WordPress as CMS for Pandan.gov.ph

Friday, December 17, 2010 @ 11:50 pm by Sofie Hofmann

I converted Pandan.gov.ph, the Official Website of the Municipality of Pandan, Antique, Philippines, from simple PHP to WordPress as CMS. I actually revised the Website a few months ago but I did not write about it.

I designed this Website in 2005 and it was officially online on April 01, 2005. I also paid for the hosting of the Website. But more than two (2) years ago, I gave up maintaining the Website but did not give up hosting it yet as I would like to turnover the Web content maintenance of the site to Pandan Local Government Unit.

This year, upon my request, Mayor Tan, the new mayor of the Municipality of Pandan, Antique, Philippines, decided to maintain the Website and so I converted it to WordPress CMS.

The web design is still the same, based on the original web design of Pandan.gov.ph when it was still using simple PHP and before that using simple XHTML, except for the navigation menu on top of the page as it is a dropdown navigation menu now. Despite the new dropdown navigation menu, I left the other navigation menu by section on the left side of the page.

I used the Pages feature for most of the pages on this Website and used the Posts feature for the gallery, news and bid sections. If there are any updates on the site, the readers will be able to see them immediately at the front page.

When it comes to WordPress Plugins, this Website is using three (3) plugins only, Akismet, WordPress Stats, and User Role Editor.

It took me at least four (4) weeks to finish redesigning this Website.

Site Updates and Important Notices

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 @ 5:53 pm by Sofie Hofmann

It’s been more than 1 1/2 months now since I updated this blog. We were on vacation in Ireland for the first two weeks of July and then got so busy right after we came back. I will be blogging about it later on my personal blog but after I finished writing about my trip to England in April with some friends.

I used to write it here every time I updated some of the sites I maintain, not regularly but somehow I did. Some things may change though, I will probably no longer write what sites I updated as it is taking so much of my time. Once in a while perhaps, time will tell. I actually do it as it reminds me when did I update any of the sites. Well, we will see…

Site Updates:

I updated several of my own sites including those I maintain like Lux International AG, Swiss Big Game Fishing, and Green Cross Switzerland Websites. I transferred Pagtatap.org to another server, and upgraded it from WordPress 2.1.3 to WordPress 2.2.1 before WordPress 2.2.2 was released on August 5, 2007.

Important Notices:

I will also be transferring some sites to another server especially Weggis.net, Sehdi.com, and SofieHofmann.com. I will not mention anymore the other sites that I will also be transferring to another server but I will definitely be transferring a lot.

I will also be upgrading the sites using WordPress to WordPress 2.2.2 as I have not upgraded them from WordPress 2.1.3 to WordPress 2.2 or WordPress 2.2.1.

I will also be redesigning several HTML sites and code them in PHP or ASP, probably use CMS too especially WordPress.

With that, if there will be any interruptions and you can’t access or view any of the sites that I maintain, it’s because of what I mentioned above. So please bear with me in the next few days. Or maybe weeks?

That’s all for now. I just would like to let you know why I will be very busy in the next few weeks.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.2 and Site Updates

Thursday, May 31, 2007 @ 11:00 pm by Sofie Hofmann

I tried to upgrade from WordPress 2.1.3 to WordPress 2.2 but to no avail. This is actually the first time that I’m having problems in upgrading to a newer version. I only tried upgrading this site and my personal blog. I didn’t attempt to upgrade my other sites yet hoping to solve the problems.

The word “Array” keeps on appearing at the plugins section and other parts of the admininstration pages. You can not even delete them since they’re not visible at the control panel’s file manager. I tested deleting the plugins and reinstall them but nothing happened, the word “Array” still appears.

With that, I just rolled back to WordPress 2.1.3. So far, no problem with the database and everything went fine. For now, I’ll just use WordPress 2.1.3 and probably wait for WordPress 2.3.

Site Updates:

I updated the website of Green Cross Switzerland several times already. The newsletter 02/2007 for the month of May is now available, but only in German language. Kindly check the publications page. Green Cross have some press releases, something to do with agricultural micro-projects being under the leadership of women, see media page. The list of the members of the National Council was also updated, see parliament page.

I updated Swiss Big Game Fishing too. The “Fisch Rekord” winners for the month of April were announced at the site. Naturally, new photos were uploaded at the “Fangerfolge” page.

I also updated Pagtatap.org website. PAGTATAP Youth with the support of PAGTATAP USA will hold the 5th Youth Leadership and Teambuilding Camp this coming June 22-24, 2007 @ Villa Bautista, Dionela, Pandan, Antique, Philippines. Professor Vinnie Tan of the University of the Philippines (UP) is the main facilitator of the activity. Later on, I will also upload some photos of the Pagtatap Youth Camp 2006, the Pagtatap Youth Bugang River Clean-up 2006 and the Pagtatap Youth “Alay-Kapwa” 2006.

