UPDATE  `wp_posts` SET  `post_type` =  '<new post type name>' WHERE  `post_type` = '<old post type name>';

UPDATE  `wp_term_taxonomy` SET  `taxonomy` =  '<new taxonomy name>' WHERE  `taxonomy` = '<old taxonomy name>';

It’s been a long time since I made major changes to SWIFT, it’s time to add some cool and fancy features to SWIFT making the best use of new features added to WordPress3.0. Here are what I planned for the update. Please post your suggestions and ideas.

• Fix the image resize problem.
• Separate comments, trackbacks, and pings.
• Change the styling of blockquote.
• Add support to menus.
• A widget to share links of your profiles on major social media sites.
• Some animations to dropdown menus.
• Change the default font of the theme, how do you like the font of this site?
• Styling the calendar widget correctly.
• Custom template for images uploaded.
• Custom meta box to upload post thumbnail on write post page.
• Option to upload background images and logo from the options page.
• AJAX comments. I have been trying to add it since a long time, but couldn’t make it. I hope I can find some good tutorials on how to do this
• Reply with quote option in comments.
• Add style sheet to post editor, so that your post looks exactly the way it look in your editor.
• I’m beginning to dislike the social media icons at the end of the post. I might change them or remove them completely.
• I want to add some useful post types, please drop in your ideas. (One thing I can think of at the moment is a template to publish weekly or monthly roundups)

If you want a new feature or want to report a bug, this is the best time. Also if you come across a blog with beautifully styled footer, blockquote, lists, author template, 404 template, has some cool js features or anything that you like post the links in comments. Lets make SWIFT the best WordPress theme

PS1: I recently changed the name of my other blog, GenisuHackers.Com to TechBU.com and converted it into a revenue sharing blog. I made a BuddyPress compatible version of SWIFT for that blog, let me know how you like it and post your opinion.

PS2: Do you want the BuddyPress version of SWIFT to be made public?

Ps3: Italicized features in the above list are already implemented

Yesterday when I was trying to publish a post it was redirecting me to 404 error page. The problem was with only one particular page and it was some way related to the post content. I was able to save the post when I removed some part of the post. I tried a lot of things like

• Disabling plugins
• Activating the default theme
• Updating and reinstalling WordPress
• Rewriting htaccess and updating permalinks

Nothing helped, some of the threads on this problem referred to mod_security rules. The problem was due to the mod security rules. As my post had some strings that directly relate to security issues. These obviously triggered some mod_security rules I had to disable mod_security rules temporarily to publish the post.

This is what I added to /usr/local/apache/conf/modsec2/whitelist.conf, (location may be different in your case)

[code]

<LocationMatch "/wp-admin/*">
SecRuleRemoveById 300015
</LocationMatch>

[/code]

If don’t have the permissions to edit mod_security rules, ask your hosting support team to update them for you. You may want to show this post as reference to them.

SWIFT is compatible with WordPress 3.0

The much awaited WordPress 3.0 was out yesterday. I have been using RC’s ( Release candidates ) for the development of SWIFT since version 5.25, SWIFT is compatible with WordPress 3.0. There are no known issues, if you find any please post them on the forum.

There were some bugs in v5.28 of SWIFT like

• Problem with subscribe widget.
• Problem with banner ads widget.
• Bug in links appended to the navigation bar.

And the following error, result of accidentally deleting some files and missing file extensions.

Warning: fopen(/home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/js-base/slider-lite) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/create-js-file.php on line 19

Warning: filesize() [function.filesize]: stat failed for /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/js-base/slider-lite in /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/create-js-file.php on line 20

Warning: fread(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/create-js-file.php on line 20

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-content/themes/swift/admin/create-js-file.php:19) in /home/sdesdf/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 868

all of them are cleared in v5.29. You can download it from the downloads page.

I will be releasing the first ever child theme of SWIFT some time this week, here is a screen shot of it. Feedback appreciated.

Kill Bill, The first ever child theme of SWIFT

I’m very happy to announce the new import / export options feature in SWIFT a feature unique to SWIFT in it’s class. Apart from the ease in carrying your customizations from development server to live server, this new feature opens new doors for SWIFT. Now you can easily share your customizations and color schemes with fellow Swifter’s, release them as child themes.

I haven’t yet styled the import/export options admin page, I will write a detailed post on how to share your customizations once I finish styling the new import/export page.

The new slider announced in my earlier post is included in this version of SWIFT

Download  SWIFT v5.27

PS: Please share the news on twitter and other social media.

Thanks

Satish Gandham

Currently, if you want to move your WordPress install to a new host and keep the same domain, you only need to move all the files (WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins), and then export/import the database. It’s pretty straight forward, but still more complex than many users are capable of.

However, if you want to change the domain (even without moving to a new host) you have to export the database, do some search and replace on the .sql file, and then re-import the updated database. Even then, if the new domain has a different number of characters in it than the old one did, you can run against problems if any of the places you replaced the name happened to be inside a serialized array (almost all the options, including things like widget settings, text widget text, etc).

