I recently updated one of my Wordpress blogs to v2.3
All seemed to be going well until I tried to post a new entry using Windows Live Writer (v12.0.1277.816) and it had an issue. Live Writer would post the entry yet come back with an error. It would not know it had posted the entry and would therefore save it as a draft. Also, republishing the same (draft) entry would result in an entirely new copy being published on the blog. The error was this:
Invalid Server Response
The response to the metaWeblog.editPost method received from the weblog server was invalid:
Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server.
I hunted high and low for a solution. I did not find one. Then I thought perhaps there was an issue with my plugins. After disabling all plugins and then one-by-one reactivating them, I discovered the one causing the issue: Google Sitemaps v2.7.1
Looking up this plugin on the Wordpress 2.3 plugin compatibility list I see it is not compatible and that there is an updated version (3.0). I deleted the 2.7.1 version (just one file called sitemaps.php) and installed the folder and files for v3.0
After activating this new version I no longer get the publishing error on Windows Live Writer.
The lesson here is to check that all activated plugins are compatible with the latest version of Wordpress.
Looking for a CAPTCHA system to stop comment spamming on your blog or other web application?
It has been calculated that about 150,000 hours of human labor is spent filling out CAPTCHA requests on web sites wishing to reduce spam. Yet another waste of time and energy expended on dealing with idiots the persist in proliferating unwanted advertising material in this world.
The reCAPTCHA project doesn’t have the answer to eliminating website spammers but it does have a solution for putting the time spent filling out CAPTCHA questions into productive use. Every time the reCAPTCHA system dishes out CAPTCHA words it is in fact using this people-power to convert scanned copies of archived books into digital format. Click here to read more about it.
If you didn’t know about the huge online media archive over at www.archive.org you may like to check that out also. There you will find a vast library of free ebooks that are digitised copies of old books that are no longer under copyright protection. There are also many other resources at this site, including archives of millions of web sites.
Sending HTML (pretty looking) emails for corporate newsletters and the like is considered to be the norm these days. Most browser based (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.) and offline client based (Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, etc.) are taking great strides toward fully supporting HTML based emails. Oddly, but not at all unlike Microsoft, the most recent version of Outlook (2007) has retrograded its feature set in this regard. Outlook 2007 does not support background images, nor does it support a great deal of CSS based formatting. Yes it’s true. As far as supporting modern email formats (HTML/CSS) Outlook as gone backwards.
If you are looking for information on the compatibility of various email clients with various email formats and technologies there is a fantastic site over at Campaign Monitor.
You should find everything you need on the above topic at that page.
So here’s my first post from the new Live Writer V1 (Beta) (12.0.1183.516)
Cosmetically it has been brushed up to fit in with Vista. I don’t use Vista so that’s nothing I am particularly interested in. But it does look nice. Of course, functionality is most important, then looks.
- It has spell as you type. Nice
- It has a “link glossary”. This allows you to set up link text that will be converted into a link
- There are many great plugins to add various features. For instance, plug-ins to:
- Insert video
- Insert social bookmarks
- Insert code
- Insert formatted text
- Insert non-formatted text
- etc.
- I am yet to find out it it will clear the current post after publishing, whilst leaving Live Writer open for writing the next post. I’ll know this in a moment
Missing features?
The main one, which I previously told MS about, is the ability to increase/decrease the font size with a button for each. This is much like the feature available in Word 2007. To change the font size and face in WLW we have to go to the FORMAT menu, the FONT, and change it in there.
This one issue aside, I still consider WLW to be the nicest blog editor around.
You can get it from http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas
There is a new version (at long last) of Windows Live Writer available. I’ve not tried it yet as I am just downloading it now. If you want to check it out go to http://writer.live.com/
As mentioned in a previous post, having tried nearly all of the various desktop blog editors available (paid and free) I considered Live Writer (the version I am typing in now) to be a close contender as the best one to use. Let’s put it this way, it’s currently the only one I bother to use. Hopefully the new version will fill out the various “missing features” I wanted. I’ll let you know.
Jonathan
The following is a list of Open Source / Free online groupware applications. There are many of them out there and this list represents the more appealing ones I have come across. At some time I might update this list with more information on each groupware solution. For now, however, this list is to simply serve as a starting point for finding the right open source online groupware application for you and your organization.
If you have any suggestions of other good systems not on this list please leave a comment and let me know.
- Hipergate — http://www.hipergate.org/
hipergate is an open source web based application suite.
