Downgrade to Any WordPress Plugin or Theme Version

May 27, 2015/in General Information, Plugins, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

Downgrade to Any WordPress Plugin or Theme VersionThere are some rare cases where WordPress themes and plugins need to be running at an older version number, due to various technical reasons like the server’s PHP version, inter-plugin dependencies, deprecated or older code in the current frontend theme.

There are also cases where the desired functionality for a particular website cannot be fully achieved unless using an older version of a plugin, or the site’s theme performed and loaded much faster in its previous versions.

For this kind of situations, you need to find the desired theme/plugin, search through its downloads history and download an older version. If sometimes you realize you need even an older release, you have to repeat the whole process and end up losing more time, keeping you from doing something else.

This process is now automated and can be carried out via WP Rollback, a plugin that can make this entire process as simple as clicking three links: (1) selecting the theme/plugin to downgrade, (2) choosing the version to go back to, and (3) pressing a final “Rollback” button. Read original article here…

Taking A Closer Look At The WordPress wp-config.php File

October 9, 2014/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

Taking A Closer Look At The WordPress wp-config.php FileSome people will never touch the file that sets the most important details that make a site unique: wp-config. In fact, since WordPress automatically creates the file during its famous “5 minute installation” a lot of users don’t even know it’s there or ever need to touch it. That’s a great thing.

Most, but not all of what you do in wp-config is set the values of constants, so it’s important to understand constants, before discussing wp-config. Constants are a type of identifier, that like a variable holds a value. The big difference between a constant and variable, is that once a constant is defined, its value can not change. They are like non-variable, variables. Taking A Closer Look At The WordPress wp-config.php File

How to Add Background Videos to Make WordPress Posts More Appealing?

October 8, 2014/in WordPress News, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

How to Add Background Videos to Make WordPress Posts More Appealing?Videos dramatically increase the value of WordPress posts. They are not only eye-catching, but also attention-grabbing. With the help of a video, a viewer can understand your post far more clearly and quickly, than he would have, if there were only words to read.

However, it is quite difficult to add videos in the background of your WordPress posts. The job involves several format, browser and theme problems, which can annoy even the proficient developers. Though CSS works in case of background images, it does not provide any solution when it comes to creating fullscreen background videos. The job is not as simple as opening the CSS, putting the MP4 video URL inside the background clause and setting the size such that the video covers the full screen.

Firstly, download, install and activate the Background Video plugin. The plugin has a self-contained bgvideo shortcode. When you add this shortcode to the content of a post, a background video is generated. The attributes taken by the shortcode are:

Useful Facebook Comments on your WordPress Website

November 8, 2012/6 Comments/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

Add useful Facebook comments to your WordPress Website

Lets face it getting people to comment can be a challenge especially with all the many hurdles they face just to place a comment you know what I am talking about such as the ever favorite ReCaptcha which 7 out of 10 time you cannot read and have to reload until you finally get one you can read or those simple question such as what is the colour of the sky? An even then once you place the answer something goes wrong and it does not accept it and then those times when you go through all that get the response wrong and it wipe out that wonderful 2 paragraph though you just tried to post…
There has been an option for some time to allow comments via Facebook but it had many issues the biggest of which was you lose all the SEO value provided by those comments and they stayed on Facebook and you lost out…

Well now you can avoid all that in one simple step by allowing your visitors to leave comments on your WordPress website using their most used social program Facebook wit his great plugin. The problems with using facebook for comments have been overcome in this plugins as it takes those comments down from facebook and places them into your database before displaying them on your site as well as taking all comments on your site and moving them up to Facebook.

Create useful Facebook Comments on your site with:

The plugin you want here is called:
SEO Facebook Comment 1.4.5.1

Version: 1.4.5.1
Author: Fabio Zaffani
Last Updated: 167 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 2.9 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.3.2
Downloaded: 89,492 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

This plugin is fantastic in how it handles Facebook comments on both your website and on facebook, it even keeps the nice threaded look for you. Installing it is a breeze and I walk you though that below.

You can even keep your old commenting system & comments on the site if you like or remove them completely.

Installing this plugin take a few min but if you follow along it will be done in not time:

First: Go to your admin dashboard and under the plugins menu click on add new then search for SEO Facebook Comment

Now you need to install it and then activate it…. The look for a new menu item in the left called SEO facebook and click on it.. Once open you will get this area…

Here they have a convenient link for you to go to and create your Facebook App but in case you miss it here it is again…. https://www.plulz.com/how-to-create-a-facebook-app Make sure you are logged into the facebook account you want to create this app for… I will not duplicate their instructions as they are pretty comprehensive and simple… But if you like to go off on your own here is the link to facebook developers to create the app.. https://developers.facebook.com/apps

Once you have created the app which take all of about 5 min even if you have not yet registered as a developer then you need to locate the specific user ID for the Facebook page you want to share comments with.. Again they have a convient link to locate your ID but incase you miss it here is is again … https://www.plulz.com/how-to-get-my-facebook-user-id or again if you want to head off on your own head here to get your Facebook user ID https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/

Once all this is completed then you need to set a couple simple steps such as what width you want the comment box to be and the auto approve and if you want to hide the default commenting system or not.. Once that is done simply look at any post on your site to see how it look and you’re all done.

So now you can enjoy having your visitors who use Facebook make simple comments on your site and you still get all the SEO benefits and more..

