simon.schönbeck.dk

Tag: code

  • <code> vs. <pre> in WordPress editor

    Writing my earlier post about the textarea issue I initially ended up with a funny looking post. It was due to the examples of HTML code included in the post not being parsed properly. Apparently I had been writing my post in HMTL mode instead of Visual mode and all the HTML code was parsed as “real” code.

    The code was wrapped in <code> tags, instead of the usual <pre> tags which keeps the code looking as expected.

    If you are neither certain of the exact uses of each of these two tags I suggest you read this documentation page for a quick overview of the differences along with other usage hints.

  • HTML textarea default value line breaks

    This one I struggled to find the right formula to get it working. The solution was so simple and basic that I wonder why I did not just try it before all the complicated approaches.

    I basically needed to have line breaks occurring in the default value of a textarea field inside a HTML form. That is between the <textarea>…</textarea> tags.

    My first approach was to simply add \n where I wanted a line break. I also tried all possible combinations of \r, \n, CR, LF, separate, together, quoted, escaped… you name it. Nothing worked.

    Googling around proved no good. Most people kept referring to the nl2br function in PHP, but this is not what I was trying to achieve. Besides this is all client code, pure HTML, no server side processing involved.

    I ended up at the W3 HTML specification and saw the light! A simple example copied from their site included the solution to all my struggles:

    <FORM action="http://somesite.com/prog/text-read" method="post">
   <P>
   <TEXTAREA name="thetext" rows="20" cols="80">
   First line of initial text.
   Second line of initial text.
   </TEXTAREA>
   <INPUT type="submit" value="Send"><INPUT type="reset">
   </P>
</FORM>

    Notice how they simply added a line break in the actual HTML source. This is so simple that you may even not notice the subtle difference. Let me show you how I had my initial code:

    <form>
<p>Some random paragraph</p>
<textarea>First line \n Second line</textarea>
<p>Some more randomness</p>
</form>

    As normally white space in HTML is simply ignored I did not give a thought about the fact that a line break can be created in the default textarea value by simply…, yes, adding a line break when writing the source code.

  • Virtualmin & suEXEC

    If by chance you have installed the Webmin module Virtualmin at some point you may have come across the following error message when setting up the module:

    Failed to save enabled features: The Suexec command on your system is configured to only run scripts under /var/www, but the Virtualmin base directory is /home. CGI and PHP scripts run as domain owners will not be executed.

    This error message is caused by using a version of suEXEC compiled by default to use /var/www as the document root of Apache. The suEXEC feature allows to execute scripts as the user owning the virtual host instead of the global apache user increasing security. The solution has either been to recompile suEXEC with the new desired path (/home in this case) or simply disable (Server Templates > Apache Website > Automatically add appropriate SuExec directive?) suEXEC completely inside the Virtualmin module configuration.

    A much simpler approach I used was to create a link between the two directories. I used mount to bind the two directories together and act as one. Voila, Virtualmin now continued the module setup without a remark!

    To achieve this I ran the following command as root:

    mount --bind /var/www /home

    That is it really. Now the directories act as one for the suEXEC wrapper too.

    Please note this will usually only last till next reboot. To mount permanently include the following line into your /etc/fstab:

    /var/www /home none bind

    The following is the extract from the mount man page:

    Since Linux 2.4.0 it is possible to remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is
    mount --bind olddir newdir
    or fstab entry is:
    /olddir  /newdir  none  bind
    After this call the same contents is accessible in two places.  One can also remount a single file (on a single file).

    One note is that if you already had local users set up inside the /home directory you will mount on top of it, making the existing users data unavailable (not deleted). Simply unmount again and the users data will be back again. To get around this change the default path Virtualmin uses to create new virtual hosts home directories to something else e.g. /virtualmin. This can be done in the Users & Groups module.

  • Tags vs. Categories, my ontological classification

    When writing something I usually have a hard time categorising the content as very seldom it will fit into one single category. The solution to this may simply be adding it to more categories instead but then the category hierarchy actually breaks. Instead I definitely prefer to assign tags to content which is much more specific and does not limit you in any way, as there is really no predefined containers but instead any word in the vocabulary can be used to tag your content. During my research determining if WordPress actually had improved the categorisation system I came across an interesting piece of writing about ontology on the web which I recommend you to read through in its full length.

    The latest version of WordPress does seem to handle tags fine although there is some misconception between the tag and category idea. It is somehow mingled together to actually overlap each other although still not the same. I guess the WordPress developers are worried about legacy installations and possible issues during an upgrade path, so they keep things backwards compatible somehow.

    As you can see on this site I make no use of the categories whatsoever. I am forced by WordPress to assign any content to at least one category which I left as the default “Uncategorized”. The name is really irrelevant as I make no use of categories in the display. You may notice the tags assigned to each post just below the title where before the category was displayed.

    To make this little change depending on your theme you may have to edit a couple of files. In my own case I edited three files:

    1. page.php
    2. index.php
    3. single.php

    The change required is the same in all three files, namely replace the following snippet:

    <?php the_category(',') ?>

    with this one:

    <?php /*the_category(',')*/ the_tags( ' ', ', ', ''); ?>

    That is all. Now you will have a nice list of tags instead of the irrational categories list which does not really suit written content.