function show_photos_main() {
	$album = $_GET['album'];
	$photo = $_GET['photo'];
	$page = $_GET['page'];
	$tags = $_GET['tags'];
	$show = $_GET['show'];

	$output = '';
	$continue = true;
	if (!is_null($show)) {
		if ($show == 'tags') {
		$output = $this->show_tags();
		$continue = false;
		}
		elseif ($show == 'recent') {
		$tags = '';
		}
	}

	if ($continue) {
		// Show list of albums/photosets (none have been selected yet)
		if (is_null($album) && is_null($tags) && is_null($photo)) {
		$output = $this->show_albums($page);
		}
		// Show list of photos in the selected album/photoset
		elseif (!is_null($album) && is_null($photo)) {
		$output = $this->show_album_thumbnails($album, $page);
		}
		// Show list of photos of the selected tags
		elseif (!is_null($tags) && is_null($photo)) {
		$output = $this->show_tags_thumbnails($tags, $page);
		}
		// Show the selected photo in the slected album/photoset
		elseif ((!is_null($album) || !is_null($tags)) && !is_null($photo)) {
		$output = $this->show_photo($album, $tags, $photo, $page);
		}
	}

	if ($this->has_error) {
		$this->template->reset('error');
		$this->template->set('message', $this->error_detail);
		$output = $this->template->fetch();
	}

	return $output;
}

Okay I made a decision. Let’s go back to basics. After spending much time in trying all sorts of themes I switched to the default WordPress theme Kubrick by Michael Heilemann. The themes I have tried out so far:

• Emire from Phu Ly
• Glued-Ideas Subtle from Christopher Frazier
• Hemingway from Kyle Neath
• Regulus from Ben Gillbanks

To name just the ones I enjoyed quite a bit. Another theme that caught my attention for it’s nice layout and use of AJAX snippets is ‘Lush’ from Marco van Hylckama Vlieg and Christoph Boecken. I haven’t decided yet for it has some limitations on the way it’ll render on FireFox.

So why the change to Kubrick?

Well I was a bit bored. It clearly seems that the more a theme offers in colors, layout, useability the faster it bored me. Anyway that’s one explanation. Another might be that I am still charmed by the raw simplicity that Kubrick offers. It’s almost like this theme is the foundation of all blog-themes. And maybe it is. Offcourse I adjusted one thingy or two. To name a few modifications I have made:

• Added LiveSearch AJAX powered search, instead of the default/conventional search method, by John Nunemaker.
• Altered the rather dull <h2> font family by a more stylish one, Century Gothic. I like it’s typography more.
• Added a more efficient way to navigate my blog by use of Liew Cheon Fong’s ‘SuperNav-bar’.

The plugins I use

• Taragana’s Del.icio.us mp3 Player. Which you can see in action here.
• WP Lightbox 2 and Falbum mashup by Lokesh Dhakar and Elijah Cornell respectively and Adrian (a.k.a. GrinGod) responsible for the mashup.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis.
• Viper’s Video QuickTags by Viper007bond.
• The Excerpt Reloaded by Kaf Oseo
• WP-PageNavi by GaMerZ
• SEM Recent Comments and Recent Posts by Denis de Bernardy
• Anti Spam Image by Krazy Nio
• DD Formmailer by Aleister
• FlickrRSS by Dave Kellam
• Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith and Jennifer (ScriptyGoddess)
• Related Posts by Alexander Malov & Mike Lu
• AdSense DeLuxe by Acme Technologies
• Gravatars by Scott Merrill a.k.a. ‘Skippy’.
• InlineRSS by Cal Demaine. In action here.
• Exec-PHP by Sören Weber

And a few more I didn’t mention because it’s use isn’t visible on the blog but in the admin section.

Another nice feature I discovered was the Kubrick-Headermaker a.k.a. “Kubrickr” by Owen Winkler at RedAlt. You really should try it out. I realize that this might be old information but I was glad I found it. Result…look at the header image. Like it?

Conclusion

I am defnitely going to change again. I just love the work in getting a theme modded to my likings and making it XHTML Strict 1.0.

Wishes for Kubrick

I am still very interested in more AJAX control. This site is powered with the Script.aculo.us scripts. But other, maybe lighter/easier script suites are waiting like Moo.FX. And even maybe Ruby on Rails stuff. I have a lot todo. But to stick with Script.aculo.us seems difficult because of its bugs. In certain situations IE and FF crash because of Script.aculo.us. That’s a pitty.

A nice new feature of IE7 I noticed last week: ClearType is now a browser-specific feature.