I also updated Pandan.gov.ph, the Official Website of the Municipality of Pandan, Antique. I posted the Local Election Results 2007 at the News section.

Ok, I was not able to update this blog because I was busy organizing my photos during my vacation, then got busy resizing the pictures that I would like to post in my personal blog. If you like to travel, check out my personal blog at SofieHofmann.com. I will be posting some photos taken during my two weeks vacation in four European countries.

“Fisch Rekord” by Swiss Big Game Fishing

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 @ 1:23 pm by Sofie Hofmann

I just finished updating Swiss Big Game Fishing Website. If you are into fishing and using the products that Swiss Big Game Fishing is selling, I recommend that you visit its site although it’s only in German language.

Swiss Big Game Fishing based in Weggis, Switzerland launched a monthly fishing competition “Fisch Rekord” under “Fangerfolge” for their clients. Whoever catches the biggest and heaviest fish per category basis specified at the site using the products it sells could win a gift certificate worth CHF 50.00. Deadline for submission for the “Rekord Fisch” of the Month is on the 15th of the following month.

See some samples at the newly uploaded photos at the “Fangerfolge” page.

Join now and have fun fishing!

Sites upgraded to WordPress 2.1.3

Sunday, April 8, 2007 @ 8:40 pm by Sofie Hofmann

All blogs (Sehdi.com Blog, Simply Sofie Blog) and websites (Sehdi.com, Weggis.net, Pagtatap.org, Pandan.ph, Pandan.gov.ph News section, Tugbong Festival) that I own and being maintained using WordPress have been updated on April 4, 2007, the day after WordPress 2.1.3 was released.

It’s not only the WordPress 2.1 branch which has a new security release but also WordPress 2.0. So for those who are still having the WordPress 2.0, you can also upgrade to WordPress 2.0.10.

A lot of WordPress users have issues regarding upgrading to WordPress 2.1 for the reason that the plugins they have been using are no longer compatible with WordPress 2.1.

I suggest, use a plugin if it’s only necessary. Let go of the other plugins for a while. Find another one similar to the plugin you used before that is compatible with WordPress 2.1 branch. Upgrade slowly, just don’t jump from a lower version to a higher version like from WordPress 1.5 to WordPress 2.1 unless you really know what you’re doing. Spend your time reading the forum, you’ll most likely find the answer there. You probably need not even ask a question. WordPress forum is quite very helpful. And yes, don’t forget, the most important is, backup your database and the theme or template you are using especially if you already tweaked it a little bit before you upgrade.

Or better yet, read this at the WordPress.org on how to upgrade WordPress, Upgrading WordPress.

Another important matter about major releases, if you don’t know yet, WordPress will be having another major release (WordPress 2.2) this April, most probably on April 23, 2007. I also mentioned about it on my entry WordPress 2.0.7, WordPress 2.1 RC1, Site Updates. Check it out too at this entry WordPress Wednesday: New Security Release, Updated WordPressMU, More WordPress Plugins, and Time to Get Naked by Lorelle VanFossen at The Blog Herald.

Site Update:
I updated the media pages of Green Cross Switzerland. The press release is ony in German language. Green Cross Switzerland has a new board member.

Boracaydivers.com converted to XHTML and PHP

Thursday, March 22, 2007 @ 12:53 pm by Sofie Hofmann

Boracaydivers.com had been converted from HTML to XHTML and PHP. I actually finished converting the site within a day on the first week of March but since I was busy with other matters I was not able to write about it. There were no other major changes and the design remains the same.

On other matters, maybe it’s a bit late but it is still important. You might not have read about it yet. For those of you who still have WordPress 2.1.1, please upgrade your WordPress 2.1.1 to WordPress 2.1.2. I was also not able to write about it here but a few hours after I read the announcement at WordPress “WordPress 2.1.1 Dangerous, Upgrade” I immediately upgraded all my sites using WordPress 2.1.1.

Even if I downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 earlier than what was stipulated at the announcement when the original code had been possibly modified I still upgraded all my sites. It was probably not affected but then WordPress declared version 2.1.1 dangerous and released version 2.1.2.

Just to inform you, I don’t write all my updates here especially if I update the other sites, so please visit my other sites once in a while for site updates.

Tugbong Festival Website converted to WordPress

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 @ 10:52 pm by Sofie Hofmann

I finished redesigning the Tugbong Festival Website before we left on February 17, 2007 for a week vacation but I was not able to upload the redesigned pages. Tugbong Festival is a yearly Joint Municipal and Religious Fiesta Celebration, every 21st to 25th of April in Pandan, Antique, Philippines.

