Me extremely happy, thanks to our good friend Yousif Al-Saif who has coded a nifty little application which not only converted the old Xaraya entries to WordPress FLAWLESSLY, but also managed to correct A LOT of SQL errors in the old database.
So now have a look at this from the Admin screen of WordPress copied a few seconds ago:
Blog Stats
There are currently 1,988 posts and 18,380 comments, contained within 21 categories.
Is this SWEET or what?
Please join me in thanking Yousif Al-Saif very much indeed for his efforts, and all for free!
Let me also explain that the errors I’ve had with the site are not all Xaraya’s fault, as Yousif discovered, there have been a lot of errors within the database which might very well be due to power recycling or restarting the server at inappropriate times, and also take into account that the database was originally converted from PHP-Nuke through to PostNuke then to Xaraya and now to WordPress, that’s quite a journey!
There still are some attacks on the server, almost all of them coming from Riyadh, in Saudi. So I blocked a few IPs from that side and more importantly I have installed the Apache mod-security module to take care of most if not all of the known spammers.
That all doesn’t matter now.. what matters is that Mahmood’s Den is back online, so welcome back to you all my friends!
There are a few things that still need to be sorted of course, and those are minor compared to what has already been converted, and those are the various “pages” that I have created, and due to the fact the MySQL stores Arabic, all Arabic entries in the old site have been screwed up, (update: the character set of the theme I’m using was different than that used to store the Arabic, once I changed the theme header to utf-8, most Arabic entries are ok now. But there still remain a few which…) I’ll have to dig them up manually and edit them to get them back into operation.
I would appreciate it if you would enter a comment in this thread to report errors you come across so I can correct them.
Thanks Yousif! 😀
Comments
Looks like the pics on the main page aren’t coming through or they’re not on my puter.
Hi Mahmood,
Do you know any independent tv production houses in Bahrain of good quality for a quick turnaround job that may be needed the night of the GP? Can you answer to my email please?
best, Alyson
Glad things are working out for you Mahmood! You must feel a great sense of relief that this recent problem is being put to bed once and for all.
I hope so… Yousif did a great job!
There’s only thing wrong which is probably the fault of my browser and not this site, but the sidebar appears to be at the bottom of this page. I refreshed it and tried loading this page on another window. Is the sidebar too wide, perhaps? And your normal posts are too much in the center?
I’m on the latest version of IE.
Kudos to Yousif for a job well done.
can you take a screen shot for me to have a look?
the site loads well in both Safari and Firefox (mac and pc)
Here:
http://www.the-enlightenment.net/screenshot1.JPG
http://www.the-enlightenment.net/screenshot2.JPG
This is probably stupid of me to point out, but I actually thought the subtitle was “ass is always half full” because “the gl” is camouflaged with the black chair. But I think that may help you identify the problem. I’m sure you didn’t intend for it to look that way.
Bloody IE!
Ok, I’ll have a look at this during the weekend. Try looking at the site using Firefox and you’ll see the difference. You should dump IE.
Here are the screenshots for you to compare (and see what you’re missing!)
* Firefox (mac)
* Safari (mac)
does anyone else have a problem with this theme on IE? If so, which version are you using?
IE is ****!
Site looks good btw. The only problem I see is not being able to edit or preview my own comments. Is there a WP plugin that can fix that?
Mahmood:
Keep on truckin’!
It is a JUNGLE out there!
Thank you and happy blogging.
—Dan
Thanks Yousif!
Congrats Mahmood!
I just realised something … don’t know if you realised that last year, around your birthday, there was also another glitch with your blog!
Brace yourself for next year!!
The reason I realised this is because on both occasions I couldn’t wish u a Happy Birthday here but had to do it on the silly blog!!
Thanks babe, your good wishes already arrived much before the written word… telepathically, as usual!
Congratulations. We enjoy reading your blog. A great insight into Bahrani life.
Mahmood,
You are more than welcome!
Bring back the tree! And shrink the dodgy-looking bloke in the top left corner!
hehe.. yeah I like the old layout too, haven’t had time to do anything but get a semblance of usability first. I’ll work on that now that the horror of losing all my posts has passed.
It works perfectly fine now! Sidebar shows up where it’s supposed to be. I guess it was just the large image then if the logo is the only thing you’ve changed since I told you about the problem.
No, because IE determines the size of a pixel differently than the rest of the world, the size of the left column was too big for its measurements so it squeezed it to the bottom. I have reduced the width of the left column by 20 pixels to accomodate IE’s wishes. Now it looks a bit disjointed in other browsers, but I can live with that.
The image has nothing to do with it as it is not taking any physical space because it is a “background element.” The details in and around it of course do (the title and the slug) and those I’ve had to define their placements, and if you compare IE and others, you will see a slight difference too… but like you said, at least now everyone sees the site approximately properly!
Thanks for putting the TREE of LIfe back Mahmood!
Woohoo! Thanks to Mahmood and Yousif Al-Saif.