Wordpress / Comicpress Help

NibCrom

So I bought a book to help me learn PHP. The CD it came with to install PHP didn't work. I downloaded MAMP and tried to get it to sync with Dreamweaver. Didn't work. I tried to get my Web server to process the PHP in Dreamweaver. Couldn't get that to work either.

This is the video I followed to sync MAMP with Dreamweaver.
http://experts.adobeconnect.com/phplocalsitemac/

I followed it exactly and... nothing. I'm out of ideas at this point. I thought developing PHP with MAMP would be the easiest route. Is there something else I should try?

Please help me get started so I can actually learn some PHP! Thanks!

SeñorAmor

Do you have hosting elsewhere (I see your sig links to what I presume is your site)? I would bet PHP is installed and already set up there. Maybe use that instead of trying to run it locally.

Straygatsby

This might work:

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html

I used xampp while testing out content management doodads and dipping my toes in html/css/php/lol/omg, and I was really happy with the package and how simple it was to get running out of the box. This was all for windows-based stuff, so I can't speak any further than the link claiming its for Mac. Good luck! I've always wanted to get deeper into that depth of the pool but feared my lack of visual artistry would guarantee it'd be wasted.

NibCrom

Amor - I got Dreamweaver to sync up with my Web host supposedly, but when I put "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" into Dreamweaver and go to live view, it doesn't return anything.

Gatsby - I'll give that a try, thanks.

SeñorAmor

NibCrom wrote:

Amor - I got Dreamweaver to sync up with my Web host supposedly, but when I put "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" into Dreamweaver and go to live view, it doesn't return anything.

Just so we're clear, you're creating your .php file that contains phpinfo() and you're uploading it to your website and then viewing that page in a browser?

I have a feeling that's not what you're doing and instead using Dreamweaver's built-in browser to render the page, which won't work for you because it doesn't have a local PHP engine.

I would upload your file and hit F12 to have DW open a browser to that page (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) and see if you get better results.

NibCrom

Gatsby - I installed XAMMP, but couldn't get it to sync with Dreamweaver.

This is the error I'm getting:

And these are the settings I used:

Amor - The phpinfo page works when I manually upload it my Web host. Shouldn't it work in Dreamweaver as well? That's why I put in the ftp info for my site, so that Dreamweaver would render the files on my Web server and return the results in Dreamweaver. Correct me if I'm wrong!

Straygatsby

Hmm, I can't be sure, as I didn't use dreamweaver in that way when I used XAMPP (I was using Joomla and weaver when I needed to whip up part of a page and then copy it over into a joomla module), so I don't know if I can be of much help with that error. The one thing I'd suggest is to poke around the xampp folder. When it installs, it tends to want your web files within the directory structure of C:\xampp\etc\etc\thismightbeyourwebfiles. It could be as simple as a URL change for DW to find it.

G'luck.

Infidel

/Users/nilsguldberg/Documents/MyWebSite

Is that the root of your web server?

If so, you should have http://localhost/ just, the additional MyWebSite would have it looking for the files under MyWebSite/MyWebSite.

NibCrom

So the URL prefix under testing server should just be "http://localhost/"?

NibCrom

AAHHHH I THINK IT WORKED!!!

NibCrom

Dang it. I don't think it worked.

When I go to Live View it shows:

And I think it's supposed to show something like this:

I tried some other PHP functions and they didn't work.

Infidel

Looks like you need to configure XAMPP to actually point to your MyWebSite directory.

Right now you're getting the default/admin files, that are under the XAMPP directory.

NibCrom

Alright, I got it working. I had to change some settings in MAMP as shown here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/setup_php.html#articlecontentAdobe_numberedheader_1

It's silly that the video tutorial never mentioned anything about reconfiguring MAMP.

Any Wordpress / Comicpress Gurus out there? How do I eliminate the comments and the calendar from the layout?

amateurhour

NibCrom wrote:

Any Wordpress / Comicpress Gurus out there? How do I eliminate the comments and the calendar from the layout?

It's in the comicpress options when you log in, or in the wordpress options. For the calendar, if it's the widget on the sidebar, just put something in the sidebar. The sidebar.php file has script that basically says if there's no widget in the sidebar, show the calendar. You can remove that or just put something there, like a comic nav or a blank text field widget

For the comments, just turn them off in wordpress discussion settings or go to comicpress options and disable the comic blog, that should do it. I think you can also turn off comments there too.

