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Advanced WordPress Usage

Introduction

WordPress is great, but it also has limitations that can quickly become annoying. There are ways to overcome these limitations, which I'm going to explain here.

Nginx Configuration

For WordPress configuration under Nginx, here's an example:

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server {
    include listen_port.conf;
    listen 443 ssl;

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/deimos.fr/server-unified.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/deimos.fr/server.key;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;

    server_name blog.deimos.fr;
    root /usr/share/nginx/www/deimos.fr/blog;
    index index.php;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/blog.deimos.fr_access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/blog.deimos.fr_error.log;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_cache mycache;
        fastcgi_cache_key $request_method$host$request_uri;
        fastcgi_cache_valid any 1h;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    }

    # Drop config
    include drop.conf;

    # BEGIN W3TC Browser Cache
    gzip on;
    gzip_types text/css application/x-javascript text/x-component text/richtext image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon;
    location ~ \.(css|js|htc)$ {
        expires 31536000s;
        add_header Pragma "public";
        add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
        add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.4";
    }

    location ~ \.(html|htm|rtf|rtx|svg|svgz|txt|xsd|xsl|xml)$ {
        expires 3600s;
        add_header Pragma "public";
        add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
        add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.4";
    }

    location ~ \.(asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx|avi|bmp|class|divx|doc|docx|eot|exe|gif|gz|gzip|ico|jpg|jpeg|jpe|mdb|mid|midi|mov|qt|mp3|m4a|mp4|m4v|mpeg|mpg|mpe|mpp|otf|odb|odc|odf|odg|odp|ods|odt|ogg|pdf|png|pot|pps|ppt|pptx|ra|ram|svg|svgz|swf|tar|tif|tiff|ttf|ttc|wav|wma|wri|xla|xls|xlsx|xlt|xlw|zip)$ {
        expires 31536000s;
        add_header Pragma "public";
        add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
        add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.4";
    }
    # END W3TC Browser Cache

    # BEGIN W3TC Minify core
    rewrite ^/wp-content/w3tc/min/w3tc_rewrite_test$ /wp-content/w3tc/min/index.php?w3tc_rewrite_test=1 last;
    rewrite ^/wp-content/w3tc/min/(.+\.(css|js))$ /wp-content/w3tc/min/index.php?file=$1 last;
    # END W3TC Minify core
}
}

Using JavaScript in a Post

I want to use JavaScript here to prevent my email address from being captured by spam robots. We first need to insert this in a post:

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<script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/updatepage.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">
<!--

Then our JavaScript code:

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emailE=('deimos@' + 'deimos.fr')
document.write('<A href="mailto:' + emailE + '">' + "click here" + '</a>')

And finally, we call our function:

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updatepage();
//--></script>

So the full anti-spam system looks like:

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<script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/updatepage.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">
<!--
emailE=('deimos' + 'deimos.fr')
document.write('<A href="mailto:' + emailE + '">' + "click here" + '</a>')
updatepage();
//--></script>

<span><NOSCRIPT>
    <em>Email address protected by JavaScript.<BR>
    Please enable JavaScript to contact me.</em>
</NOSCRIPT></span>

Adding Unsupported Extensions

For example, I want to enable the OGV format for my blog. I'll need to modify the file wp-includes/functions.php and add these lines:

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...
function wp_ext2type( $ext ) {
    $ext2type = apply_filters('ext2type', array(
        'audio' => array('aac','ac3','aif','aiff','mp1','mp2','mp3','m3a','m4a','m4b','ogg','ram','wav','wma'),
        'video' => array('asf','avi','divx','dv','mov','mpg','mpeg','mp4','mpv','ogm','qt','rm','vob','wmv', 'm4v','ogv'),
        'document' => array('doc','docx','pages','odt','rtf','pdf'),
...
    if ( !$mimes ) {
        // Accepted MIME types are set here as PCRE unless provided.
        $mimes = apply_filters( 'upload_mimes', array(
        'jpg|jpeg|jpe' => 'image/jpeg',
        'gif' => 'image/gif',
        'png' => 'image/png',
        'bmp' => 'image/bmp',
        'tif|tiff' => 'image/tiff',
        'ico' => 'image/x-icon',
        'asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx' => 'video/asf',
        'avi' => 'video/avi',
        'divx' => 'video/divx',
        'flv' => 'video/x-flv',
        'ogv' => 'video/ogg',
        'mov|qt' => 'video/quicktime',
...

There are two places to modify: the wp_ext2type function and the get_allowed_mime_types function.

Automatically Delete Comments from Trash

It's possible to automatically delete comments in the trash after a specified number of days. Edit your WordPress configuration and add this:

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[...]
/* Empty the trash */
define('EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 2 );
[...]

Here, I've indicated that I want the trash to empty itself every 2 days.

FAQ

Failed to write file to disk

I had this small problem when I tried to upload files that were too large. Here are the different solutions to fix the problem:

  • Check the owner permissions and write access on the upload folder
  • Look in the file /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini and adjust the size that suits you:
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post_max_size = 50M
upload_max_filesize = 50M
  • Check the size of /tmp on your server (for example, my vservers are by default set to 16M, which was problematic since it's the temporary location where WordPress stores its files)

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