NC@WP

Jessica C-1,

They’re your images, all yours.

In that case, why bother publishing them? You can always enjoy them offline. Publishing your work is supposed to be (at least partially, in some way) a service to others. Publishing it on the Internet, doubly so.

You’ve received compliments on them, they’re one of a kind, they’re your pride and joy. Are you concerned about people stealing them from your website?

Personally, I am not. But there certainly are people that are concerned. But then, again, there are people who are concerned about alien invasion, too…

If you are, what do you do to try and prevent that from happening? I’m curious because I like photography and I anticipate building my first website using WP.

It’s hard to accept (especially for an artist), but the fact is, the world is drowning in art. Every decent museum in the world (and most half-decent ones) has a collection that is between three and ten times bigger than what they have room to display (so most of the world’s art today languishes in back rooms). With photography, it’s even worse, as there are way more people that snap cameras than people that draw, paint, or sculpt. As a result, there is very little money in art, and what money there is is mostly earned by (or, more precisely, falls into the lap of) very few artists who happened to become fashionable in their lifetime. So while I do understand the annoyance factor, I also think that trying to protect images on a Web site is not worth the effort, as the effort seems to be more expensive than the assets being protected.

As to stealing bandwidth through hot-linking, is it really that big of a deal, especially if images are watermarked, so you get to display your credits no matter what? Not to mention the fact that you can always make it someone else’s bandwidth by hosting your images on any photo sharing site…

Well, the situation you are describing is exactly what WordPress MU was developed for. Since you need to reinstall the blogs anyway, why not start with a MU installation?

It’s hard to say, as you really gave no description of what the site is supposed to do, but generally speaking, WordPress provides enough extension flexibility to pull off practically anything. The real questions are (1) whether WordPress native functionality will be an impediment to the extensions, and (2) whether the extensions will be compatible with future versions of WordPress.

Take a look at a plugin called Drain Hole; it provides an alternative location for file storage and allows you to restrict access to downloads to users with a certain level of privileges.

Your plan, essentially, is to build two independent things, the main site and the blog. If that’s what you really want (i.e., if the independence and the related difference in the look-and-feel is desirable), you can do it. Often, however, people don’t realize that WordPress has a facility called Pages, which exist outside of the blog flow and form a hierarchy of their own, so you can use Pages to build your “main site”. If you do, you only have one application to maintain, the look-and-feel is uniform, and any changes you make impact both the blog and the “main site” uniformly and simultaneously…

jennyooooo,

There is no way to “just drop” a blog into a template. You need to modify the template to make it into a functional theme. Generally, if this is something you’ve done before, you can get it done in a day or two. If you haven’t, but have good understanding of HTML and CSS and basic knowledge of PHP (both in general and as it pertains to WordPress), you may be able to pull it off within a week. If you have none of those skills, you are simply not ready to deal with this…

There’s also a third potential solution, one install of WordPress MU… This way, you get both the flexibility of multiple installs and the convenience of single application to manage…

ahrenba,

A little while ago, I actually wrote a simple plugin that allows you to include free-form PHP / HTML / JavaScript / whatever into WordPress posts/pages. You can download it here.

Note, however, that if you use it to include PHP scripts, they will not be included in the PHP sense of the term; rather, the PHP script will run in its separate memory space, unrelated to WordPress, and its output will be embedded into the including post/page. So if you intend to include PHP scripts that rely on WordPress’ environment, data, or authentication, you will need to explicitly include() the proper WordPress files…

It’s a directory structure issue. When you include /wordpress/index.php, the code runs as if it resided in the directory in which the including file is located. Consequently, none of the subsequent includes work.

What you need to do is to put WordPress into an iframe.

The alternative is to so something like this:

<div id="apDiv16">
<?php

readfile('https://localhost/wordpress/');

?>
</div>

but it is a little slower and may produce bad links.

Use HTML entities to represent the accented letters. Specifically, to display “é”, you can use é

jrauck,

Can you put forms and such on a post just like with any regular site?

Yes, but you’ll have to have a plugin that would both display the form and process the submission once it occurs.

Customize the regular page to add pictures and content together?

Yes, absolutely.

Can you add adsense?

Yes, but you will need to learn how to change themes without breaking them.

People who blog full-time and earn full-time profit from it (of which there are probably a few hundred in the entire world) usually don’t have time to hang out anywhere except at their own blogs… Also, the value of their insight is highly questionable, as the popularity of blogs is a largely random thing (just like popularity of books, only even more random).

It seems like you’re in a bind… Yes, there are security issues. And yes, upgrading to 2.6.1 may break your blog, if your theme and plugins are not compatible with 2.6.1.

What I don’t understand, however, is why your security is any concern of your host… Under a proper server setup, even if you do get hacked, it should affect only your account.

Sylvia,

I did try with “localhost”

Why? What makes you think localhost would work for you? Again, start with your hosting help/documentation/support. Blindly trying every imaginable option (no matter how common) will get you nowhere.

Is it necessary to go through these steps in order to install plug-ins, or is there another way?

Plugins are called plugins because they plug into things. WordPress plugins plug into an operational instance of WordPress. If you don’t have one (and you don’t), there is no plug for a plugin…

phototoart,

What should my DB_HOST be?

This is something your hosting company should tell you. There is no single setting that fits every setup. It could be localhost, or it could be an IP address (something like 10.1.2.3), or it could be a server name (something as simple as mysql or as elaborate dbhost123.yourprovider.net). So look in your hosting company’s help files. Failing that, call support.

This is what I set it at right now:
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘https://www.abc-impact.com’);

This is definitely incorrect. Whatever else you may do, the https:// prefix does not belong in a DB server name…