Comments on: ISP-In-A-Box: The $500 Mac mini (HOW-TO Become A WordPress BlogMaster, Part I)

By: Fred

Fred — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 05:29:33 +0000

I followed your instructions very closely however, I have one problem that I don't know how to solve.. maybe you can point out where i did wrong. I can see the blog pages fine with the nice default template on my machine. However, when i try to access the blog page from another machine on the LAN... I get only the text, there are no images and the page is not even formated correctly. I tried using other "themes" same problem. What's worse is that another computer outside the LAN could see the blog with just the text when the theme is set to default (like my other computer on the LAN) and can't see anything (get error) with other themes other than default. Any idea why? [WM: This is a common problem if you are trying to access a WordPress blog with a different site address than what you specified when you set up the blog. For example, you can't use a private IP address or localhost for your site if you want users on the Internet to be able to access it. You can change the two addresses under the Admin->Options menu to solve it.]

By: Steve D

Steve D — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 21:16:58 +0000

I experienced one problem following your instructions, regarding the collation on the wordpress database. I had all sorts of MySQL errors when trying to edit my blog options. Dropping the database, then creating it with the default collation (which for me apparently is ?��?�?ɂİ?Ǭ�?��Ǩ��latin1_swedish_ci?��?�?ɂİ?Ǭ�?��Ǩ��) and rerunning the WordPress installer fixed the issue.

By: Steve D

Steve D — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 23:51:45 +0000

Could you briefly explain why the Postfix SMTP mail server needs to be installed before installing WordPress? I hesitate to try installing Postfix SMTP mail server because of your warning ( http://mundy.org/blog/index.php?m=20050202 ) that for most folks it is probably a bad idea, and also because I know that my ISP requires all SMTP traffic to go through them.

[WM: Very good questions. In our next article, we’re going to configure WordPress to only allow moderated comments (just like we use with Nerd Vittles). This lets you control what gets posted to your blog and gives you a way to eliminate comments from creeps and automated systems. For this to work, there has to be a way to notify you when comments are posted, and that’s what you need the Postfix SMTP server for. You do not need to open a port in your firewall for incoming SMTP traffic because all we want to do is send messages, not receive them. So you’re still safe from spammers.

Your ISP’s requirement that SMTP traffic flow through their SMTP server poses another problem. If you only enable Postfix and try to send messages, they simply won’t get delivered which isn’t helpful obviously. The solution is to tell Postfix to relay outgoing messages through your ISP. We do this by changing a line in the Postfix config file to tell it to use your ISP as a relay host. Open a Terminal window and switch to root access: sudo su. Then move to the Postfix folder where the config file is stored: cd /etc/postfix. Now edit (carefully) the config file: pico main.cf. Search for relayhost 3 times: Ctrl-W, relayhost, enter, Ctrl-W, enter, Ctrl-W, enter. Now uncomment one of the relayhost lines with Ctrl-D and change the host address to the fully-qualified domain name or IP address of your ISP’s SMTP server, e.g. smtp.comcast.net. Save your changes: Ctrl-X, Y, then enter. Now restart Postfix or reboot your Mac. Send a test message to yourself using localhost as your SMTP server or just post a comment to your blog (after we complete the steps in the Part II article) and check the headers to be sure it worked correctly, and you’re all set.

Another approach (which I have now tried) is to modify the operation of PHP using the php.ini configuration file in the /etc folder so that PHP sends SMTP messages out through your ISP’s SMTP server rather than through localhost. The advantage in going this route would be that you wouldn’t need to activate Postfix. Unfortunately, it only works on Windows platforms for some inexplicable reason. ]