Web Developer Blog

Swimming Pool – A fine installation from Argentine artist Leandro Erlich.

Leandro’s work usually centres around architecture such as a swimming pool, a window, rooms etc and the Swimming Pool is a great example of what can be possible and bending the perceptions of the viewer. Leandro’s almost illusion-like pieces allow the viewer to get involved with project (in this case, walk underneath the pool).

His work looks normal at first but once you have a closer look, things are not as they seem.

The Swimming Pool was shown at the Venice Biennale (2001) and its current place of residence is a the Kanazawa museum in Japan.

I have recently been brushing up on my WordPress knowledge for a blog I have created for a client. While working on the blog I noticed that the error below displayed when trying to view a dynamically generated sitemap (/sitemap.xml) in my Firefox browser:

Error loading stylesheet: An XSLT stylesheet does not have an XML mimetype:

http://DOMAIN_NAME.com/wp-content/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/sitemap.xsl

The sitemap was created by the superb Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress and after a quick bit of research on Google I came across this article at tutsarena.

It is important to mention that the error only occurs in the Firefox browser and not Internet Explorer (for a change). The error is not WordPress – specific but was actually related to the Apache server the client’s website was hosted on.

To fix the error add the following line of code to the bottom of your .htacces file (found in the root of your site):

This adds the MIME type for XSL, which was missing from the list of MIME types on the client’s server.

If you are still having problems try adding the below line of code as well as the above code into the .htacces file:

This should sort everything out nicely.

/*
Theme Name: WordPress Default
Theme URI: http://wordpress.org/
Description: The default WordPress theme based on the famous <a href="http://binarybonsai.com/kubrick/">Kubrick</a>.
Version: 1.6
Author: Michael Heilemann
Author URI: http://binarybonsai.com/
Tags: blue, custom header, fixed width, two columns, widgets

 Kubrick v1.5

http://binarybonsai.com/kubrick/

 This theme was designed and built by Michael Heilemann,
 whose blog you will find at http://binarybonsai.com/

 The CSS, XHTML and design is released under GPL:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php

*/

This is a quick fix for anyone who has seen the following error appear when trying to edit a WordPress theme through the admin section:

The Requested Theme Does Not Exist

I remember seeing this and immediately fearing the worst (that I had broken my WordPress blog somehow) but I had a think of what I had been changing on the site before I got this error (the CSS file) and after a quick look on Google I found this article.

The article mentions that the commented-out information at the top of the CSS file (containing the theme details) is used by WordPress to pull out the theme name:

At the time I wasn’t too familiar with WordPress and had just deleted the code to save about 15 lines in my CSS file. If you delete the code or use certain special characters in the theme name (such as an ampersand – &) WordPress cannot find the theme and display the templates or CSS in the admin section for you.

To fix this quite simply check the commented code at the top of the theme’s CSS for any characters which may be causing the error. Or if you did what I had done and delete the commented code completely, put it back in via ftp and WordPress will load up the editor section straight away.

I encountered this problem when attempting to upgrade my version WordPress (for this blog) and also upgrade my WordPress plugins to the newest versions.

I chose to upgrade my WordPress blog automatically, entered the correct ftp details and came across this error:

Unable to Locate Wordpress Content Directory wp-content

I racked my brains for a while making sure that all the permissions to the necessary files were correct and after about 45 minutes I found a blog post by Hui Wang which provided the answer.

The problem may not necessarily be with WordPress or any of my files / permissions but actually my hosting company. My blog is currently hosted through byethost.com and quite a few people who have WordPress blogs get the same problem.

To fix the problem, add the following code to the bottom of your wp-config.php file:

The above code overides the default file system method to allow WordPress to upgrade, delete plugins directly (without using ftp details). It works for me and saves me from having to download .zip files and uploading them through my ftp client etc… which takes up a lot of time when you have a lot of plugins.

Let me know if it works for you or if you have any other problems or solutions let me know and I’ll write a post about it.

jQuery Cycle Plugin is a lightweight jQuery plugin which offers an easy way to create a slideshow of images for your website.

The plugin provides a bunch of different effects for cycling between each slide, from a simple fade to the more elaborate ’shuffle effect’, you can choose to cycle through each slide on a time delay or for it to be initiated by the user through a click.

The jquery Cycle Plugin does not only cycle through images but it can also cycle through <divs> which can contain text and images, allowing for more freedom of what goes into each slide of the slideshow.

I prefer the fading option and mainly use it for small advertisements on a page or sometimes as the main focus of a website (such as small accommodation sites). The effect is not as clean or visually sharp as a flash movie but it takes a lot less time to implement and does not require flash, therefore it will display in android devices and on the iPhone with no problems.

Implementing the code is easy, list the images inside a <div> and then specify the plugin to cycle through that <div> by using the small piece of code provided on the jQuery Cycle Plugin website.

jQuery Cycle is easy to set up, run and configure, while the end result can help give a website that extra feel of professionalism. I am a big fan of the jQuery Cyle plugin and have used it in quite a few websites to great effect.

Download jQuery Cycle Plugin at:

jQueryCycle