Joelika.com

Netfirms Pretty Permalinks Plugin for Wordpress

UPDATE: 2008-03-24 Some users have reported that the Netfirms Pretty Permalinks plugin no longer works. My brother allowed me to use his Netfirms account and I can confirm that on his Netfirms plan (with PHP4), this plugin is no longer needed for Pretty Permalink support. So if you are getting a ton of 404 errors with the plugin installed (and even if you’ve disabled it), please follow these instructions below.

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This plugin brings “pretty permalinks” functionality to Netfirms users, without the need to insert “index.php” into your permalinks structure, edit any code in the WordPress core, or add custom rewrite rules into your .htaccess file. This plugin is based off of my previous findings, which for those with insomnia (or a thirst for knowledge!), can read about here.

I’ve tested this plugin with WordPress 2.2 and 2.3 on a Netfirms Small Buisness Plan with both PHP 4 and PHP 5. Alex was kind enough to post an email from Netfirms confirming that their IT staff has also had it working, and should be adding it to their official Customer Support FAQ area.

To install the plugin, please follow these easy steps:

  1. Download the Netfirms Pretty Permalinks Plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. The current version is 1.0 beta 2
  2. Upload ‘netfirms_permalinks.php’ to your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
  3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  4. Choose your permalink structure through the ‘Permalinks’ submenu under the ‘Options’ menu.

The current version of the plugin is 1.0 beta 2. I’ll be watching this page and the page over at the WordPress Plugin Directory to see if anyone has any issues. If all seems well, I’ll remove the beta label in the next few days.

After November 1st of 2007, I will no longer be hosting with Netfirms, so after that, it will be difficult for me to provide updates to this plugin. I will work with anyone who is interested with either providing updates or testing updates of this plugin the unforseable future. If you are intreasted, please leave a comment below.

Please post below with any other comments, questions, or troubleshooting issues you may have. Enjoy your pretty permalinks!

trackback | permalinkComments Feed

NewMediaist:

20071023 11:04

Thanks for the plugin, works like a charm!
Netfirms may be cheap, but their support - well, I guess you get what you pay for!

moshu:

20071028 10:02

Please, feel free to announce it in the WP Forums, too, and, eventually adding it to the plugins section (Extend).

This issue was a recurring nightmare for all the helpers, so your plugin is very welcome.

joel:

20071028 07:36

Hi moshu,

I have added it to the Wordpress.org plugins directory, but I haven’t announced it on the forums yet. I feel kinda strange pimping my own kool aide so to speak… but maybe I’ll have to stop by and do that. I guess that’s called marketing :-)

Dustin:

20071206 04:06

Awesome! Thanks so very much!

Dustin:

20071206 04:08

Also, a tech support guy at Netfirms directed me to this plugin.

Frustrated Netfirms Sucka:

20071218 12:35

The sound you hear, friend Joel, is my first-born being sacrificed upon a bloody altar in gratitude.

joel:

20071218 09:43

As disturbing as that comment is, it really made me laugh! I’m glad the plugin helped you out! :-)

Dan:

20071229 09:59

Thank you so much! I was banging my (admittedly non-technical and thick) head against a brick wall trying to figure out how to fix this problem. I installed your plugin and now comments and pretty permalinks work like a charm!

Bobby:

20080103 01:31

Hi,

I’m using your plugin and it seems to be working to a certain extent. I have the blog posts on a different page but i am using pretty permalink and for all of my blog posts i’m getting this error.
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

anyone run into this? i did change the permalinks back to the default and they worked fine. But who wants to use those ugly things..

thanks for the help (in advanced)

Ched:

20080107 12:23

Thank you very much for the plugin. I was referred to it from a tech at NetFirms, who knew my problem as soon as I mentioned ‘permalink structure.’ It works perfectly.

joel:

20080107 09:17

@Bobby - I visited your site, and it looks like you got everything sorted out. Did you find a problem with your rewrite rules and the plugin, or did you end up ditching the plugin all together? Just curious so I can make any necessary updates in case anyone else has the same issue as you.

Thanks!

@Ched - Thanks for the report! I’m glad that it worked for you! :-) Now if Netfirms would just update their online support section ;-)

Emil:

20080112 11:40

Praise the Lord!

YOU ARE THE MAN MY BROTHER!
It took me long time to find something like this, I simply tried “all in the book” and voila this works so good that it scares me.

I had something with .htaccess before, first it did not work ok and it slowed everything.

But this Netfirms Pretty Permalinks of yours is the bomb!

Keep up the great work,
Emil

Martin:

20080117 08:12

Oh wow. Thank you, thank you thank you. May I never have to try and fathom out the mod_rewrite instructions on apache.org again!