When Windows XP was released in 2001, Microsoft launched ClearType as a way of smoothing on-screen fonts. Great, except for some reason, it was off by default. Most users never found the setting to enable it, so for the past 5 years, we’ve still had to assume users are seeing ugly pixellated fonts on the web.
But Vista aside, even in the forthcoming IE7 for XP, ClearType is a browser-specific setting and it’s enabled by default. Combine this with IE7’s presumed quick march onto user’s systems, and we’re going to see a whole lot of ClearType in the near future.

Nicely done, IE team.

Slow is a pain in the …. So I had to get things faster. I am not praised for my patience so I need things fast. Posts, pages, scripts, all faster. Huh. Am I losing it? No, stuff, pc’s and so on must work with lightning speed. I am a dutchie, so in Holland we say “You paid for it so I want it”. How many transactions per nano-/millisecond? Millions, trillions? Don’t know. But WP is sooooo damned slow I had to crank it by hand almost. Found a solution. One who isn’t strong must be smart, ain’t that so! I found Owen Winkler through (who else) Lorelle. Owen had it. A twin-turbo to boot WP into sixth gear, I hope. Take advantage of it, use it, drive a Ferrari or a Beetle? Your choice.

Update:

Yes ladies and boys, it certainly is faster. Testdrive came out at 200mph. Not bad for WordPress version 2.01 hey? Let’s hear it for WordPress.

The past few days I have made the go ahead for myself to start with recoding everything to meet XHTML Strict 1.0 standards. Yes, it is quite a job to start with. But it gives such a feeling of satisfaction. This site was already up to the Transitional Standards so it wasn’t too painful a task.

Adjusting the html tags

The main issues I had to deal with were the link tags. It is forbidden to use the oh so loved “target” attribute so that had to go. At first I was fiddling with inline javascripting but that was too intense. Had to let that one go. Until I stumbled on this from the people at Sitepoint. A very nice javascript that could be used from a remote file. In the head of the page I had to call it using <script src=". Benefit is that is was there whenever, i.e. always. Secondly I had to activate the script using the onload event in the body tag. No problem whatsoever. The script does something very nice (browser independent) with the DOM. It calls a XHTML 1.0-valid attribute, which you must provide in your links, called the “rel” (relationship) attribute. Then it transforms this to the deprecated attribute “target” again but only in the background, it will not be parsed to the browser. Hence it’s validity! A few tweaks in the WordPress coding and presto. No more cumbersome extra typing those target attribs. It’s now a part of WP, voila Ofcourse the ‘target’ deprecation is only one of many. I had to go at a load more others to get validated. You can read all of the differences at the W3C site itself to learn more about XHTML Strict 1.0 a very informative piece. Something else for a change at W3C I think

WordPress tweaks for the ‘external’ links

Again it is “Quicktags” time…Just add this code in your /wp-includes/js/quicktags.js file:

edButtons[i].tagStart = ‘<a rel="\external\" title="\External link\" href="’
+ URL + ‘">’;

But hey, how about my ‘blogroll’ list:?: There are external links there aswell. How do we modify those:?: For they are only accessible by means of the WordPress Admin sections. Not a problem. In your /wp-includes directory open the file ‘links.php’. Look for this line:

$output .= ‘<a href="’ . $the_link . ‘"’ . $rel . $title . $target. ‘>’;

at line number 243. Then modify it as follows:

$output .= ‘<a rel="external" href="’ . $the_link . ‘"’ . $title . $target.’>’;

Notice the addition of rel="external". That is the trick. All the links in the blogroll added by you in the WP-admin will now have the extra ‘rel’ attribute in them. Again, be very carefull what you do. Make backups first then go and edit.

Some pointers to get your Strict way

• Lorelle VanFossen has made it a shear quest to tell you all there is for making webpages, valid, accessible and just plain accurate. Go and have a look there. Her posts maybe quite lenghty but persisting in reading them makes one a whole lot wiser.
• Start simple. In making all the changes from, let’s say HTML 3. something to XHTML Strict might be quite a step to make. Maybe first going to HTML 4.01, then XHTML Transitional is better.

One site you will see a LOT is ofcourse this. . . . the VALIDATOR. The hyperlink I just mentioned states /referer, that is your URL or URI or plain and simple your website’s address, i.e. “http://www.yoursite.com”. Use it well, it is a real live saver. Happy coding . . .

