Atalaya Studio » Greg

Looking for help?

Greg — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:20:12 +0000

I almost never read the comments on the WordPress page where the NAVT plugin is hosted – I usually don’t have the time to go over there and read through everything. So if you are looking for help and you’ve written something there chances are very good I’m not going to see it. The best way to get my attention is to contact me through the contact form or write to me at greg@atalayastudio[DOT]com – I usually answer fairly quickly.

Plugin Compatibility – Really?

Greg — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:37:17 +0000

You may have seen the new Plugin Compatibility box on the plugin pages hosted by wordpress.org. The box allows users to select their WordPress release AND the plugin release and choose between a Working or Broken selection for the plugin.

So my question is this… What is really broken? WordPress or the plugin? Does the user really know for sure? Could it be another plugin that is causing the problem? Is it the browser? Does this really give an accurate accounting of a plugin’s compatibility? I honestly don’t think so.

Do I think that if a plugin is working for someone and not working for someone else that the person that the plugin IS working for will even bother to make a special visit the site and click the Working button? – NO, I don’t. It’s like the plugin comment area; if something isn’t working someone will comment. If it is working – they never comment. No one has ever visited my plugin page hosted on wordpress.org to make a comment that the plugin was working.

To truly reflect an honest and fair compatibility value, every plugin user experience would have to be recorded. I personally don’t think it’s going to happen. As a result, most of the information regarding the compatibility of a plugin with any specific WordPress version will be distorted because more people tend to visit the hosting site looking for solutions than those that don’t need them – for that reason I think more people will click the Broken button than those caring enough to click the Working button. I believe that people will shy away from installing and trying a plugin because of this; I find the entire thing irritating.

Matt and company should stop making changes to WordPress that give people the impression that their plugins will break and their sites will stop working. Arbitrarily adding a Plugin Compatibility box to the hosting site under the guise that it somehow measures Plugin Compatibility with WordPress is a joke.

NAVT 1.0.34 and WordPress 2.8.5

Greg — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:37:26 +0000

Lately, people have written to me asking me about supporting WordPress 2.8.5 or they tell me that NAVT isn’t working with 2.8.5 – I don’t have that problem. If you are STILL using IE (particularly IE8) then put it in compatibility mode or get FireFox (for the PC). I haven’t spent any time trying to figure out why IE8 doesn’t work if it ISN’T in compatibility mode (I’m not sure I care enough).

Make sure the wp-root.php file is present in you NAVT installation directory.
Make sure that there aren’t any other plugins that are interfering by deactivating all of your plugins (except NAVT) and see if it works. If it works, begin activating plugins until it stops working. Then contact the plugin writer and complain about what it is doing.
Install Filefox and Firebug. Open Firebug, open the NAVT admin page and watch the Firebug console for Java Script errors.

You can contact me at greg @ gbellucci.us – I’ll try and help you if I can.

(this site runs wp 2.8.5 and navt 1.0.34- without issues)

NAVT Update 1.0.33

Greg — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:26:34 +0000

Contains a minor change for user roles and was tested against wp 2.8.1. If you are having trouble finding the NAVT List menu item once the plugin is activated I suggest you do the following:

Temporarily change the permissions on the NAVT directory to 777.
Reactivate the NAVT plugin.
Change the NAVT directory permissions to 755

As of version 1.0.29, NAVT needs to create a file in it’s own installation directory – the file is only created once. If it can’t create the file then it will not display the NAVT List menu item.

You may find that the Word Press automatic plugin upgrade routine removes all files from the previous version and you may have to temporarily change the permissions on the NAVT directory after upgrading. Make sure you change the permissions back to 755 after activating the plugin.