nickaster

well, the use of that word was polite considering how I feel about MS word ??

I suppose I should leave it up to WP to find a way to fool-proof it if people paste in from MS word or another smartquote source.

phenomenal! thank you. that’s exactly what I neeeded

Thanks doodlebee. Can you point me to an example of how to properly use this? ie… this obviously doesn’t work:

<?php
is_author('104') {
blah blah blah
};
		?>

So… for sake of example, just print “blah blah blah” if the author is number 104. What’s the right way to do that?

So…. assuming I’m right about the template hierarchy, I’d guess I can make changes to the regular author.php file that might say “if author id is 123” then display this extra bunch of stuff, or skip this area…

Is that sort of thing possible? Is there some example code lying around? The codex seems pretty devoid of anything describing this.

Yeah, that’s what I was looking at, but doesn’t look like you can create a template specific to an Author ID in the same way that you can with categories, right? I’m talking about the hierarchy.

Incidentally, I figured it out – it’s those damn “smart quotes” that MS word created. Authors had been using it and copying and pasting headlines into WP. If you avoid smart quotes it works fine.

So… progress.

This guy says his site automatically gets rid of the quotes:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/299650?replies=3

Then I tested again on my site, and the dang thing works!!! The only thing I can think of is that someone might have been using those blasted “smart quotes” that MS Word spits out.

So I tested that. Sure enough, the quotes are now in the URL.

%#(*@%(# Microsoft!!!

At least the mystery is now solved. Thanks to all who helped.

Woah. Now that’s very interesting. So there’s definitely something wrong with mine. THanks for that info!

Well I just can’t believe that a project like wordpress, with all its attention to detail would permit URLs to be created that contain quote marks. I think this would qualify as a bug in the software!

Hey excellent. This looks pretty easy, many thanks!

Yeah but that’s not realistic – especially with dozens of writers of varying technical prowess and commitment. It’s also the kind of thing people will constantly forget to do. I’m just stunned that WP would permit this as a default given that it successfully knocks out spaces etc…

Okay… in case anyone else wants to take a whack at this. Here’s an example of a wordpress site that doesn’t seem to have the problem:

https://cleantechnica.com/2009/07/31/could-fossil-free-fossil-fuels-be-in-our-future/

I’ve emailed them but have not heard back. I find it very hard to believe those authors are painstakingly removing the quotes from the permalink so there must be something automated going on.

Any thoughts?

… I think Mary makes a good point. How do you go about making this thing public? Do I need to create a page with some code on it?

Hmm.. that could be it. It’s just habit. If I’m on a roll typing it’s sometimes easier to type things out (and I hate using wysiwygs). yeah, i’m an old school curmudgeon perhaps.

To elaborate, here are the specs for URLs:

https://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm

Quotes and other non-alphanumeric characters are not allowed in URLs unless encoded. I realize that most modern browsers let you get away with it, but many times, if a machine processes that URL it’ll return an error.

I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, just wondering how this slipped through vis a vis wordpress and whether there’s a way around it. I’ve been looking for a plugin, but can’t find anything.