The Soul Mountain

Broken Wings

8:08 PM
8 Comments

Fixing Wordpress permalink issues on Ubuntu: A Solution Guide

Okay, so I came across a situation where I needed to migrate my wordpress site from local to server (in my case which was running on Ubuntu). Everything was working fine until I came across many issues after setting up the site on the server. I had made some changes to the permalinks and now , suddenly, everything just turned into a mess.

Hence I decided to pen down this article in the hope that it may help some of you because I had searched up and down and suffered a lot trying to understand why it was causing issues.

This is the message I got:

Before we proceed on fixing the issues, lets try to put the pieces together now, shall we?

Note: You could really skip this part of the article and come back to it at the end if none of the solutions given in the next heading works.

What Really Happened before the 404

1. You think your permalinks are not cool and SEO-friendly and check the one that fits you well, like you see below:

2. You save the changes.

3. Depending on certain scenarios, you may or may not get this message at the very bottom of your screen.

One reason could be that apache does not allow wordpress to easily change the content of your .htaccess file which resides on your wordpress root folder.

4. In this case, you would manually have to change the contents. And hence you have to copy the contents listed there and paste it into the .htaccess file.

5. Now the reason you may wonder you don’t see the .htaccess file (along with some others) is because it’s a hidden file.

You may have to make the hidden files visible. (Ctrl+H or google it up to find the way). If its still not visible, you could just create a .htaccess file and paste the contents in. Like given below:

From the above code, <IfModule checks within apache whether the mod_rewrite.c module is included within itself. If it is, the code block runs. Else it does not. (which is the problem I and most of you out there is facing).

Somehow the damage is done. How do I fix the permalink issues?

If you had tried changing permalinks, your .htaccess file will get updated using new rewrite rules. This is generally what should happen, but the reason the 404 error comes is simply because none of the rewrite rules of your .htaccess file gets executed.

Why doesn't the rewrite rules get executed?

Answer: Because the rewrite module in apache is not installed or enabled.

To check if this is realy the case, go to the “mods-enabled” folder under apache2 folder and check if there is a rewrite.load file existing. If its missing then you don’t have it installed.

Note: throughout the tutorial i am assuming that you have permissions to carry out commands and also you have permissions to edit files. You may come across situations where you would have to do it, so if you get an error stating you do not have permission for carrying out a task, make sure you get access rights.

Enabling mod_rewrite.c module on Apache

1. To do that, simply open up terminal and type in this command :

sudo a2enmod rewrite

This will simply enable the rewrite module in apache.

2. If this was successful, then you could simply restart apache using the below command.

service apache2 restart

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

3. Now refresh your browser and check if your 404 error has vanished. If it has, congratulations.

It still does not work. What do I do now?

Scenario 1:

If you are still stuck maybe there is one thing you would have forgotten.You should do the following:

1. Give .htaccess files permission to override previous directives

You would generally have to open up httpd.conf file. (I have tried high and low trying to figure out where this file was, but if you don’t find this file, apache2.conf is the file you need to be looking at (in my case)).

If you don't find this file, don't worry According to their documentation, find one of these:

On Ed/X/Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu Edgy Eft, the "main server configuration file" is /etc/apache2/apache2.conf .

in the LAMP download about a week ago with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) the default configuration file was /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default

So feel free to trotter around these folders within apache2 to find the file.

On my server, this is where it resides.

2. Open up the file and locate a section that looks like (fully, partially or almost close) to this:

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
# Uncomment this directive is you want to see apache2's
# default start page (in /apache2-default) when you go to /
#RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
</Directory>

3. Replace the “AllowOverride None” with “AllowOverride All. This tells Apache that it's okay to allow.htaccess files to over-ride previous directives.

After the change the piece of code looks like this:

4. You might need to reload or restart (step given above) Apache before this change will have an effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Now your .htaccess files in your wordpress root directory will be able to make a difference. Your permalink issues should be sorted by now.

Scenario 2:

If you got an error message as such after you tried to enable the rewrite module, like this…

... it is probably because your userdir is not enabled in apache. In the apache documentation it says that by default, access to these directories is not enabled.