NibCrom

Thanks Amatuerhour, I kind of thought that was the way to do it. I had to poke around in the PHP to get some things to get it to look the way I wanted it to. I appreciate the help!

NibCrom

So I've been poking around the CSS, there's a couple of things I haven't figured out how to modify:



1. How do I add some padding to the left of the comic title?

2. How do I get rid of that horizontal rule?

amateurhour

easiest thing to do is to install firebug in firefox and you can just hover over all of that stuff and see where it is called in the style.css

If you want to PM me I can talk to you on google chat or something, because comicpress has a lot of little "quirks" that can be a pain in the ass.

NibCrom

Amateurhour - that helped a ton. Thanks!

amateurhour

NibCrom wrote:

Amateurhour - that helped a ton. Thanks!

also, please for the love of god tell me you're using a child theme and not modifying the core comicpress style.css....

NibCrom

Well I've been modifying the child theme when the CSS is there, but otherwise I've been modifying the parent theme. Is it better to copy the CSS from the parent them and paste it it the child theme and modify it from there?

Infidel

Yes, you should override everything in your child theme. If the CSS you wanted to tweak isn't there already, just copy and modify. :^:

NibCrom

Okay.

What's the reasoning behind not modifying the CSS in the parent theme? In case the developer has an update to the parent theme? Or just so you don't badly mess up the layout and not have a backup to fix it?

Infidel

Updates, yep. If you don't change their files, when they update the parent theme then you have to do much less work or no work at all.

NibCrom

Makes sense. Thanks for the help.

amateurhour

Yeah, the guy who does like 99% of the dev work on comicpress updates it once every couple of months, on average. Every update will replace your style.css with a fresh copy, which will effectively wipe out your entire site's custom layout, and it won't be saved anywhere unless you made a local backup...

If you google Frumph.net comicpress child themes he's got a good handful of them you can just plug in and tweak to your specifics without having to create one from scratch.

NibCrom

So this is what I want my header to look like:



And it does look like that, until I change the size of the site under comicpress options from 3 column (980 px) to 2 column (780 px). Then it looks like this:



It changes the transparent pixels to white somehow.

In the header upload page, it says that "Images of exactly 980 × 120 pixels will be used as-is." It says that even when I change the size of the site to 780 px.

I try to upload headers of different sizes, but I haven't had any luck with them. Anyone know how to fix this?

amateurhour

Check the CSS and see if there's a transparency option that didn't get carried over into your child theme...

Also, stick with the 3 column layout. The 980px is MUCH better for site design in general, and you can change the width of one of the sidebars or the blog to make a 2 column layout but use the bigger width.

Infidel

If the file was the original, it would still have the transparency.

Looks like automatic resizing of the file before sending it to the browser. As in, it takes the image you provided, runs it through Imagemagick or such, and gives the end user the 780px wide version. This avoids issues with how browsers handle downscaling differently/shittily.

If the automated code isn't done right though, it might lose the transparency info as you see here.

That would be my guess as to what is going on, given that I haven't ever used the theme myself.

NibCrom

I really appreciate the help, guys. You've been great. I went back to 3 columns and just make the first column really skinny so it looks like a 2 column layout. Fixed the transparency issue.

New problem, I get this when I try to import my database to my live Web server.



Any idea how to fix this?

NibCrom

Okay, I deleted the tables and reuploaded the .sql file and it seemed to work. No error.

However, now when I go to my site, none of the links to other pages work. For example, when I click on "Previous Comic" or "Archive", I get a page not found error.

amateurhour

Have you re-done the wordpress "comicpress_config" file to match the tag ID for comics? you should only have two categories, one for blog, and one for comics (it's a comicpress limitation) for your posts. They each have an ID number, usually 3 and 4 or 4 and 5 and you need to tell comicpress that.

NibCrom

Is it just Comicpress > Config > Update config? I tried that...

NibCrom

So it ended up being a permalink problem. I talked to my friend about it and he said it probably had something to do with my .htaccess file. So I went to the permalink options in the dashboard, changed them and they worked. Then I changed it back to the "friendly" url option.

Also, there's a Comicpress setting for changing the header size, so just thought I'd share that.

Thanks for all the help, guys! My site is up and running!