse the rss, I’d suggest porting WP’s own fetch_rss function to your home page and use it to sort things out. Presumably, your home website is a php file that you want to display your recent posts on.

What you need is a file in your theme folder with the name 404.php, which will be what WordPress serves whenever a request is made that it can’t fine.

The technique you have above is to force any 404 error the Apache server receives to be sent to your WordPress 404 template. Which is fine, but you need to create that template file with what you want it to say.

Since you don’t have a 404.php template, the next default is the index.php template in your theme folder, which shouldn’t be confused with many other index.php files.

It doesn’t matter if you have permalinks set or not, although they do solve the need for your above code because every file request will be sent to WordPress anyhow, and it would determine if a 404 is warranted or not. Right now https://www.sogroovynow.com/?psf=48908940sdfd will be handled by a WordPress 404 while https://www.sogroovynow.com/errorerror will be handled by whatever file Apache says to point to for a 404, which I assume you set to that lovely Microsoftian page until you figure this out.

And I’m curious, what’s the font you use in your title images?

I don’t believe that WordPress is generating the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii" ?> line for you, or I’d check what version of WP you are installing because I don’t find any evidence of it being generated by WordPress in any of its files.

Have you tried removing the htaccess file and seeing how it works? I’d have to think that apache is the monkey wrench to what WP wants to do, and somehow those error reporting settings could cause it? I don’t know..

Ah, I’m just cluing into the fact that every page on your server is beginning with the line <?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii" ?> so there you go. Somewhere Apache is configured to serve that at the top of every page it sends. You’ve got to kill that.

Search your httpd.conf for it.

strange content out of your rss feed too:
https://www.earthsky.org/blog/?feed=rss2

It’s starting with that <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”us-ascii” ?> which shouldn’t be there.

Where is that htaccess file located, in the root directory? And where are these related threads?

To add to the confusion, I don’t find the text us-ascii anywhere in WordPress’ code, so I’m not sure where that would be coming from.

the “details of extensions to load and directory info” I was talking about were values in the wp_options table in your database that could cause wp-admin to mess up, but these values would be reset to acceptable values on a clean install.

Only other trouble I can think of is an errant .htaccess file that is confusing WP.

If the rest of the site is working, and you have the proper set of files with a fresh install of the DB, there is nothing else that should cause wp-admin to fail.

the timestamp on post2cat is your best method, you just need custom SQL queries to pull that information. I suppose that is just what you chose to do.

I suppose your theme can be made to modify a table to add the timestamp column as part of an install function. As i said, the postmeta table could store the info, but it’s less ideal.

It can be done, you just need to have new tables to manage the paid accounts after they register. You can have them send money to a paypal account and use paypal to return how much they have paid. If it meets the set balance for performing whatever action, their listing will be active and featured or whatever.

You’ll likely want the Role Manager plugin to help you out.