Tag: Errors

WordPress, I love you, but you drive me crazy

What’s even more extremely current than “bleeding edge”? Well, whatever it is, I’m not it. But I still try to keep my software as current as possible, and that includes updating WordPress whenever a new version is out. Most of the time, the difference is negligible, of course. Other than the major transformation of the admin interface with WordPress 2.5, very little actually changes as far as your site appears to the outside world. Which is good, for the most part, because you don’t really want unexpected changes on your site just because the underlying software is changed. It should all keep working just like it did before.

And there’s the problem: usually the only things I notice that are different when I run a WordPress update are things that are broken. That, and the fact that it’s a major pain to have to update the entire file set whenever a few changes are made. (It would be easy if I had terminal access to my server so I could upload the tarball, but no dice. I have to upload all n-thousand files individually.) So far I haven’t been able to find a reliable source listing exactly which files are modified from version to version.

That aside, what really frustrates me is when I do an update, like the 2.5.1 update that was released last week, and discover that none of my navigation works anymore. I still have no idea exactly what they did, but the old URL rewrites I was using — /%category%/%post_id% — crapped out. It seems like the %category% variable isn’t supported anymore, but I can’t find any documentation of that kind of change (nor can I comprehend the logic behind it, if it was in fact intentional).

Anyway, I discovered along the way that pretty much any of the rewrite schemes (at least, the 3 or 4 standard ones) seem to work, regardless of the one you’ve chosen as your “real” scheme. This makes sense because if you change the scheme, old links from other sites will still work. But my chosen custom scheme does not, anymore. So after some angry fiddling around, I settled on one of the standard schemes that’s almost like what I was using before, and everything seems copacetic, for now.

A useful tip if you love both YouTube and markup validation

YouTube is worlds apart from the likes of MySpace (*shudder*) when it comes to good code, but like most massively influential sites, they don’t really seem to care that much if their code validates, and even less if the code they provide webmasters for embedding content in their own sites does.

Frankly, I usually don’t care that much about validation either. I worked in this field for too many years when no validators even existed, and I’ve always taken the pragmatic approach: make it look and work the same, more or less, in all reasonably recent versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape (with Firefox and Safari having replaced Netscape over the past few years), and be done with it.

But I still have to admit that it’s a bit embarrassing that the “Valid XHTML” link (which appears in the Meta sidebar by default in WordPress) proves just how not valid my XHTML really is. I checked it today and was shocked to find 76 errors. I was relieved, however, when I dug in and discovered that only three of those errors had been my own. I had nested a <ul> inside a <span> (which I honestly didn’t even realize was a mistake, although I understand why it’s wrong, and it was easy enough to change from <span> to the valid <div> without any visible difference), and I had omitted alt attributes from a pair of images that don’t need to be identified by page readers anyway (and would probably be better off being worked into the CSS somehow).

These were pretty minor errors, if I do say so myself. 67 of the remaining 73 errors originated in cut-and-paste code blocks I got from PayPal and LinkShare (the latter of which I deal with only very reluctantly because they provide the mechanism for Apple’s iTunes affiliate program). What a surprise that the code from these sources looks like it was written by a tech support grunt in 1996 (in other words, by me in 1996)!

These were easy enough to fix, as well. I’ll just need to remember to fix them again if I ever change the code in those ad blocks, which I’m sure I will. The final 6 errors were the result of a YouTube video embedded in one of my blog posts. Ah yes, the age-old <object> vs. <embed> conundrum. I’ve always hated <object> because it seems unnecessarily complicated, with a slew of nested <param> tags that could just as easily have been attributes of the tag itself (although I suppose the point was to allow new parameters to be added without having to add support for new attributes in the DTD); plus it reeks of Microsoft’s platform-dependent ActiveX crapfest. I especially loathe the presence of, and need to hunt down, a ridiculously long, completely arbitrary clsid string representing the file format of the embedded file. (What’s wrong with a freakin’ MIME type?)

Unfortunately, the cleaner and more straightforward <embed> has never been part of any HTML specification, so it doesn’t validate.