I finally uploaded the pages a few days ago. I finished converting the site from simple HTML to WordPress using PHP. It took me at least a week to finish it as I was not really working on it everyday. Before that, I also finished converting the whole site of Pagtatap.org from simple PHP to WordPress. It used to be that only the Updates section of Pagtatap.org was using WordPress. You can read about the minor changes at “Newly redesigned Pagtatap.org” at the Updates page of the site. It took me a month to finish the Pagtatap.org site but in reality, I did it for just 10 days as I was not also working on it everyday just like the Tugbong Festival Website.

The new design of Tugbong Festival Website has a similarity with the old design with regards to the graphics but if you really take a look at them, they are different. As of the moment, you will still be able to see the old design but later on I will have to remove the old pages to avoid duplicating the contents. The other pages are still there except for the index.html which was redirected to the new index page.

Anyway, WordPress has a new release, WordPress 2.1.1, and Tugbong Festival Website is now using it. I still have to upgrade the other websites as I was on vacation when WordPress released the new version.

Other Updates:
Also, before we left, I updated the website of Philippine Seafarers Assistance Programme. You can see all the updates at the Site / PSAP Updates page of the site.

Then when we arrived from our vacation, I started updating other websites too. I just updated the News page of Pandan.gov.ph, and the Publication and Media pages of Green Cross Switzerland.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.1 Ella

Friday, January 26, 2007 @ 6:09 pm by Sofie Hofmann

I finished upgrading the sites using WordPress from WordPress 2.0.7 to WordPress 2.1. Upgrading a WordPress site is not that complicated. What makes the site complicated when being upgraded? If some tags were deprecated, some features were removed or transferred, and if the Plugins, if you have any, aren’t compatible with WordPress 2.1 Ella.

There were no major problems with SofieHofmann.com Blog as it is a blog. I just have to check my blog entries for XHTML validation. I corrected a little bit at CSS file as my images are always centered but the text are always justified. All of a sudden, the centered text were adjusted to the left. They’re ok now.

With Sehdi.com, I had to redo the conditional tags because of the feature that a static page can be assigned to the front page. I did both the code for a static page as well as for the latest posts, so even if I switch from one to another, the pages won’t break and won’t be affected at all. No matter what, I can assign a static page or the latest blog posts anytime to the front page. I haven’t use this feature with other sites yet. One thing though, the quicktag <!--more--> doesn’t work but the quicktag <!--nextpage--> works. I still have to figure out the solution to the <!--more--> quicktag.

With Weggis.net, I needed to remove some conditional tags at the archives, having the articles after each topic. Sometimes they appear, sometimes not. Instead, I changed the number of articles at the individual archives. So if you check each topic archive, all the titles of the articles are there aside from the latest one on top of all the other ones.

With Pagtatap.org, there’s not a lot of problems, as it was just newly redesigned.

With Pandan.gov.ph News, it was just like Sofiehofmann.com Blog. I just fixed the CSS because of the floating images to the right, and XHTML for validation.

With Pandan.ph, I have more problems with one of the Plugins. I’m using a Paged Comments Plugin in this site and it was not working with PHP include <?php include (file.php); ?> unless you put the TEMPLATE PATH before file.php. I also have Paged Comments Plugin at Pagtatap.org but this problem didn’t occur there as I was not using too much page templates unlike with Pandan.ph. Anyway, I was able to fix everything.

For all the other sites, I needed to change the deprecated template tags, wp_list_cats to wp_list_categories and get_archives to wp_get_archives. Actually, as of the moment, even if you didn’t change them, they will stay the same, won’t really affect the site.

Regarding the links being part of categories now, if you have get_link_list and opted to check show description, it’s not working now. That option was removed from the admin side, and so, I replaced get_link_list with wp_list_bookmarks.

I’ve written something about a Plugin. What about other WordPress Plugins?

I don’t use too many WordPress Plugins. So far, I have these Plugins but not in all the sites.

Akismet Plugin by Matt Mullenweg, WP-PostViews by GaMerZ, Post Updated by Kaf Oseo, Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam by Peter Keung, Sidebar Widgets by Automattic, Simple Recent Comments Widget by Mika Perälä, randomimage by Justin Watt, Filosofo Home-Page Control by Austin Matzko. No problem with all these WordPress Plugins.

SRG Clean Archives Plugin by Shawn Grimes. I have to fix the post_status='publish' to post_type='post' as I don’t want the pages to be part of the monthly archives.

Paged Comments Plugin by Keyvan Minoukadeh. I already mentioned about the Paged Comments Plugin and fixed the problem.