Customize Your WordPress Login with Social Logins

November 8, 2012/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

Create a Slick Clean Login for Your WordPress Website

So you have a membership site and want to get more users but when people hit your website they are faced with yet another place to create an account and remember yet another login. So you need an easy solution to customize your WordPress Login to make it simple for your users to access your website.

Also as most people have discovered with WordPress the login page has a something to be desired and even more so if you have a membership site and allow people to create an account. It has limitations and it is one more place people have to remember a password.

Well there are a couple of great things you can do to make that login look slick and match your website design as well as allow them to create their account with any of their favorite social media accounts such as Facebook or twitter.

First you will need these two great plugins, Social Login for WordPress and Custom Login Lite links below.. These two plugins make a marked improvement to your WordPress login and make life easy to your users so much so that more will register and more will come back since it is one less thing for them to remember.

Customize WordPress Login with these plugins:

Start with Social Login, Social Sharing & Social Commenting, with User Profile Data 3.1

Version: 3.1
Author: LoginRadius Team
Last Updated: 25 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 2.5.0 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Downloaded: 45,571 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

This plugin makes the process of logging in very easy and allow your visitor to login with their favorites such as facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Linkedin and more. It not only logs them into your site but also captures their email and other information and adds it to your database and creates an account on your website for them. This is useful in case you run your own email campaigns you still get the benefit of adding them to your list so you can continue to stay in contact with them and help keep them active on your website.

You do need to head on over to https://www.loginradius.com and setup your account to use this plugin, but you can aslo add multiple ebsites there to manage and allow access to. They even make the process of getting setup as easy as possible with complete instructions on how to setup the plugin so it works well with your website.

Now you will want to go from this login look……..
To this login look…

Or simple

To accomplish this you need the following plugin:
Custom Login 1.0.4

Version: 1.0.4
Author: Austin Passy
Last Updated: 81 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 3.2 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Downloaded: 128,195 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

This plugin allows you the ability to change that bland simple login provided by WordPress to something that matches your websites style. It allows for multiple settings such as background colours, custom graphics for the header and background and if you’re into CSS & HTML you can add your own customizations via both to make a truly unique login screen for your website.

So with both of these plugins you can step in front of others with an easier to access website and a look that matches so that your website is unified for the whole user experience.

WordPress 3.4 upgrade gets Fatal error: Call to undefined method line 370

June 14, 2012/1 Comment/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

WordPress 3.4 upgrade gets Fatal error: Call to undefined method dbrc_wpdb::delete() in wp-includes/option.php on line 370

Ok if you see this Don’t Panic it is not the end of the world just a few minutes of yout time. If you found me first I suggest heading over to https://www.techbeast.net/2012/06/13/wordpress-3-4-fatal-error-upgrading-database/comment-page-1/#comment-36094 where Gavin has written a great article on a fix for this issue.

On further testing at my end there is something he did not add to the article. That if you want your plugin back you will need to reinstall it after everything has been upgraded. You can also do the alternative on other sites after fixing this mess and that is make sure you update your plugins first before upgrading to WordPress 3.4 this will stop problems with updates on them.

Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error

June 12, 2012/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in …./wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/wpsc-includes/category.functions.php on line 361

How I solved this error and it might save you some time.

I converted over an OsCommercer store to WP-Ecommerce using cart to cart a great way to bring over that database especially when huge like this one was. It had over 6k items and more. The conversion tests all went well so I went ahead with full conversion. That’s when the site broke after full conversion; suddenly I was getting the following error

Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in …./wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/wpsc-includes/category.functions.php on line 361

And the real fun began after search online in Google etc. found no definitive answer so began the usual process of elimination to find the issue, looking for what was out of place or what I could get to work.

First I did the usual started by turning off all plugins to make sure of no conflicts I had no luck same issue. Then I activated the default theme to rule out any theme issues and yes this was while all plugins off, I still had no luck so issue was not basics

I started looking at individual postings and discovered on some posts I could get a partial list of categories in the widget. I then started experimenting on what I could show in the widget.

What I discovered by limiting which catigories to show was where the issue was that several of the sub cats had no image properly associated not even the no-image image was there, as strange as this was. How I noticed that is that in place of the image or even the no-image image there was test as the title of the category. I went through them and deleted the image even though there was none and sure enough by removing the non-existent image I was able to solve the problem.

This error most likely occurred due to mismatch or missing image from old site that where not noticed.

I hope this helps save someone wasted time…

WordPress Visual Editor Missing Button and White Text Issue

June 5, 2012/in General Information, WordPress Solutions /by John Overall

How I solved the missing editor buttons and white text in or unable to switch between html and visual editor in WordPress

First verify it is an issue with WordPress install and not a caching issue on your machine. Log into your admin area and click on add new post and click the tab for HTML above the edit box. If nothing happens then there is most likely an issue. Also type some text into the text box if it is white there is an issue and here is where you start.

Make sure you have cleared you cache on your browser before proceeding and clear it regularly while working through this issue. Always use the F5 key for a refresh to force a fresh download from the site.

Start by placing this line:
define( ‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false );

Right before stop editing line in your wp-config.php file

If this does not work move to next item and that is replacing the WordPress Admin files with freshly downloaded ones from WordPress.org

And when this does not work notice one thing that is happening that you may have missed and that is how the page is not completely loading. Then look at the source code and scroll to the bottom and look for the error and when you find that which is this case was the ecommerce store and then fix it and all will be well in your world.

In this case I found it to be wp-ecommerce had broken for some reason due to WordPress update.