Matthew’s Weblog

More quick reference links to apache goodness: mod-rewrite and virtual hosts overview. Next step, hooking up the rewrite so my old-format links with multiple blogs point to the new-format post URLs. sigh.

Wordpress is simple, but it still isn’t psychic.

And I also found that Redhat has a nice overview of named for those of us still learning BIND.

I finally got the MU installation working the way I desire, though it ended up requiring some code hacking. Why? For some reason, the wpmu-settings file strips out “www.” before evaluating the blog… and when it did that and redirected, it found my Apache redirect… which sent it back to www, which stripped… and so on.

It ended up being a very easy fix… comment out two lines and bingo! the code works how I expected. But it took hours of searching because the code somehow thinks a “www” subdomain should be handled differently than any other subdomain. I disagree, and once I remove the “www” restriction in the admin tool, I expect the code to behave consistently.

I finally found the solution on a couple of the WPMU forum threads where others had the same problem — I simply wasn’t searching for “www” because… well… why would that subdomain be handled any different than all others I was using?

I also found a link to a multisite manager which could eliminate a bunch of the multi-domain manual database work I was doing. I’m downloading it and will have to play with it later when I have free time…

…thank goodness. OK, on to the next challenges… how to adapt the theme(s) to the new 2.x code, and then to run the theme security scanner…

used Stray Quotes since it appears to be more maintained. Now I just have to actually get updated themes and then add it in again…

Also, I got closer to the everything-running-multidomain (though not with multiple URLs to the same blog, and I may fall back on apache redirects) thanks to a discussion thread with Dr. Mike and then a recipe from cafespain for making multiple domains work:

1. edit the Domain server for the domainname you are interested in and add a CNAME record for something like blog.domainname.com which points to your WPMU installation.
   eg. I added the CNAME blog.clearskys.net to the clearskys.net DNS settings and set it to point to cafespain.com
2. Create a blog in your WPMU installation - it doesn’t matter what you call it for now - use the existing admin system to create it.
3. Add a record in wp_site with the the domain of the new blog. eg. in this case clearskys.net and set the path to /
4. Duplicate the wp_sitemeta entries for your new site (insert into wp_sitemeta (site_id, meta_key, meta_value) SELECT x, meta_key, meta_value FROM wp_sitemeta WHERE site_id = 1 (change x to the id of the new site record created at step 3.
5. Modify the record for the blog you created in wp_blogs and change the domain to the CNAME you created in step 1 (in this case blog.clearskys.net) and change the site_id to the id of the site record in step 3.
6. Modify all the records in wp_xx_options (where xx is the record number of your blog in step 5) that have the domain path, so that it is the same as that set in step 5 (blog.clearskys.net).
7. Wait a bit for the DNS changes to propagate and access the website at blog.clearskys.net, voila one wordpress blog, with it’s own domain running off an installation of WPMU at a different one.

There’s some discussion of issues with administration of blogs on other domains farther down after that recipe, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Notes on getting mu working…

From David Yin, a tip on adding Ubuntu mod-rewrite:

To install mod_rewrite, “sudo a2enmod rewrite”

The site-add dialog doesn’t let you do both subdirectories and subdomains, though I can’t see why not.  It also restricts you to a 4-character subdomain, but you can alter that within the database and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems. Not yet.

I’m also trying to figure out how to have both subdomains and subdirectories, and/or how to have multiple subdomains that point to the same blog.  Still in process… let me know, Noble Reader, if you have any tips.

I had a couple of blogs on 1.5.x and needed to get them upgraded, and yet I was dragging my feet due to the extra pain of migrating to new hardware and copying mysql tables and fun like that. Thankfully, WP has progressed far enough to have an export/import, and so all I had to do was get my 1.5.x blogs exported. Eevn that has now been covered, and I was able to use a very brief set of steps in this tutorial combined with the 1.5.x export plugin and now I’m moved over!

Next, dealing with my plugins…

Comprehensive Wordpress Plugin Database with Plugins Tracker

AskApache htaccess password builder

and then some tips on WP security:
drop version string
block viewing of plugins/themes folders
and htaccess (see link above)

whoops, almost forgot Lorelle’s mention of a theme security scanner… which is this security scanner here.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, security

Bad Behavior (as previously noted - only two comment spams since installation)
Easier custom field insertion when writing posts
Easier display of custom fields in posts
Random Quotes

Installed but not used (effectively) yet:
WP Database Backup
WPTheme Manager

And suggested by RWC:
Technorati Tagging
File Organizer

Our story so far, 30 hours after installation… Bad Behaviour 191, Spammers 1. Now that’s a winner!

OK, so I’ve been fighting comment spam here for the last 2 days… 7981 comments deleted and a number of options tried - but hey, I found that three people actually submitted real comments and I didn’t know it! Worse, it’s frustrating my wife (3800 spams on hers). I didn’t want to use a captcha because I find them annoying. However, I will resort to that if necessary and these next steps don’t work. So now it’s time for the heavy artillery.

Enter Bad Behaviour (plus the addon add-on log reader). I’m hoping this will resolve it, but if you have any trouble, let me know. If you don’t know how to get me, guess! Odds are you’re smart enough to figure out my email.

Even if this works, then I have to figure out the trackback issue. Pesky Vikings…