It’s mission is to cover a full range of technical requirements in any organization. All applications are addresses from Internet Explorer, without needing any other additional software in the client computer.
This suite is multi-company capable, and can be used in a single company, a corporate group or working as an ASP solution capable of serving an unlimited quantity of single customers.
-
PHProjekt — http://www.phprojekt.com/index.php?&newlang=eng
PHProjekt is a modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and document via the web. Components of PHProjekt: Group calendar, project management, time card system, file management, contact manager, mail client and many other modules. PHProjekt supports many protocols like ldap, xml/soap and webdav and is available for 38 languages and 9 databases.
- eGroupware — http://www.egroupware.org/
I am not entirely sure if this one is able to be installed a run in a purely web based environment, but it otherwise looks very good.
- Group-Office Groupware — http://sourceforge.net/projects/group-office/
- Centraview — http://www.centraview.com
Provides more than just Groupware functionality.
CentraView is a leading Open Source Centralized Business Management (CBM) solution that delivers an ideal combination of Contact Management, Salesforce Automation (SFA), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality and much more, all through a standard web browser. CentraView is much more than just CRM or SFA. We offer a comprehensive business management suite that reduces the need to purchase many different software applications that don’t talk to one another. Ultimately we provide you with that all important “Centralized View” of all your customer information.
There is a great list of Wordpress plug-ins over at the ditii.com web site. You’ll find them here. (http://www.ditii.com/blog/2007/04/11/dtwl-best-wordpress-plugins/)
I think most of my favorites are there, along with numerous other plug-ins many people will find useful.
Here’s a nice AJAX file manager. It’s still pretty slim of features in my opinion. For instance, it does not support compressing files and directories in a zip/gzip file before downloading, which is particularly what I was looking for. Otherwise it’s a nice to use file manager for web sites.
http://ecosmear.com/relay/
MySQL is a popular database system used in the backend of a huge number of web applications. Just about every database driven PHP application I have seen has MySQL working alongside it. There are various tools available (usually provided by your web host) for managing MySQL databases online (phpMyAdmin for instance). I have found that having a desktop manager can be very useful. I’ve found it particularly useful when I need to manually edit data within a range of tables and records.
The following tools are worth checking out if a desktop MySQL manager is what you want:
OPEN SOURCE
- HeidiSQL (formally SQLFront — an old favorite of mine)
HeidiSQL is an easy-to-use interface and a “working-horse” for web-developers using the popular MySQL-Database. It allows you to manage and browse your databases and tables from an intuitive Windows® interface.
With HeidiSQL you will also be able to
- generate nice SQL-exports
- synchronize tables between two databases
- manage user-privileges
- import text-files
- export table-data as CSV, HTML and XML
- browse and edit table-data using a comfortable grid
- batch-insert ascii or binary files into tables
- write queries with syntax-highlighting (next version will have also code-completion)
- monitor and kill client-processes
- and much more
- MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser (from the makers of MySQL)
Avaialble for Mac, Windows, and Linus
I find the Heidi system to be easier to use
COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS
It’s important to backup content and databases we have online. Whether you run a blog (such as Wordpress) or other applications on a website, there are often many individual files to download if doing a backup manually via FTP. This can be slow and tedious if a quick backup is what you want (and why wouldn’t you?). phpMySQL has build in backup functions if you need them, although the following tools provide an easy one-stop solution.
Check out the following great tools for backing up your site content and MySQL databases.
- phpMyBackup Pro is a very easy to use, free, web-based MySQL backup application, licensed under the GNU GPL.
You can create scheduled backups, manage and restore them, download or email them and a lot more!
Major features:
- backup of one or several databases with or without data, table structure, …
- three types of compression (no compression, gzip or zip)
- scheduled backups (by a small PHP script which must be included in an existing PHP script)
- interface for management of the backups (viewing, restoring, downloading, deleting)
- backup directly onto FTP server and sending of backups by email
- platform independent - only webserver and PHP needed to run e.g. on MS Windows, Linux or Mac
- shell mode (to use manually or by cron script)
- backup of whole file directories (on a FTP server).
- backup databases from different accounts on several MySQL servers
- one installation can be used for all MySQL users of one MySQL server (used by webhosters)
- highest security through two alternative login methods (HTTP or HTML authentication)
- easy to use interface and very easy to install
- several language packages available
- PHP WebSite Backup
- PHP MySQL Backup
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