Karine:

20080123 11:39

Thank you SO VERY MUCH for that wonderful plugin!

seragon:

20080214 07:01

dude ! u have written cool plugin for netfirms, i use this plugin, well just one more thing to say well done, and keep going :)

victories:

20080215 04:08

Thank you so much.

flamesfans:

20080217 11:51

thanks buddy,

works as promised.

Thao:

20080219 09:45

Hey! Excuse me for bothering you in this post, but I had a few questions regarding the netfirms permalink plug in.

Right now, everything apparently works on my netfirms wordpress located at erinyes.nu. Well at least it appears to. The permalinks are set to the date/post name and they appear the way I want them to, but the only problem is that the comment box doesn’t appear at all.

I read that your plugin fixes that problem, but even after being installed correctly and activated, the problem persists. I was hoping that you would be able to help me get things straight.

I have wordpress installed inside a a folder in a directory so it looks like /www/erinyes/wordpressstuff, and I was looking around for the .htaccess file. I couldn’t find one even with view hidden on, so I assumed I had to make one myself. However, even after making one and leaving the content blank, after uploading it, I have internal server errors.

So I delete it, but that just leaves me with the problem I have right now. After clicking on the comment link to leave a comment, nothing appears. If I go back to defaults permalinks, everything is fine.

Hopefully I provided you enough information and you have time to help out :D Feel free to email me back since my comments don’t actually work.

joel:

20080219 10:18

Hi Thao,

Do you know if you’ve enabled .htaccess in your WordPress control panel?

http://support.netfirms.com/idx.php/0/068/article/How-do-I-enable-htaccess.html

Once you have that enabled, hopefully everything will work as expected.

Thanks! Let me know if that works for you.

Thao:

20080219 10:33

Yes, I personally went into the control panel and activated htaccess. It says it only for password protecting, but I activated it nonetheless. Does it help that I can’t even find it?

Thao:

20080220 12:05

Gosh, I’m so sorry for posting the last two comments in the wrong place again. I should have looked to the right, literally, page. Anyways, I’ll just repost here and you can delete the other two comments. I’ll just copy everything from the two and add more on.

Yes, I personally went into the control panel and activated htaccess. It says it only for password protecting, but I activated it nonetheless. Does it help that I can’t even find it?

I did everything exactly like you said in the readme of the folder, but I guess another problem is that just by adding a htaccess into the folder where my wp stuff is located creates an internal server error. The only way to fix that is the delete the htaccess.

Just to add, I created a .htaccess file in texteditor in mac and put in the coding

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

like I saw in your previous post.

When I go into my ftp client and hit view, this is what it shows

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf949
{\fonttbl\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Verdana;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
\margl1440\margr1440\vieww9000\viewh8400\viewkind0
\pard\tx560\tx1120\tx1680\tx2240\tx2800\tx3360\tx3920\tx4480\tx5040\tx5600\tx6160\tx6720\ql\qnatural\pardirnatural

\f0\fs24 \cf0 RewriteEngine On\uc0\u8232 RewriteBase /blog/\u8232 RewriteCond %\{REQUEST_FILENAME\} !-f\u8232 RewriteCond %\{REQUEST_FILENAME\} !-d\u8232 RewriteCond %\{REQUEST_URI\} !index.php\u8232 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]}

I’m at a loss lol. Everyone using netfirms and wordpress is experiencing results except me. Thanks for your help in this matter.

joel:

20080220 09:24

Hi Thao,

That’s all right. This design is sorely in need of a refresh. Things can be a bit confusing!

Yeah, you shouldn’t use TextEdit when editing source code, because it will turn everything into rich text. You can have TextEdit output plain text, but I find it easier to use TextWrangler from Bare Bones Software. It does all your syntax highlighting for you, and it’s completely free.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Do you know if when you first selected your permalink structure, if WordPress had a message at the bottom of the screen like “If your .htaccess file was writeable…”, then a copy of the rewrite rules? I have a feeling that the sub-directory you are using doesn’t have write permission for PHP. You can try chmoding it to 775 or last resort, 777. Netfirms runs PHP under your user name, so normally 755 works fine, but you may want to try 775 instead. Consult your FTP’s help to learn how to chmod.

I wouldn’t got by the .htaccess rules in my other posts. The ones included in the plugin are newer.

Hope this helps.

Thao:

20080220 01:57

Thanks a ton for the advice Joel.

I don’t think when I change permalinks that the htaccess has been rewritten at all. In fact the only thing it says is “permalink structure has been updated” I can double check again for sure, but I’ll definitely try modding the directory to allow it to be changed. I doubt that the permissions are open right now.

I’ll also download textwrangler and remake the htaccess. Do you think that the richtext format is the reason uploading the htaccess file is causing internal server errors? I’ll double check that again.

