bitful

UK-based weblog on technology, queerness, language and fitness
« spry
truss »

Mobile Admin and Simplelife do not play nicely together

Electronic circuits

I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out why I could not access WordPress from my mobile any longer. Well, it's the holidays and I can waste a day like that if I want to.

It turned out that Mobile Admin (the plugin that streamlines the WordPress admin interface for easy access from smartphones and PDAs) had stopped working when I installed SimpleLife (WordPress plugin to generate lifestreams).

[Update: Kieran has fixed this issue and Mobile Admin now works eeven when SimpleLife is activated. They were using the same function internally - more info in comments for this post]

Even if I don't blog much on the go (I don't blog much at all these days) I like to approve the occasional comment straight away, and clicking on the email link to do so kept sending me to a blank page until I disactivated SimpleLife.

SimpleLife sounds very promising but it is admittedly still in Alpha. I'll stick to my own existing data stream and wait for further developments.

Today's little project will be finding out why every time my phone connects to WordPress it downloads over 300k of stuff. Oh, and of course opening presents and having Christmas lunch and nodding off in an Advocaat-induced haze in front of Queenie or catch her on her new YouTube channel instead).

Merry Christmas to you all, whatever rocks your boat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 6:58 am and last modified on January 16th, 2008 at 5:30 am, and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Mobile Admin and Simplelife do not play nicely together”

  1. Kieran Deaney Says:

    Tuesday 25 December 2007 at 5:02 pm

    Hey,

    I will look into this, did you get any errors or dd it just stop working?

  2. bitful Says:

    Wednesday 26 December 2007 at 8:32 am

    Hi Kieran, nice of you to stop by!

    Thanks for putting together the plugin, I hope one day I'll get it to work, it sounds like a great job.

    If you want to look deeper into the problem I encountered when using Simplelife and Mobile Admin, here are some details:

    1. Mobile Admin was working fine
    2. I downloaded, unzipped and uploaded Simplelife into the plugins directory at bitful.com
    3. Unfortunately, I did not get Simplelife to work (it displayed an empty page with your link/disclaimer at the bottom but no actual links to the feeds I'd entered), but thought I'd sort it out at a later time
    4. I tried logging on to the WordPress admin interface with my PDA via Windows Mobile 6. It said 'opening file' for a short while, then stopped and did not load the page. Same thing with any wordpress admin URL,
    5. Same behaviour with Opera Mobile.
    6. I disactivated other plugins one by one, and when I disactivated Simplelife I could access the admin page via pda.
    7. Reactivated Simplelife, and could not access admin pages via pda.
  3. Kieran Deaney Says:

    Sunday 6 January 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Both Simplelife and Mobile Admin used the same function name internally - would you test the latest release for me, as i hope it fixes the issue.

  4. bitful Says:

    Saturday 12 January 2008 at 6:46 am

    Kieran, this is now fixed and I can have both SimpleLife and mobileadmin active at the same time. Mobileadmin works, however, I still seem to have problems with SimpleLife. Here are the details of what I have done:

    1. Downloaded and installed SimpleLife 1.1b
    2. uploaded on server, activated plugin, configured plugin
    3. added code to page: http://www.bitful.com/simplelife/
    4. error message on output page: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 262144 bytes) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/bitful.com/httpdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/simplelife/simplepie.inc on line 7690
    5. fixed error by adding the following code to simplepie.inc: ini_set("memory_limit","24M");
    6. http://www.bitful.com/simplelife/ only displays 'Lifestream powered by wp_SimpleLife.'
    7. added SimpleLife widget to sidebar, same phrase displays ('Lifestream powered by wp_SimpleLife.') but no content.
    8. removed SimpleLife widget from sidebar but left http://www.bitful.com/simplelife/ in case you wanted to have a look

    Am I doing something wrong?

  5. Kieran Delaney Says:

    Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 1:05 pm

    Sorry it took so long to reply, i only just got round to checking the site!

    Glad the plugin clash is fixed! Not quite sure what could be causing the issues you've got now however, as they haven't been reported before…

    I know its probably a stupid question, but have you checked a stream you know definately works in the extra feed section?

    Are you running php5 or 4?

    Contact me via email and i'll reply more speedily!

  6. bitful Says:

    Wednesday 16 January 2008 at 5:26 am

    Hi Kieran, once again thanks for looking into this.

    Well, I'm baffled. I'm not the techiest person in the world, but usually I have a clue of what's going on. However, I'm afraid I'm lost here.

    A few more details, should you wish to spend some time on this:

    - running PHP 5.2.5
    - the first three columns (Plugin, Version, Description) in the SimpleLife row in the wordpress admin plugins page display the whole code instead of just the links. I have had this since the installation, I just never mentioned it before. Perhaps this will suddenly make you go 'a-ha, that's it!'
    - configured simplelife options: left general settings as default, added my delicious username, nothing happened by clicking on 'Select background' and 'Select text' (using firefox2, javascript is enabled, nothing blocking it as far as I know), entered hex values manually. Did not see the colour changes in the username field
    - added widget at bottom of sidebar at http://www.bitful.com (theme is widget-ready)
    - created new page from template and added < ?php simplelife(); ?> in the page content area (wordpress running the exec php plugin, so I can write code there). Published page at http://www.bitful.com/simplelife/. Page content only contains 'Lifestream powered by wp_SimpleLife.', sidebar widget displays the same.
    - after receiving your email below, I removed the delicious details and added the working feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/bitful in the extra feed section, but same outcome as above.

    If you want to know more, please don't hesitate to ask even stupid questions: there is a chance I am missing something very very obvious here :-)

Leave a Reply