Lets enable it now.

1. Type into the console the following as you can see in the image:

2. Open your mods-enabled folder under the apache2 folder. You can now see the rewrite.load file has appeared in it.

3. Refresh your browser and now you can see the site running fine.

Scenario 3:

Maybe your rewrite rules are not included within your .htaccess file or something along that line. Idk. Read the first heading given above to check around a bit.

If none of them also work, I am sorry I don’t think I can find any other way. You may just have to search for more ways.

Eventually you shall come up with a solution like I did.

5:02 PM
22 Comments

Favorite Movie Moments - Godfather

Movies

3:52 PM
2 Comments

Enabling USB Debugging - For the ANDROID Developer

Android

Many a time, when trying to enable USB Debugging, our devices may not actually get discovered whatever you try to do.

So here is how I was able to fix the issues I faced with USB Debugging.

How to enable USB Debugging option on your device

Follow these steps:

1. On your device, in the Developer options, enable "USB Debugging"

Where you actually find the "Developer Options" may differ from phone to phone (But definitely hiding somewhere in your Settings menu). The above is a screenshot from Galaxy Grand Duos Device.

On newer phones with Android 4.2 , such as Samsung S4 device, etc, you might have to enable USB Debugging in a rather weird kind of way. This option is hidden by default. You will have to un-hide it

This is how you do it.

1. Go to Settings -> About Device

2. Now, click on the "Build Number" seven times and you get a message saying "Developer options has been enabled

3. And now, your "Developer Options" has appeared back again

On Windows

Now for your device to get detected in order to run the app on it, you will need appropriate drivers. Sometimes, as you plug your device to the machine, the drivers automatically update themselves. But in other cases, you might have to manually do that and you may not always have the drivers.

This is the driver I used for Galaxy Grand DUOS. This will also work for other phones. (But first make sure your device is connected to the machine through a USB cable)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c5nv47vx8sxcz42/Samsung_USB_Driver_for_Mobile_Phones_v1.5.14.0.exe

If the above doesn't work, you can alternatively try this too.

http://developer.samsung.com/android/tools-sdks/Samsung-Andorid-USB-Driver-for-Windows

On Mac

On MAC machines, you don't need a driver. Follow the link below and download this application. Run it once after connecting your device to your machine through a usb cable.

http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let us inform our Android App project on our IDE (like Eclipse) that we would like to debug our app on a real device.

1. Right click on your project and click on "Run as" and click on "Run Configurations"

2. Select the first option as you can see below. And click "Run"

3. Now you can see your device that has connected to your machine. Click on it and then hit "OK".

(You can tick the "Use same device for future launches, so this dialog will not appear all the time)

4. You are now ready to run the application on your device. You don't necessarily have to repeat step 1 every time you want to run your application. You can just click on the "Run" button on your toolbar.

12:48 PM
1 Comments

Gotchas and Lessons Learnt - Android Development

Android

Starting Android development might mean taking a new leap into a new area for many. But Android can be very interesting to work on. Only at the end of completing an app, would someone wish that they knew about some essential android information at the very start!

These are a few tips can help you on your first Android venture. So here goes:

Running and Debugging applications

I would always recommend using a device rather than an Emulator. One of the reasons being:

Running an application on an Emulator is very slow and it takes minutes to just deploy the app onto the emulator. On the other hand, deploying it on the real device is fast, efficient and , HEY!, the end product is going to be on a real device. Why waste time on an emulator (unless of course you don’t own one).

If you want to know how to do this procedure or you have issues with detecting your devices to debug your app, follow this link:
http://seventhsoulmountain.blogspot.com/2014/01/usb-debugging-for-android-applications.html

Know how your application looks on different phones

In case you overlook this feature, I just want to remind you that there is a cool feature on ADT where you can find how your app looks on different densities of screens.

You can choose any of these different devices to check how your app looks like on these devices.

Alternatively, you can click on “Preview All Screens” to see all the screens fitted to your screen.

Note: If you get an error as such

…then simply click on the green android image on top and select an API Level lower than 19 (API 18 or below).