Unfortunately WordPress 2.01 still suffers from some anoying bugs. In order to get my nicer archives up and running I ran into an very annoying error. I tried to get a page saved and it produced this error on screen. The socalled WSOD was immently visible. Not a pretty site to see

Fatal error: Call to undefined method WP_Rewrite::flush_rules() in X:\yoursite.com\root\wordpress\wp-includes\functions-post.php on line 200

Hmmm, not so good… So a search on WordPress Trac for the solution was done. That’s more difficult then I expected. The exact error message wasn’t there at all. So I searched for hopefully related issues. This is what I came up with. A fix in the file ‘functions-post.php’ (resides in your wp-includes folder). Ah yes, important , this implies only in the full WordPress version.

Remedy

• The new file functions-post.php you can download here.

But, as always, be careful, make a backup of the ‘old’ file first, for instance by renaming it, then use the new file. After, test your functions in WordPress and test your website. All should be in order.

Conclusion

My first feeling is that saving your posts and/or pages goes faster then before. Could be only a feeling. I can’t verify this on hard evidence. But it certainly gives a reassurring feeling nonetheless. In the WordPress Trac changeset #3525 it states the fix has something todo with time-date manipulation by WordPress. I am interested to know how this can relate to my problem? Anyway I considered it a good idea to keep you informed about this. We aren’t out of the bug-valley yet. But I am very much confident it will be fixed by those magnificent people at WordPress.

Hello everyone! During my ever continueing quest on housekeeping I stumbled on a nasty bug in WordPress. This happened after my risky upgrade to WordPress 2.01.

RSS, XML, FeedBurner feeds

What happened When clicked on the badges on my sidebar I only got ‘comments’ feed. This happened for all the syndicates (XML, RSS). A search on the WP-forum delivered me with this post. I would suggest to all WP 2.01 users to read it and fix it with a few extra pointers from me. The bug report is rather sparse in how to fix this problem.

Fix the Feed Bug in WordPress 2.01

Open up the file “classes.php”. It is in the directory /root/wordpress/wp-includes/. Search for line number approx. 1299. There you see this:

// Comments
$comments_rewrite = $this->generate_rewrite_rules($this->root .
$this->comments_base, true, true, true);
$comments_rewrite = apply_filters(‘comments_rewrite_rules’, $comments_rewrite);
// Search

The problem lies in this line from the part listed above.

$this->comments_base, true, true, true);

It is not complete. Fix:

The FIX

Just edit that line until it reads:

$this->comments_base, true, true, true, false);

Notice the addition of the boolean ‘FALSE‘?
When added and uploaded my problems were over.
I hope it will help your feeds too.

The standard editor is perfectly adequate for, like it says, standard postings. No problem. But Like many of us we would like our code tidy, valid and as a whole more suitable for search engines to follow, i.e. thus creating more hits or traffic. Lorelle, again Lorelle, has written many postings on all subjects. That is a good thing too. But unfortunately our standard editor lacks quite a bit of extra functionality to help us with that. There are WordPress plugins who can help us with just that. Here is one from a dutch guy Roel Meurders. He made it quite simple for you to add buttons to the quicktags bar in the post editor. Ofcourse you can also use the advanced WordPress editor. Activate the advanced post editor (or TinyMCE) logged in as the site’s administrator under ‘My Account’. It’s is all the way down on your left, a checkbox. There is only one thing with the TinyMCE editor. It can be a nuisance to use when it comes to, there it is again , validation and tidying up your code. Okay, I have mentioned a few things about the post editor in general. How about getting our hands dirty?

Let’s go and hack some code

The post editor from WordPress is actually nothing more then a rather extended javascript. You can find it in your WordPress directories under the directory /root/wordpress/wp-includes/js/. The javascript file “quicktags.js” is your target for today!
Just open it up with your “home garden and kitchen” text editor. Looks intimidating …naah just a little bit. It has structure, so a bit of reading should help you understand it quite fast. I have modified mine with quite a few extra’s. Here is a screenie of it.

Notice the red circles? The extra’s
Okay, first you can download my quicktags from here. That will certainly get you started in a jiffy. Remember to upload it to the previously mentioned directory or it will not work at all. That is one way to do it. The other, that is right, is “do your own coding“. First things first. Question What extra’s do you want? Write them down or just put a knot in a handkerchief For example. Standard, the editor comes with the button look-up. It redirects you to a dictionary site. Fine if you are, like me, a bl..dy foreigner, and wants to write in english. I use it frequently to look things up for it’s grammar. But what if you want to give your visitors some more explanation but you don’t want that in your posting? Well, Wikipedia ofcourse:!: There is an bonus to it aswell. More links in your postings the more likely it becomes that, for instance, a Google sniffer, gets hold of your site and traffic will boom in no time at all. Well, that is the general idea anyway. So I added an extra button on the editor named “Wiki”. Now I just select a word that needs extra explanation and click on my Wiki button. Presto, a search for the selected word is done automatically for your readers. Ain’t that sweet?

