HELP Im completely lost

[jr]

I have a site where each week I post a new cartoon.

I want the 2nd page or "Discuss" page to house a serendipity forum.

Right now I've been trying to to embed serendipity (no such luck). I have been testing it through a covert link buried in my site (see below). Until I can get it to work understandably I don't want to make it live.

This is the site:

http://www.iwillkickyourassforworldpeace.com

If you click on the 'Links' page the very last link is called 'The Forum'. When you click there you will see it takes you to a skeleton or 'wrapper of a regular page. This is my attempt to get the embedded forum in to my site. Yeah as you can see it doesnt work.

This page is in html and i prefer if possible to keep it that way. I don't know PHP and at this rate dont think I ever will.

Here's my question, what configurations do I need to set up in the Admin suite' to pull this off.

Also, What should my file names be?
And exactly what code do I need to put in what page (ive dropped in code in the discuss page i thought would work, but no)?
And then where in my ftp do I need to put such pages?

Sorry to sound so desperate but I am. I have no idea what I am doing and Im afraid Im going to grow old before I ever see this website come together.

Please help, i need ALOT of hand holding here. Almost like step by step this is how to tie your shoes instructions.

If I can get this part of the website perfected then I can finally open a t-shirt store on the same site.

Thanks in advance

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I'm not really sure if I got what you mean. You speak about "Serendipity Forum", but Serendipity is a blog!

If you intend to run a forum, you would better be off using a forum software like fudforum (or phpBB). Even though there is a serendipity plugin that offers forum functionality, it is far from perfect. And the trouble you would have embedding the s9y forums plugin into your page is slightly larger than just embedding a forum.

But if you're desperate on embedding the serendipity *BLOG* I am pretty sure I could help you out.

BTW, in your discuss1.html file, if you view the HTML sourcecode, you will see the PHP code intact. This means your webserver does NOT execute PHP code in .html files. You would need to call that file 'discuss1.php' instead. Then the code would be executed, and the snippet you pasted there already looks good.

It is including a file "content.php" which you might not have. So instead of "require 'content.php'" you might just want to use "echo $blog_data".

Another thing, you should put a line

Code: Select all

<?php ob_start(); ?>

in the very first line of your discuss1.php file to prevent some other trouble.

HTH,
Garvin

[jr]

thanks garvin

i definitely want to create a 'blog' so each cartoon can have comments associated with it. sorry is it wrong to hate the word blog, i try to use other terms but I dont think i'll win.

i will check out these suggestions you made and let you know if it works.

Keeping my fingers crossed

thanks

jr

[jr]

So far looking...

I think I have some code clean-up or path configuration to do. Any suggestions.

Im getting these messages:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/discuss1.php:3) in /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/index.php on line 19

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/discuss1.php:3) in /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/index.php on line 20

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/discuss1.php:3) in /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/index.php on line 25


or check it out at this link:

http://www.iwillkickyourassforworldpeac ... scuss1.php

thanks again in advance

jr

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Please read what I wrote about "ob_start" in my previous posting. This is related to your problem.

Regards,
Garvin

[jr]

i checked my file 3 times to make sure it was saved with the opening line

<?php ob_start(); ?>

it's definitely in there. But then I go to my website and view the SOurce code and it doesn't show up and explains your last note to me.

I have no idea why it's not taking.

any thoughts?

One more thing...
the spam-prevention image doesn't show up in the comments section. It just has a red X and says 'CAPTCHA'. For some reason the image is missing. Any thoughts there?

Thanks a ton in advance Garvin. Can't wait to get this comment board up and running.

jr

[judebert]

Serendipity manipulates the HTML headers, so it has to be the first thing called. If you call anything at all -- even printing a blank line or valid HTML -- before Serendipity, you'll get that header error.

The tech docs on the homepage explaining how to embed s9y also demonstrate a method for using ob_start() to get a variable with the entire Serendipity content. It looks like that's what you need to do in discuss1.php.

[jr]

it made some difference. the errors are gone, but now it's just a blank page.

I'll check the code but any advice in the meanitime will help.