Now it appears that there’s a solution to embedding YouTube videos in an XHTML-compliant way. Huzzah! But that means I’ll have to go back through all of my posts that have YouTube videos in them (which is a surprisingly large number) and fix them. It should be easy enough to hit them all at once with a well-constructed SQL query; I just need to study the pattern and do it. In fact, if I’d spent the last 15 minutes studying the problem instead of just complaining about it, I’d probably be done already.

But sometimes, complaining’s just more fun.

Catalog of Annoying Grammatical and Spelling Errors

Originally posted July 12, 2006

First off, let me acknowledge that my English ain’t perfect. (Get it?) That said, it’s pretty damn good. And when I make grammatical errors, it’s usually on purpose and I’m aware that I’m using something incorrectly. In those cases, I’m only doing it because I don’t really care and it’s not something I’d label as an egregious mistake. (I don’t make spelling errors, period! Well, OK… maybe once.) I will also acknowledge that English is not a fixed language, and that the rules of its use are arbitrary and subject to permutation. (And, of course, I’m sure anyone outside the U.S. who’s reading this will find the title itself to be unacceptable. Too bad! I’m an American! I get to be an arrogant jerk at least once in a while!)

With all of those qualifiers and disclaimers out of the way, let’s get down to business. There’s a difference between novel usage (and I’ll even let 1337 pass in that context) and just plain boneheaded errors though, and the latter is what I’m dealing with here. This page will be updated periodically as I encounter (or remember) errors of speech or (more commonly) writing that I simply find intolerable. (Split infinitives and dangling participles are OK. And so is beginning a sentence with a conjunction.)

These errors fall into three distinct categories: spelling, word usage and grammar. (We’ll skip the matter of whether to use a comma before “and” in a list, as I’m at a point of transition on this matter personally.) OK, maybe they’re not really so distinct. But that’s how I’m slicin’ ’em up anyway.

Spelling

I will not bother to offer the correct spellings of these words. Look ’em up!

comming
definately

Word Usage

This is a bit of a nebulous category, as sometimes it’s hard to tell whether what you’re dealing with is a spelling error or a grammatical error. In fact it’s a mixture of both, because often it involves spelling a word incorrectly, but in a way that happens to be another legitimate word; it’s just one that’s incorrect for the context.

Apostrophes in plurals: Granted, I am a super-genius, but I got this rule back when I first learned it in elementary school. Is it really that hard to tell the difference between a plural and a possessive? Apparently so. Of course, we also have the confounding situation of “its”/”it’s,” where the posessive does not contain an apostrophe. But then again, the one with the apostrophe is a contraction, not a plural.
“Alot” vs. “a lot”: Have too many things to count? That sounds like “a lot” to me. You’d better “alot” plenty of time for the task.
“Everyday” vs. “every day”: This is an “everyday” mistake. In fact, I encounter it almost “every day.” Since that one’s still a bit opaque, I’ll suspend the witticisms. “Everyday” is an adjective. You can’t do something “everyday,” unless “everyday” is describing the something and not when you’re doing it.
“Formally” vs. “formerly”: Both are legitimate and useful words. However, despite similar (or, depending on your accent, identical) pronunciation, they mean two completely different things. Yet I am amazed at how often I see “formally” used in cases where the intended meaning is clearly “formerly.” I have yet to see the reverse mistake.
“Of” in place of “have”: I know you generally don’t really get into dissecting parts of speech until junior high school, long after most Americans have completely tuned out, but just think for a minute. “Have” is a verb. “Of” is a preposition. You can “think of” something, but you can’t “must of” or “could of” something!
“To” instead of “too”: *Sigh* Do we really even need to get into this? I’ll admit this is an easy one to slip into, as I often do it myself if I’m not paying enough attention. (Therefore, if even I am susceptible to the error, it must be more excusable.) Just remember, there are “too” many o’s in “too.” (Yes, there also happen to be “two” o’s in “too” whereas there is only one in “two.” But… ah, forget it.)

Grammar

I don’t have any for this section yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of some any minute now…

More to come! Be sure to use the comment form to suggest any I’ve forgotten!