Watch every second of the BBC’s 2012 Olympics coverage on Sky with the help of 24 brand new channels, dedicated to the London Games

Arqiva Switch Over Night

The upgrade was OK although I did need the Vodafone Ice Cream Sandwich Forum to get a couple of issues resolved.

Here’s the process I followed.  Disclaimer: these worked for me, but I don’t guarantee that this work for you.  These instructions are without any kind of warranty.. Always ensure you backup your phone.

Step 1: Backup photos, media, phone numbers and anything else you want from your phone.  For me, I decided I would copy over my music post-install, so I just backed up my photos to a PC using the USB lead.

Step 2: Factory reset your phone: *2767*3855#
Caution: this wipes EVERYTHING on your phone and puts it back to the state when you first had it.  When the reset completes, don’t both entering your Google account as we’ll be wiping it again post-upgrade.

Step 3: Update KIES.  In fact, what I should really say here is uninstall KIES, reboot your PC and then install the latest version of KIES (available from Samsung GT-I9100L Downloads).

Step 4: Start KIES

Step 5: Attach phone

Step 6: Start upgrade

Note: I encountered the following problem:

.

This happened after the firmware has been downloaded, the Android man was appearing on the handset with the message “Downloading…do not turn off target”. It was sort of as though the handset could not download from the PC.

For me, the solution was to restart KIES, disconnect and reconnected phone. In fact, now that my upgrade is done, I’m wondering if this was down to the fact that I had upgraded KIES using it’s “Check For Update” rather than a clean un-install, re-install as mentioned in Step 3.

Step 7: Allow upgrade to complete

Step 8: Perform a Factory reset by dialling *2767*3855#

This was mentioned on the Vodafone forums – apparently KIES/Android may have left some of the older Gingerbread 3.2.5 files around on the phone and this would clear it? In any case, pre-upgrade my phone would stop playing music or podcasts and random times and others had reported that a factory reset would do this. So, cleaning up would mean nothing to lose.

Step 9: Sync your google account. By default most of your Google Play apps will be re-installed, but if you downloaded any apps manually, you may have to apply them again manually. An important tip: Switch off the mobile/cell data network and connect to a WiFi signal while you perform the sync – you will save your data allowance.

grep -o “….article[0-9]….” dump.sql

Where dump.sql is a MySQL dump of your WordPress database. You can then update any articles using the WordPress editor accordingly.

To catch external sites that may have references articleXXX.html or (in Tiki’s default formats of tiki-read_article.php?articleId=XXXX or tiki-print_article\.php?articleId=XXX) then the following apache rules should do the job:

rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.richii\.com(:80)?$ [NC]
rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/tiki-read_article\.php$ [OR]
rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/tiki-print_article\.php$
rewritecond %{QUERY_STRING} articleId\=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.richii.com/?p=%1 [R]

RewriteRule ^/article([0-9]+)([A-Za-z.]+)$ /?p=$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^/article([0-9]+)$ /?p=$1 [R=301,L]

That should send people from articleXXX.html to /?p=XXX. Then, if WordPress is using SEO-friendly URL’s, it will then send folks to /seo-friendly-article-name

Whilst of the subject of links, it’s worth checking that all of your outbound links are good. A good module that can do this is Broken Link Checker. To set this up, first activate Broken Link Checker in modules. Then go to configure and select:

Which Links to Check: Add:
Embedded YouTube videos
Embedded YouTube videos (old embed code)
Embedded DailyMotion videos

Protocols and API’s:
YouTube API

Check the plugin website for more documentation of this plugin.

One nice WordPress Plugin is WPTouch. I’m not sure if there’s a similar feature in Tikiwiki, but this plugin converts a WordPress site into an application-like theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects when viewed from the mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, Android mobile devices, Palm Pre/Pixi and BlackBerry OS6 mobile devices.

The install is fairly simple, just search for WPTouch in the Plugins section and download and activate it.