Source Files missing

Sometimes when you are debugging and you are faced with the scenario below. You don’t even have to get into the debugging, just jump into an Android class and you may find this.

All you’re Android source files are missing. So what should you do?

This basically means that the classes haven’t been attached to its source. Clearly, Eclipse does not know where the source code for the dependent jars are.

To overcome this problem, this solution can work. Click on the “Attach Source” button. Direct the folder path to wherever the Android SDK’s sources folder is, and select the specified API level folder (android-15) (You can also just only give the path to the sources folder without specifying the api level).

Eclipse crashes and you lose data. What next?

Be prepared to run into this circumstance at any time! Eclipse is very unreliable because it loses your code that you spent time and energy on. It can happen when your power goes, when your computer heats up, when there’s less memory on your machine etc.

You see something similar to the one below

So what can you do to prevent this?

You should always create backups.
Use a version control system (SVN, Git etc)

…BUT you haven’t, and now you are helpless. What can you do to RECOVER them at this point?

There is one thing you can do. Though at times you may not be able to recover your files or you may not get ALL of your code, it is still worth the try!

1. On the file, right click and click on “Replace with” and click on “Local History”

2. Select the last that has been in the history and click on “Replace"

Do not lose your Keystore!

Don’t forget to save your Keystore file! This is what you will need to sign your application if it has to go on Google Play. If you have misplaced your keyfile, you cannot upload an updated version of your app. You will have to upload it again!

Google doesn’t store your private key because it doesn’t have any use with it. So there is absolutely no reason and no way Google can restore something they don’t own.

So... Create as many backups as you can.

Know about Android UI Components before you start Coding!

I made a grave mistake once about overlooking the List Menu in Android. I went about implementing layouts that looked like them. The worst part was writing the functionality for them. It took up a lot of time, effort and at the end, when a co-worker pointed out what I was doing wrong, I was frustrated. That is one mistake I will never make again!

UI Resources designing and creation

When designing UI resources for your app, you should always have in mind that android devices come in various densities and sizes. When creating an icon or an image, you should create them in appropriate sizes so that your images dont look small or take up less space on your HDPI screen, when it fits properly on your MDPI.

Take a look at this documentation: It will help you get a clear idea about it:
http://developer.android.com/design/style/devices-displays.html

Libraries to use in your App

I have basically not been in need to use a third party library in an app that I was developing. But there are plenty and some of them are given below. I have heard alot about these libraries and I'm sure it can help you.

ActionBarSherlock - This allows you to easily develop an application with an action bar for every version of Android from 2.x and up

SlidingMenu - An Android library that allows you to easily create applications with slide-in menus.

Some tools to use in your App

Especially when you are planning to make your app reach out to a wider audience around the world, you should be very responsible about how your application responds to them. Which means, you should identify any crash scenarios that may arise on different types of phones.

Crashlytics - this is a really cool plugin that you can use in your app which notifies you of all the crashes that occur in their devices as a result of using the app.

Matt - this tool helps you identify possible memory leaks and reduces your memory consumption

Something in your XML file doesn't work as expected

You do some new change to your XML file and it doesn't work as expected. CLEAN REBUILD! You spend hours trying to find out what went wrong and later you realize a simple Clean Build fixed your issue. Not only goes for XML, but also your source code.

Help is just a click away

Android Developer Documentation is really good! All you need to know is in there!

------------------------------------------------------

Yeah so folks, this is all I have for now, and maybe if I have more things coming to my mind about my lessons learnt on Android, we shall meet again.

Happy Coding! :)

11:42 AM
0 Comments

Favourite Movie moments - Casablanca

Movies

8:40 PM
0 Comments

Would you have chosen Jay Gatsby over Tom Buchanan?

Movies

Yes, I am talking about the characters from “The Great Gatsby”. I am sure you may have either read the Fritzgerald classic or watched the box office sensation that came out in the year 2013 (or both). Honestly, the movie does justice to the book, which is a very rare occurrence when whirling the characters and words from a book into the rolling cameras.

