Installing Wordpress on Redbrick/2.0.x

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This page documents how to install Wordpress 2.0.x version.

Unless you have a very good reason you should refer to the guide for installing the latest version of Wordpress. The old legacy 2.0.x builds have not been maintained since 2007 and so have several known security exploits.

The page Installing Wordpress on Redbrick should detail how to install the latest version of Wordpress.

You can get your hands on the last working 2.0.x version on Redbrick of Wordpress at http://static.wordpress.org/archive/wordpress-2.0.4.tar.gz

For the most part the instructions bundled with it are correct.

You will need to have an SQL account so if you don't have one email the admins.

You can follow the instructions included with Wordpress to finish the installation.

Getting Permalinks

If you're using a vhost, 'mod_rewrite' is not enabled by default.

This means that Wordpress Permalink options do not work. You must email the admins and ask them to enable it for your domain.

Is 'mod_rewrite' enabled for normal redbrick webpages?

Getting it to work through the Redbrick/DCU Proxy

Wordpress works fine without any of the following fixes. However you may find that a number of plugins or other features that attempt to access external sites and servers to Redbrick won't work. This is because there is no proper proxy support built in to Wordpress (or in php, depending on your point of view).

If your trying to get Wordpress to work on another site thats behind a proxy, just change "proxy.dcu.ie" to your proxy and "8080" (or is it "3128"?) to the correct port. These fixes do not, however, support authentication.

I did a quick "grep" and "find" of Wordpress and found 5 to 6 other calls to 'fsockopen' that do not support proxies. More than likely your Redbrick Wordpress blog will not send pings/trackbacks unless you do further modificatoins. I have raised as defect on Wordpress about this issue.

Fixing the Dashboard

You may notice that the "Dashboard", the page that welcomes you when you login, looks a bit blank. With 2.0.3, Wordpress no longer crashes but it may not update very well. This is because Wordpress is attempting to download other websites relevant to Wordpress such as the Wordpress Dev Blog but can't because Redbrick is behing a proxy.

To fix this, open 'wp-include/class-snoopy.php' and search for 'var $proxy_host'. Set 'proxy_host' to "proxy.dcu.ie", 'proxy_port' to "8080".

var $proxy_host = "proxy.dcu.ie";   
var $proxy_port = "8080";

Now search for the variable '_isproxy' and set it to "true".

var $_isproxy = true;   

Now the dashboard should work properly.

Akismet

The Akismet anti-spam plugin won't work on Redbrick without modification. I'd recommend Spam Karma 2 plugin for dealing with comment spam. However, if you want to use Akismet instead, you'll find that it seems to think that your Wordpress.com API key is invalid. This is because it doesn't handle sending post requests through the proxy.

You do not need to do this modification. Wordpress will work correctly without it.

Open 'wp-content/plugins/akismet.php'. Search for 'function ksd_http_post'. You'll need to modify this function like this:

 // Returns array with headers in $response[0] and entity in $response[1]
 function ksd_http_post($request, $host, $path, $port = 80) {
        global $ksd_user_agent;
 
        //$http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
        //$http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
        $http_request  = "POST http://$host$path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
        $http_request .= "Host: http://$host\r\n";
        $http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=" . get_settings('blog_charset') . "\r\n";
        $http_request .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($request) . "\r\n";
        $http_request .= "User-Agent: $ksd_user_agent\r\n";
        $http_request .= "\r\n";
        $http_request .= $request;
        $response = '';
 
        //if( false !== ( $fs = @fsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10) ) ) {
        if( false !== ( $fs = @fsockopen('proxy.dcu.ie', 3128, $errno, $errstr, 10) ) ) {
                fwrite($fs, $http_request);
 
                while ( !feof($fs) )
                        $response .= fgets($fs, 1160); // One TCP-IP packet
                fclose($fs);
                $response = explode("\r\n\r\n", $response, 2);
        }
        return $response;
 }  

Now it should be able to verify your Wordpress.com API key and make requests to the Akismet server.

class-IXR.php

I identified another proxy problem with Wordpress. What exactly it effects I don't know but probaly trackback/pings to other sites because the xmlrpc uses 'class-IXR.php' which does not support proxies. I noticed the problem trying to get a plugin called LiveJournal Crossposter to work. See here for details of what I tried originally.

You do not need to do this modification. Wordpress will work correctly without it.

Open 'class-IXR.php'. Search for 'fsockopen'. Just above this, modify the '$request' string like this:

 $request  = "POST http://{$this->server}{$this->path} HTTP/1.0$r";
 $request .= "Host: http://{$this->server}$r";
 $request .= "Content-Type: text/xml$r";
 $request .= "User-Agent: {$this->useragent}$r";
 $request .= "Content-length: {$length}$r$r";
 $request .= $xml;

Then below that, modify the 'fsockopen' call like this:

if ($this->timeout) {
 //$fp = @fsockopen($this->server, $this->port, $errno, $errstr, $this->timeout);
 $fp = @fsockopen('proxy.dcu.ie', 3128, $errno, $errstr, $this->timeout);
} else {
 //$fp = @fsockopen($this->server, $this->port, $errno, $errstr);
 $fp = @fsockopen('proxy.dcu.ie', 3128, $errno, $errstr);
}

Now, class-IXR.php will handle outbound requests from Redbrick perfectly.

functions.php

I installed the latest version of Google Sitemaps, a plugin that generates a google sitemap for your wordpress blog and tells Google about it. However when I activated the latest version and tried to generate a log I saw an error when it tried to ping Google. This is due to a similar problem as 'class-IXR.php' above.

You do not need to do this modification. Wordpress will work correctly without it.

To fix this, open 'wp-includes/functions.php'. Search for the function 'wp_remote_fopen'. You should find something like below:

 function wp_remote_fopen( $uri ) {
       if ( ini_get('allow_url_fopen') ) {
               $fp = fopen( $uri, 'r' );
               if ( !$fp )
                       return false;
               $linea = ;
               while( $remote_read = fread($fp, 4096) )
                       $linea .= $remote_read;
               fclose($fp);
               return $linea;
       } else if ( function_exists('curl_init') ) {

This code does not work behind a proxy. Replace it with this code.

 function wp_remote_fopen( $uri ) {
       if ( ini_get('allow_url_fopen') ) {
               /*$fp = fopen( $uri, 'r' );
               if ( !$fp )
                       return false;
               $linea = ;
               while( $remote_read = fread($fp, 4096) )
                       $linea .= $remote_read;
               fclose($fp);
               return $linea;*/

               $proxy_fp = fsockopen('proxy.dcu.ie','3128');
               if ( !$proxy_fp )
                       return false;
               fputs($proxy_fp, "GET $uri HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: proxy.dcu.ie\r\n\r\n");
               while(!feof($proxy_fp))
                       $proxy_cont .= fread($proxy_fp,4096);
               fclose($proxy_fp);
               $proxy_cont = substr($proxy_cont, strpos($proxy_cont,"\r\n\r\n")+4);
               return $proxy_cont;
       } else if ( function_exists('curl_init') ) {

Now the Google Sitemaps plugin should work a treat and ping google correctly.