Installing Wordpress on Redbrick

Wordpress is a nifty open-source PHP Content Management (or "blogging") web tool. You can use it to handle your website blog with ease.

It is very easy to install on Redbrick. 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.

The only difficulty is that because it's a PHP and your trying to run it on Redbrick you've got to modify the files. You need to add '#!/usr/local/bin/php' to the beginning of any PHP file that will be excuted. But which ones?

Well I've already done it so here is the list of files you'll need to modify to get it installed and up and running. There maybe more but they'll be corner cases rather than anything else. This is only applicable to version 2.0.3!

These changes are also applicable to the latest version 2.0.3.

index.php
wp-comments-post.php
wp-login.php
wp-pass.php
wp-register.php
wp-rss.php
wp-trackback.php
xmlrpc.php
wp-admin/edit-comments.php
wp-admin/categories.php
wp-admin/edit-pages.php
wp-admin/edit.php
wp-admin/import.php
wp-admin/index.php
wp-admin/install.php
wp-admin/link-add.php
wp-admin/link-categories.php
wp-admin/link-import.php
wp-admin/link-manager.php
wp-admin/moderation.php
wp-admin/options-discussion.php
wp-admin/options-general.php
wp-admin/options-misc.php
wp-admin/options-reading.php
wp-admin/options-permalink.php
wp-admin/options-writing.php
wp-admin/options.php
wp-admin/page-new.php
wp-admin/plugin-editor.php
wp-admin/plugins.php
wp-admin/post.php
wp-admin/profile.php
wp-admin/templates.php
wp-admin/theme-editor.php
wp-admin/themes.php
wp-admin/upgrade.php
wp-admin/users.php
wp-admin/upgrade.php
wp-admin/profile-update.php
wp-admin/inline-uploading.php
wp-admin/user-edit.php
wp-admin/setup-config.php

You can use this command on Redbrick to automatically modify the files but replace file1, file2, etc. with the files from the list above.

perl -i.bak -ple 'print "#!/usr/local/bin/php" if $. eq 1; close ARGV if eof;' file1 file2

Once you've correctly modified the files, you can follow the instructions included with Wordpress to finish the installation.

Fixing the Dashboard

But there is one final step. Once installed and working, 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.

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.

Permalinks

If your using a vhost, 'mod_rewrite' is not enabled by default. This means that Wordpress Permalink optinos 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?