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AWSOM Plugins Troubleshooting/FAQ Guide

General Plugin Troubleshooting

I moved the plugin files to my plugin folder but it’s not showing up in my Admin Plugin area to activate, What’s going on?

The most likely answer to this problem is that you’ve moved the plugin to your server inside a 2nd folder. When you unzip a plugin on your PC it creates a top level folder that contains the plugin folder. If you move the top level folder to your server, the plugin folder will be too deep for WordPress to find it. The plugin files need to be in the first level folder within the Plugins folder in WordPress. Make sure you only move the folder actually containing the plugin files to your web server.

AWSOM Plugin troubleshooting

I’m receiving an error statement after activating the AWSOM Pixgallery plugin and trying to view my gallery that includes the line “Error: Photos path must have write permission for reduce originals option!” or “Error: Your Image Folder is not Set to the 777 permissions needed to allow Global Resize function to operate”, what’s wrong?

The error you are receiving is in relation to improper folder permissions on your webserver. AWSOM Pixgallery automatically creates thumbnails of your images, but a requirement of this is that it needs the proper permissions to write these new images to your webserver. The AWSOM Pixgallery setting in it’s Options area called “Cache Path” determines what folder on your webserver the plugin will use as it’s save area for these thumbnails. This folder MUST have full open permissions, 777, for the process to work correctly. The error is telling you that this is not set. Please check your entry for the cache path field and the folder on your webserver to make sure that they match and that the folder has the proper permissions settings in place. (see here for info on the Options area of AWSOM Pixgallery, see here for info on how to set permission levels for a folder on a webserver.)

I’m getting the error statement “Error: Photos path must have write permission for reduce originals option!” or “Error: Your Image Folder is not Set to the 777 permissions needed to allow Global Resize function to operate” on regular pages and posts that do not have an Image Gallery, what’s going on?

AWSOM Pixgallery has a feature that allows you to set a global maximum size for any image that appears on your site in a page or post, even non-image gallery pages and post–this is to prevent an image from breaking your theme. By default the feature is turned on. To turn it off go to the Pixgallery Options page and change the setting Reduce images in photos path (0 = disabled) or Maximum image size for viewing full size images within the WordPress page (use this setting if you need to scale full size images to fit your theme)(0 = no max) (depends on what version of Pixgallery you are using) Width and Height to 0, this will turn this feature off and eliminate those error messages.

I have my archive and cache set up properly but for some reason my thumbnails are not displaying when using the AWSOM Pixgallery plugin. What’s wrong?

The most likely answer is that you are using a sub folder to host your WordPress website on your server or you are using custom permalinks. Pixgallery is looking in the wrong spot for your thumbnails based on the root folder, not the WordPress folder–to fix this go to the Pixgallery options page and remove the first / in the cache path setting: so if its says /images/cache/ change it to images/cache/ . In some cases you may also need to remove the trailing /. This should correct the problem.

You may also have to turn on Absolute Linking support. You normally only need to do this if you have a WordPress site that is both in a subfolder on your server (not in the root directory of your website path) and is using Fancy Permalinks. The option is in the Pixgallery Options page.

Can I use an Image folder outside of my WordPress install folder chain to show my images in AWSOM Pixgallery?
Well, this isn’t recommended. WordPress functions mostly based on relative linking, and folders outside of the WordPress install folder chain are not easily linked to normally by the process WordPress uses. This can lead to your thumbnail images or full size images not appearing properly in the gallery plugin. You really might want to consider placing your gallery folders within the wp-content/uploads folder, since this is where WordPress stores the images you upload using the native upload function for posts and pages. It also makes your site more portable. AWSOM Pixgallery can even make a default gallery in the uploads folder for you to use.

If you have to use a folder outside of your WordPress install you will need to add ../ and ./ to your path in order to have WordPress correctly create links to your images. This can be tricky and you should look for a help file on this if you don’t know how to do it.

After turning on AWSOM Pixgallery my main page or non-gallery pages are loading very slowly, what’s wrong?

The most likely answer is you are displaying images on your main page that are on a different server (like Flickr or Photobucket) and your server PHP settings are set to be very restrictive. Apparently some server set ups have restrictions on how some PHP commands (like fopen) can be used with an external server. This leads to the Pixgallery trying to access information about the external image but failing and causing a PHP timeout to occur. This timeout is typically set to 30 seconds per process, so if you have 4 external images it will take an extra 2 minutes for the page to load. The workaround for this that has been discovered is to request that your server admin add the external server you are using for images to your servers etc/hosts/ file. This then approves that server and allows the PHP process to work properly. See this entry on the AWSOM support forum for more information.

You can also turn off “post scanning” in PixGallery. This is a new option in the Admin settings for PixGallery. This will tell PixGallery to no longer scan for images in your posts, so the global re-size function will no longer work for posts.

I’m running my WordPress site on a Windows IIS server, Is this compatible with AWSOM Pixgallery?

