Category: Technology

You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page: WordPress Contact Form ][ plugin

There is a problem that seems to still be plaguing many WordPress plugins since upgrading to WordPress 2.8.2 over the summer: Navigating to the plugin admin page results in the WordPress error, “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.” The only affected plugin on sites I maintain is the Contact Form ][ plugin. Zalds.com has a good write up on how to fix the problem for the Adsense Deluxe plugin, and the solution is the same for the Contact Form ][ plugin.

Here are the steps to fix the problem. It seems like a lot, but only because I am breaking it down into very fine steps.

  1. Log in to the admin area of the site.
  2. Go the the list of installed plugins by clicking the “Installed” link in the Plugins menu.
  3. Deactivate the Contact Form ][ plugin. It is not recommended to make changes to an active plugin.
  4. Edit the Contact Form ][ plugin by clicking the “Edit” link next to the Activate/Deactivate link. This will allow access to the actual PHP code of the plugin.
  5. Find the text “admin_head” using the browser find functionality, just like you would search for text in a web page (usually “Control-F” on Windows, “Command-F” on Mac).
  6. Change “admin_head” to “admin_menu”.
  7. Hit the “Update File” button.
  8. Go back to the list of installed plugins and reactivate the Contact Form ][ plugin.

To better illustrate the line that needs changed, this line:

    add_action('admin_head', 'wpcf_add_options_page');

needs to be changed to look like this:

    add_action('admin_menu', 'wpcf_add_options_page');

The zalds.com solution has some screen captures to illustrate the process as well, although that fix is for the Adsense Deluxe plugin. Again, the process is identical, so substitute “Contact Form ][” for “Adsense Deluxe” in that solution, and you should regain access to the admin pages for the Contact Form ][ plugin.

Tech stuff: The admin_head hook should not be used to add plugin specific content to admin pages, as it adds the plugin specific content to every admin page, which has the potential to break other plugins. More on this topic here.

Incidentally, the author of the Contact Form ][ plugin seems to have stopped maintaining it and has taken his site down, apparently due to lack of donations.

Google Updates (Fixes) Mobile Reader

Well, mostly fixes my issue…

Although going to the www.google.com/reader/m on my N95 still redirects to the iPhone version, www.google.com/reader/i, the iPhone version now contains a settings page that allows external pages to be reformatted for better display in a mobile browser.

Much better. I still prefer the /m version of the mobile reader over the /i version, but as long as I don’t have to wait for the bloated ad heavy external pages to load in the mobile browser I’m pretty happy. The mobile version of Google Reader is usable for me again.

Update (September 23, 2008): Google has removed the redirect from /reader/m to /reader/i for both iPhone and Series 60 users (N95 and other Nokia smart phones). I am happily using the old /m interface again.

Google Reader Confuses N95 with iPhone

One of the killer apps I use daily on my N95 is the mobile version of Google Reader, http://google.com/reader/m. Until recently this was one of the best mobile web apps around, in my opinion, as the pages were extremely lightweight, easy to read and fast to load. This is roughly what the mobile interface to Google Reader looked like on an N95:

I say “looked like” because the user experience changed one week ago, coincidentally right around the time of the iPhone 3G launch. Some users, notably all iPhone and at least some Nokia phone users, are now automatically redirected to the Brand new Google Reader for iPhone, http://google.com/reader/i/, which looks like this on my N95:

Yes, it’s all Web 2.0 and Ajaxy and stuff, but it’s also bigger, slower, less efficient, and less effective as an application for me.

Note these screen captures were done using Safari on a MacBook Pro, not on the actual phone. You get the idea, though, as this is still a good representation of what the pages look like on the phone. The images actually look nicer here. For example, the stars, which are clicked to “star” or highlight an item, don’t show up on the N95.

I’m not the only one experiencing disappointment about this change, although it seems most of those upset are using an iPhone and not an N95 or some other phone. While I believe it’s wrong to force the /i interface down users’ throats for anyone, even iPhone users, it’s a bit disturbing from a development/QA perspective that non-iPhone devices are affected as well, and that this has been the case for a week now.

Unless this is intentional.

Assuming it’s not, the reason non-iPhones are affected is likely related to the browser user agent on the Nokia phones:

Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN95-3/20.2.011; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413

The N95 browser advertises itself as Safari, probably because it uses Apple’s WebKit. It also very clearly shows that this is a Nokia device, and not an iPhone.

The only response from Google so far has been:

Thanks for your feedback on the recent changes to Google Reader for your iPhone. Could you all confirm that you are using the latest version of your iPhone’s firmware? The latest update offered by Apple improves performance significantly and using Google Reader should not cause poor performance, even on EDGE iPhones.

I’d also like to let you know that we hear your feedback loud and clear regarding allowing the original, HTML version of Reader on your iPhone as an option. I’ll post an update to this situation shortly. In the meantime, please let me know if updating to the latest version of your iPhone’s firmware doesn’t solve the issue.

Not much help to me. Can I just have access to the /m interface again?

Additionally, navigating to the original article from the /m interface results in a page that is tailored to a small screen mobile device, which looks something like:

Continue reading Google Reader Confuses N95 with iPhone

Not remote enough

It’s not often that I completely take a day off from working. Seems there is always some little thing that needs attention, whether it’s testing out some new code, checking stats, responding to email, or addressing some sort of issue. Well, today wasn’t one of those days off, but if ya gotta work, there are worse places to be when working.

Remote working with Django

I was out for a hike near my house with our dog Django (no relation to the web framework, but some relation to Django Reinhardt), when I received an alert from our server monitoring system. Nothing critical, but it was something that needed to be addressed before it became critical. Perched on the nearest rock, I pulled out my Treo 650 (I’m not going to upgrade until I can get a Linux based Palm device), which has pssh installed. The signal is not great around here, but usable, so I was able to access the server in our data center, correct the issue, and continue our walk. This photo, taken with that same Treo, was my view from that rock after receiving the “recovery” alert. (Django is pretty patient with server alerts.)

Makes me wonder just how remote I can go, with the fewest and smallest devices, and still be effective. Not many look at this site, but I’m interested in any thoughts or comments regarding minimal tools used to work remotely in a technology related position. Sure, a laptop makes it easy. Let’s go smaller.