I thought I broke my oEmbed discovery links but I had a more fundamental problem. I had broken fancy permalinks on my nginx configuration for a while and didn’t realize it.
I revisited the Nginx Codex page and did a stare and compare of my configuration and the examples there. I am sure I read that page in the past and my mistake was the “try_files” line.
See the “?$args” part? With that in place the non-post URLs work. The permalinks worked fine but things that were not to a post or page didn’t. Due to my fancy permalink settings my oEmbed discovery links had this format.
https://blog.dembowski.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=urlencoded-data-here and that wasn’t being handled by my nginx configuration.
My plugin worked because I was replacing the fancy URLs with the regular non-fancy “?rest_route” version which nginx passed along to my WordPress installation just fine.
I could not get it to work for me. No way, no how. The json and XML discovery links were there in the post HTML but those links came back with “What? What? No. Go away, you’re bothering kid.”
It should have come back with a valid output and it did. It was a result, just not a functioning one.
Nice huh? All neat in an iframe and easily embeddable. The output is customizable too and I plan to do that on my photo blog.
The oEmbed discovery links should just work but on my installations it doesn’t. I tried Apache2, nginx, clean installation with zero plugins and the Twenty Fifteen theme. Different servers too. I always got the wrong output and could not get oEmbed working.
During my troubleshooting I found a different URL that worked consistently for me. It’s the same information but with a filter I replaced the default output with one that worked for me.
Here’s the plugin code I used. The oembed_discovery_links is filterable (filters are cool) and I toss out the old links and replace them with my own.
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This works for me but I do not like this solution.
The problem I have is that the normal links are not being replied to correctly via my WordPress installation. I don’t know why the default discovery links are not working. It bothers me, it really does. 😉
I’m convinced that there is something I’m doing wrong in my setup. Once I figure it out I’ll I can remove this plugin and I’ll post what I was missing.
I’m more of a Network Monkey, but whenever I can provision something just using an ssh session I smile. Many hosts use WP-CLI already and I’ve installed it on my VPS too.
This morning I wrote up a small script to go to my test vhost directory and did the following.
Install a blank WordPress site
Update some settings
Fix my user display name
Make sure the plugins and themes are up to date (Akismet needed an update)
Delete the default post and page
Install, activate and configure the Wapuuvatar plugin
Install and activate the Baskerville theme
Imported the Theme Unit Test data
Cleaned up after the import
Used search and replace to make all my http URLs into https
All this was performed without using a mouse or web GUI. (Okay, I checked the avatar setting via /options.php, but I didn’t have to.)
Here’s the script with sensitive details changed.
#!/bin/bash
cd /my/notsecret/www/vhosts/bang.dn7.me
# Setup a new WordPress installation
wp core download
wp core config --dbname=tothemoon \
--dbuser=testuser \
--dbpass=3c962761afbf9ab40a2e75346809c8cf
wp core install --admin_user=jan \
--admin_password=Rea11y*ot7y^assWiRd \
--admin_email=example@example.com \
--url=bang.dn7.me \
--title="Bang! Boom! Pow!"
# Update some options and my account info
wp option update blogdescription \
"What could possibly go wrong?"
wp option update comment_moderation 1
wp option update comments_notify 0
wp option update moderation_notify 0
wp option update comment_whitelist 0
wp user update 1 --first_name="Jan" \
--last_name="Dembowski" \
--display_name="Jan Dembowski"
# Make sure plugins and themes are all up to date
wp plugin update --all
wp theme update --all
# Clean up the default post and page
wp post delete 1 --force
wp post delete 2 --force
# Wapuuvatar is cool. Install, activate
# and set to the default avatar
wp plugin install wapuuvatar --activate
wp option update avatar_default dwapuuvatar
# Let's play with the Baskerville theme
wp theme install baskerville --activate
# Now to import the theme unit test data
wp plugin install wordpress-importer --activate
curl -O https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/demo/theme-unit-test-data.xml
wp import theme-unit-test-data.xml --authors=create
# Clean up in aisle seven
wp plugin deactivate wordpress-importer
wp plugin delete wordpress-importer
rm theme-unit-test-data.xml
# My test site is also TLS so I'll fix
# all the things to point to the encrypted URL
wp search-replace http://bang.dn7.me https://bang.dn7.me
# All done
I previously dropped the test installation’s database and created a new empty one. A quick “rm -rf *” (which wise people never do) in the right vhost directory and I ran “bash install-bang.sh”.