Coding recommendations

As I wrote above, adding relevant links to other resources in your postings will get your blog noticed, no doubt. That’s the whole point isn’t it? I will not get in the details in how to increase your traffic. This is done for us in a very extensive and learning way already by Lorelle. So I will leave at that. One thing I will pinpoint is how to modify your WordPress installation with some minor hacks here and there. Mind you I am not responsible for any damage. Do this on your own account. Don’t worry you can always upload the originals if necessary. Back to our subject. Links in your postings and how to add them in a relaxed manner. One thing I mentioned was the ‘Wiki’ button. Others are the <acronym> and the <p> html-tags. Both contribute to more up to standards [x]html. Especially the <acronym> tag is a good example. It is a way of giving a description about certain subjects and or words that you use in your postings. You can even give them a bit of extra CSS adornments, like I did. I will write a posting on that one later on. Paragraphs <p> and <H> tags (mind the lower case for valid XHTML!) are also noticable for search robots like the ones from Google for instance. They search for these tags, that is to say, the contents they have.

Last bit of advice

Use up to standard code. I believe I have mentioned this already somewhere haven’t I? It is of vital interest for your site’s readability, accessibility and validity. And so will increase, given time, your site’s traffic. I am still trying anyway. But fear not, I have my share of validation errors almost everyday too. Ofcourse I always correct them. So can you:!: it’s not difficult. One step at a time they say isn’t it? Till next post, bye.

Call me a purist. I just like to have my code valid. It is also far better for your feeds aswell. They rely on valid code. Lorelle has dug herself into this aswell a while ago and she came up with some tips and hints which might interest you too. Offcourse you should look at WordPress too for they wrote some good stuff on the subject too.

HandsOn experiences with validation

I decided today to do some housekeeping on my postings and pages in general. Guess what… Errors at the validating service from W3C. One very specific error I wasn’t aware of is that you just can’t put <p> everywere. They need to be at the beginning of the lines but not, this was my mistake, nested around an <ul> or an <ol> listing. This just is not up to standards. Just look at a quotation from Elliot Back’s site:

Incorrect nesting of lists. Please do not place lists inside a paragraph tag. The w3c reports this error as “document type does not allow element “ul” here; missing one of “object”, “applet”, “map”, “iframe”, “button”, “ins”, “del” start-tag.”

I found this piece of extra learning at this site here from Elliot Back. He describes, in good to understand language, what the basics are for valid XHTML. I can sincerely recommend it to you.

WordPress Plugin

I thought it might be a good idea to have look around for a suitable plugin that would ease the pain of those errors a bit. It just happens to be that both the standard WordPress editor and the advanced TinyMCE editor aren’t that great at valid coding. What’s more both WP and the editors are sometimes a teeny bit illusive. I just can not always fathom why a piece of [x]html is coded that way or another. I am used to that hands-on feeling with it. So to take matters in my own hand I activated this plugin from Jamie Talbot. It is called ‘XValid’ and as far as I can tell does the job very good. It even tells you what, if any, errors have been corrected. You have full control over what happens to your coding. What is important is that you deactivate WordPress’s own XHTML correction. You can find it under Administration-panel->Options->Writing. Just uncheck the validator from WP where it says “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically”. What is also important for your site’s validations to Xhtml (be it transitional or strict) is the way XValid can email you as the administrator on comments being added that aren’t valid. Or have errors in them. This way you can correct those errors and still have a very clean site.

Validation Resources

These resources will help you validate your web pages and code and can help you understand a little more about how validation works.

HTML – Validation

• Watchfire’s Bobby Validator for Standards and Accessibility – hardest to pass
• W3C Tidy Online
• Windows GUI Interface for TIDY
• Searchengineworld.com’s Validator
• Site Report Card Validator
• Valet Webthing.com
• The W3C’s HTML Validation Service (URL and upload)
• Watson Addy’s Validator
• Alpine Internet HTML Validator
• AnyBrowser’s HTML Validation
• Cynthia Says Validator
• Doctor-HMTL Validator
• HTMLvalidator.com’s Validator
• Website Test Tools and Site Management Tools (mostly paid, some free)
• Software QA and Testing Resource Center
• HTML Tag Checker
• W3.org Tidy Validator
• Cleans Your HTML Code to Shrink It