If like me you’ve been using WordPress since the beginning – or at least prior to December 2012, you might remember the old WordPress Links Manager (sometimes also known as Blogroll). However, this functionality was removed by default from WordPress version 3.5 onward. Yes, on the one-hand, links like that are a bit old-fashioned, however, there are occasions when it does come in very useful.
The links manager will allow you to easily create and manage links on your site that are (normally) simply added to the sidebar using a widget.
This functionality is still available within he core WordPress functionality, it’s just turned off now. However, it is pretty easy to ‘turn it back on again’, and here’s how.
How to re-activate or add the WordPress Links Manager to your site
Firstly, you need to access your theme ‘functions.php’ file. The easiest way to do this is through the site’s in-built ‘theme editor’. Find this file for your current live WordPress theme and open the file for editing. If this ‘theme edit’ option isn’t available, try accessing the file via FTP (it’s in the theme files)
Secondly, add the following line of code to the file and save:
This is a simple guide to fixing the problem where your images appear to upload to your WordPress site but don’t display properly in the media manager
This is a simple guide to fixing the problem where your images appear to upload to your WordPress site but don’t display properly in the media manager
Ever experienced that problem where you upload an image through the WordPress media-manager, but they don’t appear properly? It appears like it has uploaded but there is just a blank space where the image should display? This is normally a relatively easy problem to fix provided you have access to your web server or access to your site via FTP.
This is most commonly a problem to do with file permissions.
What are file permissions?
File permissions are web server system settings which apply to all web server files and determine who can access specified files and what they can do with those files.
In terms of ‘who’ or which ‘user’ can access the files, they are:
The ‘owner’ of the file – The person who created the files.
The ‘administrator’ – The person responsible for managing and updating files, as well as setting permission levels.
The ‘Group’– referring to specific groups of users with unique settings specific to them.
The ‘global’ group which is also sometimes referred to as anyone or public – Provides access to all users.
The ‘individual’ user – allowing you to create a specific level of access at the individual user level.
Or sometimes you’ll only have these options:
Owner
Group
Public or others
In terms of permissions, these are (basically):
Read – this level of permission assigned to a file allows respective user to view and copy files but can’t make changes to the file or create new files.
Write – this level of permission allows the user to edit, rename, and move files. In most cases, they can also create new files.
Execute –this level of permission can run a specific program or type of program file.
You’ll also probably see the permissions most commonly referenced as numbers which refer to:
7 – read, write and execute (in other words, everything)
6 – read and write
5 – read and execute
4 – read only
3 – write and execute
2 – write only
1 – execute only
0 – none
Note the ‘permissions’ are also sometimes referred to as ‘properties’ or ‘CHMOD’
Why does this mean that my WordPress images don’t display?
When you upload a file to the web server (as you do with the WordPress Media Manager) it places the file in a folder and applies user ‘permissions’ to the file. When the media manager tries to display the file, if the permissions are not adequate for what it needs to do (in this instance, display the image in the dashboard), it won’t work and you’ll see an error (in this instance an empty grey box where the image should be.)
You also may be experiencing a problem where, when you try to upload an image, you get the error message along the lines of ‘unable to create directory wp-content/uploads… Is its parent directory writable by the server?’ – if this is the case it’s the same problem with the same fix.
How do I fix this problem?
To get the image to display properly, you’ll need to change the image file permissions for the appropriate users to ones that let the image display publicly on the server.
Before you attempt the fix, please remember that aome files are very dangerous if run on a webserver (such as executables or ‘.exe’ files) so make sure you know what you’re doing or get professional advice before you change the permissions for files like this. However, basic image files, such as JPGs or PNGs, are usually innocuous.
You can change the permissions for a single file, a whole folder (directory) and its contents, or a whole folder and its contents including all files, sub-directories, and the contents of sub directories
To fix the problem, change the required folder or image or images permissions to 744 (or 0744) – this is ‘owner can read, write and execute’, ‘group can read’ and ‘public can read’
You’ll need to access the website files using FTP or via your hosting control panel.
If accessing through FTP, navigate to your ‘uploads’ folder which is in the default ‘wp-content’ folder located in the public root directory of your WordPress installation.
For example, I only have images in my media manager so to change the file permissions for all the uploaded images, I access my web server using my FTP client, I navigate to the ‘wp-content’ folder, I then right-click on the ‘uploads’ folder, I then select the ‘properties / CHMOD’ option, I then change the permissions to ‘to should allow you to change the permissions of the folder to ‘744’ or ‘0744’ and click ‘apply’
Although individual FTP clients differ, this method normally allows to you change the permissions as required on any individual file or folder and contents.
To change the permissions using a file manager, I log into my hosting account, navigate to my file manager, navigate to the required folder or file and then use the file manager tools to change the permissions as above. I can’t give individual instructions here as there are too many individual hosting accounts with different file managers.
if, when trying to upload a new image, you’re getting the error message ‘unable to create directory wp-content/uploads… Is its parent directory writable by the server?’, this means that WordPress cannot make a new folder on the server to upload the new image to. In order to create a new folder (aka directory), the containing folder must be writable by the server. In this instance it’s normally the ‘uploads’ folder which is inside the ‘wp-content’ folder. Change the permissions for the ‘uploads’ folder to ‘744’ or ‘0744’ and try again.