It works like a charm. Smart web hosts can and do tie WP-CLI into their provisioning setup. I happened to setup my vhost with TLS and mysql in advance but with a little backend work this can be easily automated.
If you have a test server to play with then give WP-CLI a try. You’ll get a better understanding of both WordPress and the command line.
Friday afternoon I called the house and got my then 13 year old son. He turned 14 a few days later.
Dad, the WiFi sucks. I'm trying to download an update to War Thunder and it's taking almost an hour.
He was right, the WiFi adapter on his PC is garbage. The access point is in the same room less than 10 feet away. There's no reason for wireless to suck.
I told him that I'll get an Ethernet cable and hardwire him into the FIOS router. That will give him all the bandwidth he could ever use. I didn't think much about it after that till I got home.
He really wanted that update to War Thunder.
He gave it some thought and enabled tethering on his iPhone. Via WiFi he connected his PC to the iPhone and began to download the update. In less than 2 hours he ate almost 3 GB out of my monthly 10 GB allotment.
This did not make Lily and I very happy. She got a text message saying we'd crossed 75% of usage. She asked him and he suddenly remembered what he'd done and quietly disabled tethering without 'fessing up. Lily pulled up a pie chart of the usage and his phone was right behind mine.
I got home and it took me 0.0035 seconds to figure out what he did. I was angry and let him know that he was being selfish. He should have told his mother what he'd done. And yet… I like how he figured out another way to connect to the Internet. He had a problem and quickly came up with an alternative to fix it.
He lost cellular data for the week and may lose it for the rest of December. I also deleted his games and YouTube app from his phone; enough already. But I'm glad he thinks to solve problems and I can't be mad at him for that. Later on I told him I like that part of what he did.
Last year I was fortunate to be invited to the 2014 WordPress Community Summit and this year in Philadelphia I’m going again. Tomorrow morning Lily and I will wake up around 4 AM. She’ll drive me to the train station where I’ll take a 5 AM train to Penn Station. From there it’s an Amtrak ride to Philadelphia.
I’ll be a little late to the event. 😉 It can’t be avoided, I had too much going on at work to be there the night before. The 4 AM is rough on Lily but I’m often awake at that time waiting for 5:30 to get up. She’s much more sensible than I am and I wouldn’t be going but for her support and tolerating my hobbies.
I’m excited and it’s interesting to me that I explain why.
Everyday I go to work and with a great team of people and I deal with conflict. Projects that are in-flight, new commitments are made, deadlines are met or extended or flat-out missed (which is not good). Sometimes work is a disappointment and there’s always someone that’s upset or really pissed off. Sometimes I unintentionally let people down.
“Work sucks” or so the saying goes. It’s a challenge and it’s a constant test and conflict. How will I deal with this problem? Will someone or something piss me off and what drama will happen today?
I don’t think it sucks at all.
I’m one of the people in the middle of that organized chaos. When the alarm bell rings and it’s on me to figure it out and make it all work, I am one of the best firefighters there is. I’ll find the problem, I’ll get to the solution, I’ll have a dozen eyes on me all talking at the same time. I’ll have the support of my boss and co-workers. I won’t have any fear or hesitation. I’ll stand there on the call and get the job done. And I’ll do it with my characteristic and occasionally inappropriate sense of humor.
It’s not really different from a lot of jobs. My participation in the WordPress community is nothing like this at all.
Tomorrow I’ll be surrounded by developers, support people, designers and people I respect and admire and, most importantly, a number of friends. This will be my fourth WordCamp. I’ll be having great fun.
I will, once again, be intimidated. That’s not a bad thing.
You see, for me providing support for WordPress started out as therapy. Answering a topic in the forums and helping someone is fun and addictive. I occasionally help people out of a hole and that’s always cool.
Later on getting more involved meant helping people as well going behind the bar and moderating the forums. Cleaning out the spam queue, closing an occasional run away topic, stuff like that. I’m big on routines and I’m used to looking at the forums before the coffee set in.
My WordPress involvement went from being a form of therapy to using that involvement to becoming better at my job.
Collaborating with people in person and online improves me as a professional. The reason I’m intimidated is that, while I don’t think that my involvement is bad, I’m sure that I can improve. Or perhaps someone else can do it better than I do.
I’m comfortable with my intimidation. I don’t always have to be the one putting out the fires and I can learn more when I don’t have all the answers.
I’ll have a great time. I can’t wait to see the gang in person.
