If you’re working with a complicated site then you may find that importing files and posts into WordPress is a bit of a black art – there are lots of places where things might go wrong. If the upload_url_path value for your site has been manually changed, then this might cause problems with WP export files.

Q: why would you change upload_url_path?

A: changing upload_url_path lets WordPress serve images etc. from a subdomain or different domain, which should improve site performance if you have an image-heavy site.

This is an example item entry from the WordPress eXtended RSS export file (this is a simplified entry, with most of the post data (comment status, stickiness, time, post ID etc. removed for clarity).

	

	
	
Triplets

	Fri, 15 May 2009 20:20:12 +0000
	
	http://iso200.com/simple/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/dsc_63181.jpg
	
	
	
	6
	
	
	
	
	
		
		
	
	

The problem is with this line:

The attachment url line doesn’t contain a protocol – either http or https – which is why my media import failed. A protocol isn’t needed when you change the upload_url_path value – but it is needed when WP is importing media.

Solutions:

1. Post-export: grep the file – add a transport protocol to the url – i.e. http: or https: Don’t forget to add the : after the protocol – the wp:attachment_url line should now look like this:

<![CDATA[https://

2. Pre-export: check your media library settings and make sure a protocol is included:

NB: you only see these options in your Media Settings page if you have changed the value of upload_url_path.

If you have folders full of intermediate thumbnail sizes that you don’t want, you can easily select and delete all the thumbnails WordPress has generated using the right tools. This is particularly useful if you change thumbnail sizes and want to get rid of old images.

If you have a Mac, use ‘Find Any File‘ and use a regex pattern to search for images: -(\d{2,4})x(\d{2,4})\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)

The regex will select file names that end with a dash followed by thumbnail width by thumnbmail height and the usual image file name extensions. This is the standard WP thumbnail naming format.

‘Find Any File’ will give you a window of images and you can manage/delete as you want.

If you type an incorrect regex (search) string in, the app will helpfully flag the error:

If you have repeatedly imported a test file into a development server, this may leave you with a number of additional duplicate full-size images in your uploads folder – the regex above will not remove these though.

This string has found a lot of duplicates for me – but not all – but be aware that it may select images that you don’t want, depending on their naming format: (\d)-(\d)\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)

TIP:

When you import a test file of WP posts (etc.) into a development server create a new Uploads folder each time you do a test import. This avoids the problem of having duplicate original files.

When is an excerpt not an excerpt?

If you call get_the_excerpt() WordPress returns a string that looks like an excerpt – but it might not be. If your post doesn’t have a handcrafted excerpt, WordPress returns an automatically generated word-counted trimmed-down version of the full post content (see codex).

TL/DR: WordPress returns a string for get_the_excerpt() even when has_excerpt() is FALSE.

I’d used this bit of code to automatically add a ‘read more’ link at the end of every excerpt on a search page.

function ds_excerpt_read_more( $output ) {

	$read_more_link = ' (Read more)';

	if ( has_excerpt() && ! is_attachment() & is_search() ) {

		$output .= " " . $read_more_link;

	}
	return $output;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'ds_excerpt_read_more'  );

Problem was, it wasn’t working everywhere – some posts didn’t have the modified excerpt.

has_excerpt() was the problem – it only returns TRUE if there is a manual excerpt.

So this works better:

function ds_excerpt_read_more( $output ) {

	$read_more_link = ' (Read more)';

	if ( has_excerpt() && ! is_attachment() & is_search() ) {

		$output .= " " . $read_more_link;

	} elseif (is_search() &&  ! has_excerpt() )  {

		$excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
		$output = wp_trim_words( $output, $excerpt_length, '' );
		$output .= " " . $read_more_link;

	}
	return $output;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'ds_excerpt_read_more'  );

but this is best:

function ds_excerpt_read_more( $output ) {

	if (  is_search() && ! is_attachment() ) {

		$read_more_link = ' (Read more)';
		
		if ( ! has_excerpt() ) {

			$excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
			$output = wp_trim_words( $output, $excerpt_length, '' );

			/* Finds the last full stop in the excerpt, removes everything after it. */
			if ( ( $pos = mb_strrpos( $output, '.' ) ) !== false ) {
				$output = substr( $output, 0, $pos + 2 );
			}
		}

		/* Appends a 'read more' link at the end of the excerpt - if it's a search */
		$output .= " " . $read_more_link;

	}
	return $output;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'ds_excerpt_read_more'  );

You have to do two things to add a new page template to WordPress.

1. Add a file with the correct name

WordPress uses a template hierarchy – you need to give your template the right name. Either page-ID.php – where ID is the post ID of the page you are targeting, or page-SLUG.php – where SLUG is either the slug of the page you are targeting or an understandable name you can assign through the page interface to pages.

2. Add a ‘Template Name’ declaration at the start of your template file

For WordPress to pick your template up, you need to start each page template file with a Template Name string followed by a unique name for the template:

/*
Template Name: Offer page template
*/

You may not like how WordPress’ Categories widget lists categories – particularly if you want to modify the list that’s displayed and hide some categories or have a custom order of categories (rather than alphabetical or by number of posts).

So what’s the easiest way to customise the display of the Categories widget??

You don’t.

Create a new *menu*, add the categories that you want in the order you want them, and add your new menu to the widget area.

So you can go from this:

to this:

This strange thing happened to me earlier today – added a custom post type earlier this week, published an article this afternoon – but then I couldn’t view the published version – WordPress said it couldn’t be found (404 error).

Solution:

Go to your dashboard, and then to settings/permalinks.

Scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes”. This will force WordPress to update permalink settings and your posts in your custom post type should now work.