To configure it, just go to Settings -> WPtouch

One option you may wish to disable:
Enable Email Menu Item (Uses default WordPress admin e-mail)

Finally, you will probably want a Contact Form of some sort. One that comes highly recommended in many guides is Fast Secure Contact Form. Install through the Plugins Menu and you’ll then the options under Plugins -> Fast Secure Contact Form Options. You can probably accept the defaults, but perhaps disable “Accept Meeting Requests via vCita”

One nice feature in Tikiwiki is that each article/topic was assigned an icon. To get these icons into WordPress, there are a couple of steps.

First, you’ll want to upload your topic images from Tikiwki into WordPress. The easiest way to do this is to install the plugin Add From Server. Once installed, check the settings under Settings -> Add From Server.

Under User access Control select:
Any users with the ability to upload files listed below : admin

Copy over images from Tikiwiki (probably in images/topics) to /path/to/website/wp-content/

Then click on media -> Add From Server

The images should all get uploaded and appear somewhere like /path/to/website/wp-content/uploads/2003/11/stuff.gif

The next step is associate each icon with a category. This is done in the WordPress database.

I should stress at this point that the following steps are at your own risk and are unsupported. Although this worked for WordPress 3.3.1 in my environment, there’s no guarantee that this will work for you. And ALWAYS back up your database prior to performing any database changes.

Here’s the basic process.

The uploaded files now appear in the wp_postmeta table. Let’s say I want to associate all the ‘dotdance’ topics with my dotDance icon.

Step1: Identify the post_id for the image you want to use:

mysql> select * from wp_postmeta where meta_key=’_wp_attached_file’;
+———+———+——————-+——————————+
| meta_id | post_id | meta_key | meta_value |
+———+———+——————-+——————————+
| 716 | 325 | _wp_attached_file | 2003/11/dot_dance.gif |

Make a note of the post_id associated with the image.

Step 2: Next we look in wp_terms to find the dotDance category:
mysql> select * from wp_terms;
+———+——————————+——————————+————+
| term_id | name | slug | term_group |
+———+——————————+——————————+————+
| 9 | dotDance | dotdance | 0 |

Step 3: We need to match this term_id with the term_id in the wp_term_taxonomy table:

mysql> select * from wp_term_taxonomy where term_id=’9′ and taxonomy=’post_tag’;
+——————+———+———-+————-+——–+——-+
| term_taxonomy_id | term_id | taxonomy | description | parent | count |
+——————+———+———-+————-+——–+——-+
| 16 | 9 | post_tag | | 0 | 49 |
+——————+———+———-+————-+——–+——-+
1 row in set (1.91 sec)

Step 4: We now need to find all posts with this term_taxonomy_id=16 (dotDance) category:

mysql> select * from wp_term_relationships where term_taxonomy_id = 16;
+———–+——————+————+
| object_id | term_taxonomy_id | term_order |
+———–+——————+————+
| 26 | 16 | 0 |
| 56 | 16 | 0 |
| 57 | 16 | 0 |
| 63 | 16 | 0 |

So we know post’s 26, 56, 57 and 63 are all in the (dotDance) category.

Step 5: To make these posts use our image (image id 325 found in step 1) we can simply insert entries into wp_postmeta as follows:

insert into wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key, meta_value) values (’26′,’_thumbnail_id’,’325′)
insert into wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key, meta_value) values (’56′,’_thumbnail_id’,’325′)
insert into wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key, meta_value) values (’57′,’_thumbnail_id’,’325′)
insert into wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key, meta_value) values (’63′,’_thumbnail_id’,’325′)

This can be a bit time consuming if you’ve got a lot of categories to import.

To automate the process, we can script this up.

