Most webdesigners implement sites with videos / image galleries nowadays, and I have done numerous implementations that required video players. Most people are also using some sort of CMS to publish videos, and although Wordpress is simple it’s not that flexible so usually it’s Joomla / Drupal etc.

In my day job at Ghostwriter we use our own CMS called Content Manager usually. It creates dynamic links and it can be a challenge to “read” the file type from those for some video players that have presented some challenges. I’d like to recommend media players and explain their features in a short way so you can see which one to pick.

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I had to try and find a way to show the second level of the pages in the sidebar, but also keep the second level (child) when you click on a third level (grandchild) page, and that proved to be quite a challenge. Did a lot of searching and testing on my site before I found a way.

Example of how I wanted it (selected page in bold):

-Subpage
–Subsubpage
–Subsubpage 2
-Subpage 2

After a LOT of searching Wordpress forums and stuff I finally found the solution. The Flexi pages widget with the default option “List sub-pages only in parent and related pages in hierarchy”, and just excluding pages on the first level (parent) did it for me. Excellent widget. Get it here.

I’ve been having a bit of a journey lately, implementing sites with Wordpress, CMSMS and Joomla. All very different from our Content Manager at work. The latest I’m working with is Joomla. I’m testing it to see if it does the job as a CMS for my gamesites. I’m redoing PayneReactor, WakeReactor and adding a new site or two to my list.

The install went reasonably well, needed to contact host a few times, but in the end got it installed. I was looking at extensions and found a nice plugin, JCE. Installing that though I ran into two errors.

JFTP::store: Bad response Warning! – Failed to move file and some related errors later. I stumbled over many tips, make sure the FTP settings in Global config / Server was correct was one of them. Disable the FTP. Nothing helped.

What solved it in the end was a tip from a user in the Joomla forums. Look at the path in the Media manager, and make sure the config path for log and tmp directories is the same one. Sweet, but so far the first CMS which uses full paths that I’ve encountered.

So far Joomla in my opinion lacks serious support for rich article content and images. That’s what I’m hoping the extensions can solve for me. Many extensions seem to cost money, but not that much. It may be that I end up using it for my sites, we’ll see.

As I’ve implemented this site I’ve realized Wordpress is a bit limited compared to what I’m used to, but I hope there’s some better solutions than I’m already using. I’ve basically figured out that it’s better to get it how I want it with some crappy hacks than nothing at all, so until I learn better ways, that’s the way I do it. These are hacks for left sidebar menu and top menu.

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I’ve been scratching my head for some time about the image upload problem. The error message I got was “Unable to create directory /wp-content/uploads/ Is its parent directory writable by the server?” I read a lot of solutions, everything from disabling PHP safemode (which was disabled) to setting .htaccess rights. What finally solved it for me was to set uploads and containing folders as CHMOD 777. Hope someone finds it useful.

As I was trying to change an option in “Settings | Reading” I got a 403 error. I was searching all over the Wordpress docs and forums until I finally found a link to the solution. Go to Hackosis to read it.

Update: The link is now not working and I can’t remember exactly how to fix this issue.

I’m writing this as a sort of reminder to myself. These are some handy Wordpress bits to solve things I need as I develop this site how I want it.

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