Thanks

jr

[judebert]

Your discuss1.php should look like this:

Code: Select all

<?php
ob_start();
chdir({serendipity_dir});
include("index.php");
chdir({original dir});
$blog_data = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
?>

{Your discuss1.php HTML headers and other blog wrapping}
<?php
print $blog_data;
?>
{Your discuss1.php blog wrapping and HTML footers}

One possible explanation of a blank page is that discuss1.php is never printing anything. Silly, but it happens to all of use sometimes.

The more common explanation for blank pages is that an error has occured in the web server. Check your Apache and PHP error logs to see if something like that happened.

[jr]

what do you mean by

"a blank page is that discuss1.php is never printing anything. Silly, but it happens to all of use sometimes. "

Also, I tried your code. Same result it turned up a blank page.

I dont know where the Apache or PHP error logs are located so I can't post them.

I will check the other string on this forum of person with similar blank page problems to see if I can apply a solution.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again
jr

[judebert]

I mean, for instance, that you could've generated all the proper output, saving it into a string or something, and then forgotten to actually print the string. Some people are touchy about this sort of observation, so I noted that I've done the same thing myself once or twice to indicate that I'm not trying to offend anyone.

Blank pages almost always indicate a PHP error, although sometimes they wind up being a webserver error. Could be out-of-memory, could be an uninstalled extension, could be a lot of things. Talk to your hosting provider to get those error logs, and I'll bet you'll find the problem.

[jr]

Judebert-

Before i search around for error logs, one last time i tried the code you previously recommended.

I got this error message when I went to page in my website:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '{', expecting ')' in /home/content/j/b/t/jbtrau/html/serendipity/discuss1.php on line 3

any other thoguths? thanks

For your reference here is what the code of my entire discuss1.php file looks like:

<?php
ob_start();
chdir({serendipity_dir});
include("index.php");
chdir({original dir});
$blog_data = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
?>



<html>
<head>
<title> Cartoon of the Week : www.iwillkickyourassforworldpeace.com </title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#000000">
<body text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFFFF" alink="#33FF33" vlink="#FFFF00">
<body>
<h1>
<center>
<font size=4>
<font face="arial">
<a href="/iwill/home.html">HOME</a>      
<a href="/iwill/discuss.html">DISCUSS</a>      
<a href="/iwill/archive.html">ARCHIVE</a>      
<a href="/iwill/store.html">STORE</a>      
<a href="/iwill/links.html">LINKS</a>     
<a href="/iwill/about.html">ABOUT</a>
</font>
</h1>
<p> </p>


<?php
print $blog_data;
?>


<p> </p>
<h6>
<font size=4>
<font face="arial">
<a href="/iwill/home.html">HOME</a>      
<a href="iwill/discuss.html">DISCUSS</a>      
<a href="/iwill/archive.html">ARCHIVE</a>      
<a href="/iwill/store.html">STORE</a>      
<a href="/iwill/links.html">LINKS</a>     
<a href="/iwill/about.html">ABOUT</a>
</font>
</h6>
</center>
</body>
</html>

[judebert]

Ah. The {serendipity dir} and {original dir} are meant to be substituted. Sorry for the confusion.

Your {serendipity dir} is probably /iwill/serendipity, and your {original dir} is probably /iwill -- you should, of course, check them out and make certain. Then you'll use

Code: Select all

chdir(/iwill/serendipity);

or whatever your actual path is. Keep in mind this is the filesystem path, not the URL.

[jr]

Judebert still no luck

ive reverted the file discuss1 back to it's opriginal state when I first started my posts here in the forum.

I think I have a better chance of figuring out the configuration even this way.

So right now I get 'HEader already sent messages'
I'll just keep trying to get the paths and configurations right.

******Anyway, my original goal for my website was to just allow visitors the ability to post comments under each week's cartoons. Is there a more simple way to accomplish that without the embedding of the entire blog? Since embedding seems to be giving me such a problem.

Thanks again for your time

[judebert]

Well...

The easiest way is simply to make each comic a blog entry. Then they get the comments built right in. Set the s9y configuration to display only 1 entry on the front page, so you only see the current comic. If you modify a Serendipity theme to match the rest of your site, nobody will ever know they've left static HTML and progressed to the blog.