If everything is set up correctly, yes. However, it has been brought to my attention that in many cases the Windows IIS version of PHP does not have the GD image library properly installed by default, so this would not allow Pixgallery to work properly and would cause errors or page loading problems. If you are having these types of issues on a Windows IIS system please first confirm that GD 2.x is working properly on your system. Also, you might want to consult this website if you are using Pretty/Fancy Permalinks on your server to see if this helps solve some issues: http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/100-apache-compliant-request_uri-for-iis-and-windows/

I’ve added some captions to my images in AWSOM Pixgallery but they aren’t appearing, what’s wrong?

By default AWSOM Pixgallery does not have captions enabled. Go to the Pixgallery Options page and turn on the setting to enable captions for images.


After activating some of the AWSOM plugins that display things in my theme (News Announcement, Archive, etc.) They are appearing in an order that I don’t like or are conflicting with other plugins in the way they appear, can I change this?

WordPress uses a system of priority in how plugins display or happen. By default all of the AWSOM plugins were created to appear in a certain order that appeared to be the best combination. This can be altered by changing a line of code in the plugin file. Near the end of each file there is a line that starts with “add_action(‘loop_start’,”, at the end there is usually a number, this represents the priority of the plugin. If you make this number lower the plugin will happen higher on the list and appear sooner on your page, if you increase the number it will do the opposite. The default number is 10. So change this number until things appear the way you want them to. If there isn’t a number, simply add a , and then place the number you want there inside the ) .

I’m seeing 2 News Announcements on my index page after installing the new version of AWSOM News Announcement, what’s happening?

You are probably a beta tester or you installed version 1.02 of the plugin. The first version of the plugin required you to add some code to your index.php theme page for the announcement to appear, newer versions do not require this code–but it still supports it. What is happening is you have enabled the “show in default location” option while also having the custom code in your theme file. Either remove the old code from the theme file or turn the default location option to “No” in the manage AWSOM News area to remove the extra announcement.

I turned on the “run php” setting in AWSOM News Announcement but every time I add in the php code it doesn’t display properly or disappears entirely, what am I doing wrong?

You are probably inputting the php code using the Visual Editor. This won’t work. You can only enter php code (or html) when you are using the code editor. Switch to the code editor and add in your php code, it will now work correctly.

The AWSOM Archive isn’t displaying the box wide enough to show the full text of the initial option (which says the name of your website), What can I do to fix this?

It appears that certain server types (some Windows server versions apparently) can display drop down boxes in a weird manner that isn’t quite big enough to show all of the text. Go to the admin Options area for the plugin and alter the AWSOM Archive Size Customization field box to add a number that’s big enough to show your posts properly. You may need to play with this a bit before you find the right number that fits your theme.

UPDATED: I’m seeing multiple footer credits on my page that say “AWSOM powered”, what’s happening?

UPDATED: Issue Now Fixed in all plugins, only one credit will be displayed. If you are seeing more than one credit you probably haven’t updated one of the plugins, check for the most recent versions of all of them and update.

You have the AWSOM powered footer credit turned on in 2 or more AWSOM plugins. If you go into the options or manage areas of the AWSOM plugins you will see an option to turn on or off these credit links, simply turn them off until only one appears. (and thank you BTW for adding the credit on your site, it helps me out greatly for recognition)

Does deactivating an AWSOM plugin remove it’s database tables from my WordPress database?

No. WordPress does not have a built in system for removing plugin created database fields. If you do want to remove and uninstall any AWSOM plugin completely from your WordPress site please use the AWSOM Uninstaller plugin thats been designed to do this for you.


79 Comments

    • Hi Lokesh,
      This can all be done by making a custom language file. The default language file is called pixgallery_lang.php and is in the main folder of the plugin. If you open this up in a text editor you can make any changes you’d like to it. Once you do so, save the file but do not overwrite the original–place the new file in the folder called “awsom-customizations” that resides in your wp-content/uploads directory on your site.

      These customizations will persist past any updates I supply, the original file will be overwritten in the plugin folder.

  1. I’m using WordPress 2.85 with Awsom PixGallery version 4.5.10. I tried to change the way the dropdown menu displayed and in the process changed the page order on the WP page for 4 pages. I’m now getting an error message that there are so many redirects that the site can’t resolve. The link is http://www.marylouzeekgallery.com/artist/all-artists/ and it tries to resolve to http://www.marylouzeekgallery.com/all-artists/ and won’t display at all.

    Do you have any suggestions? I do have a site backup I made before trying to make changes. Should I restore any files? If so, which ones? Or maybe there’s a simpler fix.

    The site is live and I’d love to find a solution as soon as possible.

    Thanks in advance for any help you might give me.
    Linda

    • Hi Linda,
      Hmmm, I’m not sure what’s going on. From what you’re saying it looks like you decided to change the sort ordering of some of your pages–is that correct? Did you make any changes to your Pixgallery settings?

      I’m not able to easily determine if this issue is related to the gallery or is a result of something going crazy with your page changes.

      I would suggest resetting back to your original set up to get things working again–then slowly make changes one at a time and see if any one causes this issue as you make each change. Once you have an idea of what specifically made the issue appear we might be able to work out what to do to prevent that from having the effect.

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