So, this plugin has been fairly handy, but I ran into some trouble getting it going and couldn’t find much help on the web. So I figure I’ll write down what I had to do here, in case someone else runs into trouble. I can’t even remember all of the things I had to tweak over time (this was a very drawn-out project) but I figured I’d note the big ones here, and if you or I run into others we can share them here as well.

- You probably need to enable Paypal’s IPN for this to work. From the merchant account in Paypal, click the profile tab, then click the payments option, and choose IPN settings. Enable IPN and set the listener URL to the URL of your WordPress installation.

- In my case, we then had to deal with Internal Server Errors on the listener. I still don’t know why that was, but the site worked fine on other servers. I had the host move from FreeBSD to a linux server, and it worked well after that.

- Disable the built-in CSS so you can make the buttons as you’d like them, then go back and add in your own CSS plus whatever you deem necessary from their CSS to make the site look fine.

- Form Fields won’t line up in IE:
The form page was showing up in quirks mode; if I used the Developer Tools to display in strict mode, it worked fine. As it turns out, there were some hidden input fields above the DTD. IE didn’t know how to deal with this, so into quirks mode it went. I talked to my super wordpress guru friend, Tyrel, and he pointed out that wpnonce was echoing rather than returning. So I had to change wpgft_processOrder.php like so, from:

if( function_exists(‘wp_nonce_field’) ) $post_content .= wp_nonce_field($nonceID);

to

if( function_exists(‘wp_nonce_field’) ) $post_content .= wp_nonce_field($nonceID,’_wpnonce’,true,false);

Currently, I’m trying to see whether I can find a way to display gift certificate information such as the name of the gift, rather than its purchase cost, on the printable emailed certificate. I’ll share details there once I have them.

So you might know I love to help out with the local Open Source community. Who doesn’t love giving some time to a cause that could change the world? And yet it’s hard to find time in our schedules. Project Day helps with that, and one of the projects at our last project day involved the theme and branding for the Utah Open Source Conference that’s coming up in May 2012.

As much as all we geeks were somewhat sick of the ambiguous buzzword of the year, none of us can deny that “The Cloud” is a fairly important topic right now. Plus, since it’s such a popular term with business executives, we thought that talking about Open Source technology and the cloud might be a great way to help draw in that audience.

The trick was coming up with a fun way to phrase the theme, and one of the phrases I blurted out was, “The Silver Lining.” Alas; everyone latched onto it. I actually liked “Demystifying the Cloud” a bit better — but we all thought that might be a bit too puntastic, but The Silver Lining just sounded weak. “It’s okay,” Mindjuju reasoned, “The designer will come up with some way to communicate the idea without it looking too cheesy.” The designer == me. And thus I was sent home with the impossible task of coming up with a cool logo using that tagline. And I thought about it a lot, but couldn’t love any of the ideas, and thus kept putting the project off til I was faced with a deadline.

I explained my plight to a friend, and he suggested I might try a big thundercloud instead of a care-bear-ish sort of cloud. I thought that might work, but the tagline still sounded off to me. Walking to my car and staring at the thunderclouds forming above me, I started to brainstorm what I could do. I liked the word storm, not just the image. Storm cloud. Almost, right? So I came up with this, and after talking to Mindjuju and Herlo and their consulting with others, the phrase stuck.

What do you think of it? And what does the phrase Storming the Cloud mean to you?

One we problem I ran into when exporting is that most of my resized images did not pull through. So my post would call for someImage-400×266.jpg though the import only grabbed someImage.jpg and not its variants.

The fix was pretty easy, though. I just used Replace. Do a datadump of your wp_posts table beforehand, just in case, and then:

update `wp_posts` set post_content = replace(post_content,’-400×266.jpg’,’.jpg’);

I had a few other variants like 400×300.jpg or 400×400.jpg depending on the aspect ratio — obviously you’ll want to use sizes that are in use at your own site — but but for the most part this went smashingly. Hoping that helps someone.

So, I’ve divided up my geekiness from my momminess — though, if you know me at all, you’re aware that I am truly a very geeky mom and an equally mommy-esque geek: the differentiation exists on the interwebs alone.

Technically, I’ve got quite a bit of cleanup to do both here and there, as well as a number of hairy redirects (or perhaps I’ll only redirect popular articles and clean up my internal links) but I figure I’ll let cowpaths be cowpaths and let each blog take whatever direction it will before I polish either one.

For those of you who didn’t know, I’ve started a brand new blog: blog.SingleMormonMommy.com, wherein I’ll unabashedly cover subjects from Mormonism to Maryisms without worry that such postings will inadvertently turn up at Utah Open Source Planet or as fodder for highly awkward job interviews. Likewise, I’ll be able to post geeky stuff here without coming across as a mumbler to my non-geeky mom friends.

Anyhow, so whether you fit best here, or there, or still prefer to read both, know that I do hope this will work out well for you as my reader, too. On to geekier matters…

Would you rather be…

Stuck in an elevator with somebody who talks a lot?(A)
OR
Stuck in an elevator with nobody at all?(B)

If you said (A) then you are probably extroverted like a dog.
If you said (B) then you are probably introverted like a cat.

Dogs usually like being with other people.
Cats usually like being alone.

My mom was scratching my head this morning and said, “Ethan, you are just like a puppy.” But I sort of think I am more like a cat.