If you’re unable to change the permissions for images or folders using this method, it may be that you don’t have sufficient permissions to make these changes. If this is the case, talk to your hosting provider or give us a call if you need a hand
On occasion I’ve come across WordPress installations that don’t have English (UK) as an available language and it turns out it’s not such a straight-forward problem to fix.
The default WordPress installation comes with all manner of languages including Spanish, Japanese, Indonesian, and Korean, however, English (UK) isn’t always there. I suppose the reasoning behind this is that us native English speakers can get by just fine with the English (US) version, however, from a search engine localisation perspective it may not be so good.
Many of the tutorials tell you to update your ‘wp_config.php’ file to update your site default language but this more-than-often doesn’t actually work. The other problem is that the language files you need are not particularly easy to get hold of unless you’re quite technical.
Therefore, here is a simple tutorial on installing the English (UK) language files and setting this as your default ‘site language.’
Setting English (UK) as your default WordPress site language when it’s not available from the dashboard
To begin with you’ll need the correct language files. You can download them here: WP-english-GB-files
Unzip the files to a folder
Log into your site via FTP
Navigate to the public directory (the one containing the files index.php, wp_config.php, wp_login.php etc.)
Open the ‘wp-content’ folder then the ‘languages’ folder. You should now see two folders called ‘plugins’ and ‘themes’ along with lots of files with the ‘.mo’ extension
Upload the English (UK) language files to this directory
Log into your WordPress dashboard through a browser
Go to ‘settings’
In the ‘General’ section, from the ‘site language’ drop-down list you’ll now find ‘English (UK)’
Update and save. Done
Need a hand?
Give us a call if you need a hand on 0114 383 0711
Moving a WordPress website to SSL is something we’ll all have to do at some point for existing sites and it can cause a lot of problems. Here is a list of some of the most common problems you may encounter when moving to SSL and HTTPS and how to deal with them.
Before we start, here is a little about SSL and HTTPS
SSL and HTTPS is a method of encryption that secures the connection between user’s browser and your WordPress server. This makes it much more difficult for anyone to intercept information sent between the two and therefore harder for anyone to eavesdrop on your connection.
Each SSL and HTTPS enabled site has a unique SSL certificate for identification purposes. This is very useful in identifying legitimate websites from spoof sites, meaning for example, your less likely to be caught scams like in phishing attempts.
WordPress site does not have a green padlock
This is the most common problem you’ll encounter after installing an SSL certificate on your WordPress site and is not always so straight forward to fix. The cause of this is non-secure content being called by your site such as external JavaScript files – in other words, your page is trying to include content from HTTP sources as opposed to HTTPS sources. This can usually be fixed by very simply updating the URL your calling to HTTPS. Load the problem web page or website, press CTRL+U to view the source, press CTRL+F and search for ‘https://’ – this will show you the URLs that are not secure. Once you’ve identified the problem URL, edit the template or site content to update them. Alternatively, a faster but riskier option is to do a blanket database search-and-replace ‘HTTP:’ with ‘HTTPS:’ as this normally fixes the majority of the problems.
WordPress site won’t load any more after changing the site URL to HTTPS
Updating the site URL and address via the dashboard settings is pretty straight forward, however, if your site is redirecting to the wrong address, you may no longer be able to log in. Therefore, you may need to change this setting directly in the database. To access the relevant table, log in to the database using PHPMyAdmin via your control panel. The site URL, as specified in the WordPress settings > General Settings > WordPress / site address, can be accessed directly through the database in the table wp_options > siteurl. If you’ve not got experience editing the database you should take a backup first just in case!
Too many redirects WordPress error message after moving to SSL
This can be caused by several configuration errors often within HTACCESS or your hosting control panel. However, If you’re forcing SSL and HTTP via the wp_config.php file, you may need to add an extra line of code to fix this:
The line of code added to the wp_config.php file to force SSL and HTTP is:
define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);
To fix the redirects error that can be caused by this code, add the following after the above line
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'], 'https') !== false) $_SERVER['HTTPS']='on';
Note that this is the Chrome specific error but other browsers will give a similar error. This is to do with the fact that the browser has rejected the site’s SSL certificate. This is usually because the SSL certificate is for a different domain, the certificate has expired, or the browser doesn’t recognise the certificate issuing authority. This may mean reinstalling your certificate or getting he,p directly from the certificate provider.
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If you’re having trouble moving your site to an SSL and HTTPS connection and need our help, call us today on 0114 383 0711 or send us a message through our contact page
If like me you’ve been using WordPress since the beginning – or at least prior to December 2012, you might remember the old WordPress Links Manager (sometimes also known as Blogroll). However, this functionality was removed by default from WordPress version 3.5 onward. Yes, on the one-hand, links like that are a bit old-fashioned, however, there are occasions when it does come in very useful.