First, create a csv file with two entries per category. The first entry should be the image id (found from ‘select post_id from wp_postmeta where meta_key=’_wp_attached_file’;) and the second should be the term id (found from ‘select term_id, name from wp_terms;’)

For the exmaple of the dotDance Category shown above this would be:
325,9

Once you’ve got your CSV file, you can upload the data into wp_postmeta by running this script:

#!/bin/bash
cat $1 | while read line
do
val1=`echo $line|cut -f1 -d,`
val2=`echo $line|cut -f2 -d,`
echo “insert into wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key, meta_value) select wp_term_relationships.object_id, ‘_thumbnail_id’,'${val1}’ from wp_term_relationships,wp_term_taxonomy where term_id=${val2} and taxonomy=’post_tag’ and wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id;” >> /tmp/script$$
done
echo “SQL has been generated in /tmp/script$$”
echo “”
echo “Here are the contents of /tmp/script$$”
echo “”
cat /tmp/script$$
echo “Now run this sql as follows:”
echo “mysql -u –username=XXX –password=YYYY –database=ZZZZZ < /tmp/script$$”

Be sure to take a backup of your database before running the script. Here’s how you can confirm it’s worked: Before associating the featured images to the WordPress posts: mysql> select * from wp_postmeta where meta_value=’325′;
Empty set (0.01 sec)

After associating the featured images to the WordPress posts:
mysql> select * from wp_postmeta where meta_value=’325′;
+———+———+—————+————+
| meta_id | post_id | meta_key | meta_value |
+———+———+—————+————+
| 789 | 26 | _thumbnail_id | 325 |
| 790 | 56 | _thumbnail_id | 325 |

If needed, you can remove the topic associations:

mysql> delete from wp_postmeta where meta_value=’325′ and meta_key=’_thumbnail_id’;

To confirm that all is working as expected, just login to WordPress, select an article that’s been assigned to a category and look to see if “Featured Image” has been set. If you are using a theme that displays category images for articles, then it should be displaying these on either the article homepage or the article itself .

I’ve been using Tiki Wiki CMS for quite some time. The software was up to it’s job and added loads and loads of features for a fully-qualified CMS for which you need lots of permission settings, features like blogs, galleries, forums and link directories, etc. I’d always made lots of customisations to my Tiki install, so upgrades were always a bit of a pain. I recently discovered a WordPress For Beginners Magazine which showed that WordPress offered lots of great functionality with lots of active development. It offered a lean base from which you can add modules which are relevant to your site.

Here’s a brief set of steps in performing a TikiWiki migration over to WordPress 3.3.1:

1. Dump out your TikiWiki database articles into a CSV file and save it to the desktop (script to follow)
2. Create the MySQL database and user which you’ll use for WordPress:
   create database wordpressdbname;
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpressdbname.* to wordpressuser@localhost
   identified by ‘some_password’ with GRANT OPTION;
3. Unpack WordPress into a clean directory and perform a normal install
4. Go to the Plugins section and install and activate the following plug-ins:
   WordPress SEO by Yoast
   CSV importer
   Advanced Excerpt
   Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast
5. Using the CSV importer module, upload your CSV file containing all of your articles. If successful, you will get something like this: “Imported 269 posts and 0 comments in 35.36 seconds” If not, check your CSV file to make sure all the quotation marks are appropriately escaped
6. Set your site title and tag lines under Settings. Also set your preferred date format.
7. If you don’t want to enable comments, click on Settings -> Discussion:
   Uncheck: Allow people to post comments on new articles
   Check: Users must be registered and logged in to comment
8. Follow the setup for Google Analytics and WordPress SEO.
9. Chose a theme like Reflex Plus. In order to use this WordPress theme all you have to do is, upload the Reflex Plus Theme package through (WordPress Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes -> Upload) and Activate it like you do for any other WordPress theme.
10. Optionally, edit the Reflex Plus theme’s header.php as follows
    Add the following lines:
    <meta name=”robots” content=”INDEX, FOLLOW, NOCACHE, NOARCHIVE” />
    <meta name=”revisit-after” content=”1 days” />Change the following lines:
    <title><?php bloginfo(‘name’); wp_title();?></title>
    to
    <title><?php wp_title(”); ?></title>
11. Copy over favicon.ico from your old Tikiwiki directory to the new one
12. One nice feature about WordPress SEO by Yoast is that you can perform online SEO Page Analysis before you submit the post.  This requires PHP’s Document Object Model.  If you don’t have this installed, you will get the error “Error: your hosting environment does not support PHP’s Document Object Model. To enjoy all the benefits of the page analysis feature, you’ll need to (get your host to) install it.”   Check your PHP installation to see if DOM/XML is enabled.  On Red Hat Enterprise Linux if you are using the IUS Community repository and LAMP stack, you can just perform a simple “yum install php53u-xml”