Counterize II Plugin by Steffen Forkmann. I deactivated this Plugin except at Sehdi.com and SofieHofmann.com Blog even before upgrading to WordPress 2.1. It’s in conflict with the Google Search that I’m using. I couldn’t fix it yet. I’m always getting a message above the page referring to the database. But if I just use the normal WordPress search, no problem at all.

WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ” at line 1]
update wp_Counterize_Pages set count = count + 1 where pageID =

Everytime I activate the Plugin and test google site and web search, the message above appears and another one and another one. I haven’t asked the author of the Plugin yet about this, hoping that I will solve it myself. But since I’m not a MySQL guru, I still have to figure it out. As I see it, I think the solution is just simple and it’s just there but I haven’t really figured that out yet.

WordPress Database Backup Plugin by Scott Merrill. I never really used WordPress Database Backup as I backup my database from the phpMyAdmin itself. I just tested it and eventually deactivated again in the other sites. No matter how I changed the File Permission of wp-content, it’s just not working in other sites. It’s not creating index.php at the backup folder and so I couldn’t backup my database. So as not to put the security of wp-content in danger, I just deactivated the Plugin except at the 2 of all the 6 sites.

Well, that’s all for today. Other than what I have mentioned above, everything is ok. All the sites are fine and running without any problems. Thanks to WordPress Team! Thanks to WordPress Plugins authors!

WordPress 2.0.7, WordPress 2.1 RC1, Site Updates

Saturday, January 20, 2007 @ 12:41 pm by Sofie Hofmann

As I was saying before, it’s really crazy, it seems like the month of January is a month of upgrading from WordPress 2.0.5 to WordPress 2.0.6, then just 5 days ago, WordPress released WordPress 2.0.7 but I found that out only 2 days after it was released.

So there, for security, I upgraded all my WordPress sites and blogs to WordPress 2.0.7. To think, that WordPress is going to have a major release soon before the month ends. Then they’re thinking of releasing 2.2, most likely late April. They even invited bloggers to contribute some ideas. Read about it here, Ideas and Kvetch!.

The truth is, when I visited Matt Mullenweg‘s blog yesterday, he has a link to the WordPress 2.1 Release Candidate 1. It is out. I already downloaded it for testing but not really using it yet for the public sites and blogs.

Other Updates:

I updated the site Weggis.net. Sennenchilbi Weggis 2006 Video by Sofie Hofmann, courtesy of Yahoo! Video, and several photos were posted at the site.

I updated the site Pagtatap.org. As it was newly redesigned, I’m still improving certain things at the site.

I updated the site Greencross.ch. It was October 2006 when I removed the donation pages as I need to fix the pages. Yesterday, I finally finished configuring them. They were uploaded, and once again, Green Cross Switzerland is now ready to receive online donation.

Websites and Blogs upgraded to WordPress 2.0.6

Friday, January 12, 2007 @ 10:58 pm by Sofie Hofmann

It was just before Christmas when I upgraded Simply Sofie Blog and Pandan.gov.ph News section from WordPress 2.0.4 to WordPress 2.0.5. Then, I upgraded the other sites just after New Year, on January 05, 2005. I know it was kind of late already since WordPress 2.0.5 was released on October 27, 2006.

The last website that I upgraded on January 05, 2006 was Pagtatap.org. I finally finished converting the whole site from simple PHP pages to WordPress CMS. I used to have simple PHP pages with Pagtatap.org integrated with the Updates section using WordPress. The theme design was patterned after the original web design of Pagtatap.org. I just redesigned it a little bit.

Just when I finished uploading Pagtatap.org files using FTP and then logged on to WordPress to check if everything was ok, I saw that just 2 hours before that, WordPress.org released the new WordPress 2.0.6 version.

I immediately downloaded the new version and upgraded Pagtatap.org. As I was still checking and finalizing Pagtatap.org, I was only able to upload and upgrade the other websites after 3 days. Sehdi.com, Weggis.net, SofieHofmann.com Blog, Pandan.ph, and Pandan.gov.ph News were all upgraded to WordPress 2.0.6 on the same day. Upgrading takes about 3 to 5 minutes only, it’s really that easy. I won’t write here anymore, on how to install and upgrade WordPress as I have written about it several times. You can read my other posts if you like to know more about it.

Just when I upgraded everything to WordPress 2.0.6, I read too that WordPress will have a major release soon. You can read Matt Mullenweg‘s blog entry, Ideas and Kvetch, at WordPress.org.

It’s just so crazy, upgrading all the time for the month of January. Well, that’s one good thing about WordPress, even if WordPress releases a new version within a month, it’s not really a hassle because it’s not so complicated to upgrade from one version to a newer one.

Other Updates:
I just finished updating Green Cross Switzerland and Swiss Big Game Fishing sites.