Though it is a classic, sometimes I am not quite sure it can be classified as such. It has a storyline very similar to contemporary reality. But somehow I guess, things were very different in that bygone era and this was the best dramatic love story of all time. Sigh!

I am not planning on writing a review, but an interesting thought just popped into my mind.

If you were Daisy, would you have chosen Jay Gatsby over Tom?

I know of a lot of girls who would say, “Yes I would definitely have chosen Gatsby.” And if you ask why, they simply go, “He loved Daisy with all his life“. But that's about it. No more reasons!

Alright. He loved her with all her life. Agreed. But what Daisy wanted was protection. She was an insecure little woman all her life and she wanted someone who could protect her. And Gatsby, even after years of earning to impress her, would never have been able to give her the protection she needed. So she stays with Tom. Listening to him make decisions for her.

She was a fool. A beautiful little fool. A poor little rich girl. To her, at the end of the day, money rules love. She falls in love with Gatsby, but she decided to marry Tom because he has the wealth.

My heart definitely reaches out to Gatsby. He is a fool in love, who thinks, earning a bit of money to show off would get his love back. He should have had more brains than to think that someone who rejected him, on her accord, over his wealth one time, will never be impressed.

If you ask me whether I'd choose Gatsby or Tom, if I were Daisy…

No. I would never wish to be Daisy because her mind and personality disgusts me. But, in her shoes, if I were to choose someone I would have chosen to stick by Tom. I gave my vows in marriage to him and I will not want to break my promises. Tom supported me, and he protected me. And to top it all, I am bearing Tom Buchanan’s child. If I decide to go back to Gatsby, then I should never have fallen in love with Tom’s worldly possessions and himself in the first place.

I loved Gatsby in a long-gone time. But I also decided to marry Tom. If I am making a decision to stay with Gatsby, I should never have given into marriage.

My husband (Tom), slept with another woman, but I am going to forgive him, because, if he leaves me, I wouldn’t have someone giving me the security I needed.

Daisy was still a child who hasn’t grown up, mentally. She needed someone who would make decisions for her, someone who would provide her wealth and someone who would protect her. With her mindset, she (I) would never have gone for Gatsby.

Now that the Daisy in I have stated I will go for Tom, my real self, feels disgusted at myself. But that’s sadly how this whole love thing works. Gatsby loved me with all his heart, to go to the extent of being someone he never was just to win over me. But I, on the other hand, fall in love with another man and give myself to him in marriage.

But I hate the character Daisy so much because she was a selfish, conceited and a stupid little woman. How I really wish Gatsby got her back. She had a choice, but she married Tom. That’s what infuriates me. Not everyone would have had a chance to marry someone they really wanted and this woman gets it and she blows it up for money. Her husband was bedding another woman and he has absolutely no integrity and Daisy STILL chooses to stay with him. I hate the character to bits and I will never like “The Great Gatsby” as much as I’d want to, because of the sole fact that she could have always gone for what her heart yearned for at the start, a luxury many don’t have, but she ultimately chose money.

Now, you... who would you have chosen? Jay or Buchanan?

4:03 PM
3 Comments

Pages

Broken Wings

Fixing Wordpress permalink issues on Ubuntu: A Solution Guide

What Really Happened before the 404

Somehow the damage is done. How do I fix the permalink issues?

Why doesn't the rewrite rules get executed?

Enabling mod_rewrite.c module on Apache

It still does not work. What do I do now?

Scenario 1:

Scenario 2:

Scenario 3:

Favorite Movie Moments - Godfather

Enabling USB Debugging - For the ANDROID Developer

How to enable USB Debugging option on your device

On Windows

On Mac

Gotchas and Lessons Learnt - Android Development

Running and Debugging applications

Know how your application looks on different phones

Source Files missing

Eclipse crashes and you lose data. What next?

Do not lose your Keystore!

Know about Android UI Components before you start Coding!

UI Resources designing and creation

Libraries to use in your App

Some tools to use in your App

Something in your XML file doesn't work as expected

Help is just a click away

Favourite Movie moments - Casablanca

Would you have chosen Jay Gatsby over Tom Buchanan?

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