That all for now – more to follow later.

Below is an extract of an email sent to Birmingham City Football club describing the lack of transparency of their current system. No reply was received by Birmingham City, and since my original e-mail I’ve become aware of others that have been denied ticket sales. Many thanks for your response over Twitter regarding purchasing a ticket for the West Ham game on Boxing Day. I was trying to purchase a ticket for my wife and I for this game.

From your comments and my wife’s telephone conversation with the ticket office on Thursday, my understanding is that I am allowed to purchase a ticket for this game as I have done so in the past. However, I cannot a purchase ticket for my wife as she has only registered recently.

As a football club that makes many claims about being family and female friendly, a family visit to St Andrews on Boxing Day seems an appropriate activity. Indeed, I expect many Blues fans who live outside of Birmingham are likely to be in the area over Christmas and would want to attend. However, the current system is actually stopping families from attending. I can attend on my own, but not with any family members.

1. The e-ticket registration confirmation email is sent from welcome@email.bcfc.com and invites you to “hit reply to this email” if you have queries. As per your note on Twitter this appears to be invalid so I believe that my wife’s emails to this address have gone unread. Would it be possible to correct this initial email to give the correct address someone can reply to?

2. I have not been able to find anything on the website about the tickets for West Ham being only available to prior members. You mention this is advertised as being the case, so please could you provide me with the link that states this. Part of my frustration is that it’s not clear who can/cannot purchase tickets – clicking through the ticketing website states that they are “on general sale”.

3. My initial attempt to purchase tickets was online on Sunday night. Originally, I had planned to get the tickets as a Christmas surprise for my wife. However, after selecting the seats the site stated that “Not all items in your basket were assigned to members. Please use “assign” to do this, or remove the offending items using “remove”. My natural response was to create an account for my wife and submit her details. That also meant the tickets were no longer a surprise as she soon received the welcome email. Believing that I would now be allowed to purchase her ticket, I assigned her seat and was then shown the message “Unfortunately, one or more items in your basket is assigned to a newly registered client, which is not allowed”.

This process was most frustrating and at no point was I made aware that despite registering my wife she would still not be able to accompany me.

4. During my wife’s conversation with the ticket office, a number of different reasons were cited as to why she could not purchase a ticket. These included the steps were taken “to stop West Ham fans buying tickets”, “at the Board’s request”, “at police request”, “you registered at a London address, if you were in Birmingham you would be allowed to purchase tickets”. In relation to point 2, if the intention is stop West Ham fans from purchasing tickets, please can you clarify what process you are using to decide who can/cannot purchase tickets. I am a legitimate fan, but I am unable to make a purchase despite the tickets being advertised as being “on general sale”.

5. If I ask my mother to visit the ticket office to purchase tickets, or I visit the ticket office on Christmas Eve with my wife, would we be permitted to purchase tickets?

In closing, this problem appears to have affected others, as described here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8f8gY21EWkgJ:birminghamcityforum.co.uk/index.php%3Fshowtopic%3D2790%26view%3Dgetlastpost+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

Of course, the users in the above post could be West Ham fans trying to sneak into the game, and I appreciate there’s a need to keep the stadium safe, but it just seems to me that the current approach in screening ticket purchases does not work, is not family friendly and is not transparent.