The goal of this project would be to make a these kinds of transitions simple and smooth. If only the domain is changing, then when the user updates the WordPress URL we would update internal links in their posts, settings, image urls, etc. If they are moving to a new host, allowing them to install WordPress at their new host and enter their credentials for their old host (WordPress admin credentials as well as FTP credentials) and WordPress would simply import everything (posts, settings, uploads, theme, plugins, etc).

There are 3 possible cases

1. Change the domain on the same host.
2. Move to a different host.
3. Change the domain and move to a different host.

Change the domain on the same host

This basically requires finding every occurrence of the old domain name in the database and change it to new one. We may face problems when the data is stored in a serialized array, so I’m first going to unserilaze the data from each row, make the necessary changes and the then put it back in the database.

Move to a different host

I will ask the user to install WordPress on his new host, collect the ftp details from the user. I will then use these ftp details to fetch the details about the database and drop all the tables. I will then dump the database on the old host, transfer it to the new host via ftp and then import it to the new database and then I will copy wp-content directory via ftp.

Change the domain and move to a different host

I will first move the blog to the new host as described in case 2 and then change the domain name as described in case 1

Plugin, theme, or core: I would like to develop it as a plugin, as most of the users might not need this option.

Integrating vBulletin with WordPress

As your blog grows, you might want to build a community around it. If vBulletin is your choice, this guide is for you.

Importing WordPress users to vBulletin 4.0 forum

If there are lot of users already registered on your blog, It’s a good idea to start the forum with those users already registered on the forum. Unfortunately there are no scripts to import WordPress users to vBulletin.

Luckily for us, impex has scripts to import bbPress and the user table structure for WordPress and bbPress are same. So you can import WordPress telling impex that it is bbPress. It will show you a warning that some tables are not found, you can safely ignore them and continue with the import. All the imported users will be placed under a new group named Active Imported Users. Move them to registered users, else they may have problem logging in and posting.

goto admincp-> usergroups-> usergroup manager and drop the newly created group and they will automatically moved to registered users group.

Preparing WordPress for import in disguise.

You can ignore the warnings in red and continue with the import.

Bridging wordpress and vBulletin

There is a mod to bridge wordpress and vBulletin, you can download it here. It has clear documentation on how to use the plugin, read the instructions carefully before you do anything.

If you need help integrating vBulletin with your wordpress installation or convert your bbPress forum to vBulletin you can hire me

For example in SWIFT magazine layout, I display one category overlayed on the thumbnail.

Unfortunately WordPress functions get_the_category(), the_category() do not take any arguments and display all the categories the post is filed in. I wrote this small function during the development of swift to echo a specific number of categories a post is filed in. I hope this will help the fellow theme developers

/*
A custom function to echo specified number of categories a
post is filed in.
(Takes number of categories to be displayed as argument)
Written by Satish Gandham
Author URL: http://swiftthemes.com
Contact: http://swiftthemes.com/contact-me/
*/
function swift_list_cats($num){
	$temp=get_the_category();
	$count=count($temp);// Getting the total number of categories the post is filed in.
	for($i=0;$i<$num&&$i<$count;$i++){
		//Formatting our output.
		$cat_string.='<a href="'.get_category_link( $temp[$i]->cat_ID  ).'">'.$temp[$i]->cat_name.'</a>';
		if($i!=$num-1&&$i+1<$count)
		//Adding a ',' if it's not the last category.
		//You can add your own separator here.
		$cat_string.=', ';
	}
	echo $cat_string;
}

Usage is similar to the_category() function, except we take arguments here.

Filed under <?php swift_list_cats(3); ?>

If you have any questions feel free to drop them in comments

WordPress treats two version of the same theme as different themes. That is, if you have SWIFT v5.1 and v5.1.1 in your wp-content/themes folder they are treated as two different themes independent of each other.

That means you can have multiple version of the same theme installed on your blog. So whenever there is a new version of your theme available, instead of replacing or deleting the files of the older version follow this procedure.

1. Download the new version of the theme onto your computer.
2. If the folder name of the new version clashes with the old version, rename the folder of new version.
3. Upload the new version to your wp-content/themes folder via FTP or through the interface provided by your web host or by using the upload feature in WordPress.
4. Activate the new version from your dashboard.

The main advantage of following the above procedure is you can quickly switch back to the old version of the theme if you find any problems with the new version or if it clashes with any plugins you are using.

In case if you are using version less than 2.1.4, or If you don’t want to lose the customization you did find this in <?php echo $_GET['s']; ?> search.php  and replace it with (There are 2 occurences)

<?php the_search_query(); ?>

Even if you are not a swift user you should check your theme for the following vulnerability and fix it ASAP.
Search for something like this in your theme’s PHP files:

Search results for "<?php echo $_GET['s']; ?>"

and replace with

Search results for "<?php the_search_query(); ?>"

Note: This vulnerability is taken care in version 3.1.7, so you dont have to do any modifications.

Thanks to Rene Schmidt for reporting this vulnerability.