I just want to once again personally say thank you for trying to make this work for me. With the time and dedication I’ve spent with my website, making it look perfect is the finishing touch :)

Thao:

20080220 05:12

I’ve got everything working now! It was truely just my my faulty htaccess writing. I love how the permalinks work now! Thank you so much for your advice!

Now all I have to do is figure out why my admin page is not working correctly :D But that’s another story.

Once again thank you so much!

Jesse:

20080220 09:09

I am currently using a netfirms shared account. I have not installed this plugin, but wordpress permalinks seem to be working. I believe that this is a recent development, since I could not get similiar functionality out of a simple machines forum that I was using a few months back. Hurrah for netfirms. :) And if I do end up needing this plugin, hurrah for joel.

joel:

20080220 09:15

Hi Jesse,

That’s interesting. Did you use the WordPress packaged from Netfirms, or did you download it from the WordPress site and upload it yourself?

That would be great if they finally corrected it, I know that would save a lot of people a ton of stress! :-)

joel:

20080220 09:18

@Thao

Oh yeah, I’m glad that you got everything worked out! Mod_rewrite really is black magic, so it is great when it finally works :-D

Jesse:

20080223 07:30

So far I have just been experimenting with the prepackaged wordpress installed using cpanel. I will give you an update once I install the updated version.

Beeso:

20080224 03:38

good freakin job. thanks buddy

Script php, mysql, ajax, jquery, linux, debian, programmatore web - fenomeno.it » Blog Archive » Wordpress, permalinks e Netfirms:

20080226 04:58

[…] soluzione indolore che consiste nella semplice installazione e attivazione di un plugin chiamato Netfirms Pretty Permalinks Plugin. Una volta uploadato nella directory ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ e attivato dal menu Plugin, sarà […]

Lucas:

20080303 05:15

Great plugin!

Works great for my blog - techtoque.ca !

Keep up the great work!

Rob:

20080307 01:04

I love you so much!!! I think netfirms is on it’s out!! Who did you move to?

joel:

20080307 12:23

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the love! I moved to http://www.slhost.com with a sweet VPS plan. Price is great, support is awesome, plus it lets me do whatever the heck I want.

If you aren’t in the market for a VPS, they do offer shared hosting as well. But I know as of a few months ago, they were only running PHP 4 (I need PHP 5), but I suspect that will change since PHP 4 has been End of Lifed.

Either way, a quick email to them can sort that out, and they always get back to you wicked quick.

As for other shared host, I’m also looking into http://www.eleven2.com for another site, but right now I’m having some weird mod_rewrite issues with them too. So I don’t know if I can recommend them yet.

UPDATE: I didn’t get a response from eleven2 until about 72 hours later, and the only thing they could tell me is mod_rewrite should work once I point the domain to their servers (I was testing everything first via the IP and user account name). Needless to say that just wasn’t acceptable, so I am canceling the account there and I won’t be recommending them to anyone.

Joel Howe:

20080310 02:35

Sweet Jesus…I’m working on my first ever Wordpress installation and this problem was driving me mad. I was sure the problem was on my end because I’m a newbie to all of this, but it was so frustrating to not be able to fix it! I finally googled upon your site and your plugin worked like a charm!

I’m no wealthy sultan, (is a poor student close?) but I try to show my support of people who freely make my life easier with a PayPal donation of a few bucks. Obviously not much, but just a small thank you for the headache you saved me. Drop me a line if there’s an email address I can send it to, and once again: thanks so much!

joel:

20080310 10:23

Hi Joel,

That is very considerate of you! :-D My life revolves around the use of Open Source software so much that releasing this plugin is the least I can do to show my support for the community.

If you’re still looking to offload some of your wealthy student coin, you can throw those couple of bucks towards the developers of WordPress. That way people way smarter than me can continue to develop great Open Source software that is easy to extend and use.

Thanks again and I’m glad that my plugin worked for you!

Mel:

20080316 08:20

I upgraded to WP 2.3 recently and then discovered that my feed and pretty permalinks weren’t working as before. I was baffled by all the Apache/.htaccess rewrite bullsh**. Then…I came upon your plugin! This did the trick. THANK YOU!

Btw, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only one that thinks Netfirms sucks when it comes to customer service. Got any suggestions for other hosts? Feel free to e-mail me. Thanks again.

Lucas:

20080324 02:05

Anyone else’s permalinks get ruined during the past day? I woke up this morning to find all my links bringing back a 404 error.. :(
What gives?

Any help would be great. Thx

joel:

20080324 03:00

Hi Lucas,

I checked websites left here in comments and they seem to be working normally (except Thao’s. But I was just getting the main page and not a 404 error). Did you upgrade anything else with your account?

I tried to check out your website, but the maintenance page was up. Let me know if you would like any other assistance. I hope you get it figured out!

BTB:

20080324 07:07

Plugin and permalinks were working last night around 7pmEST but as of this morning not so much…none of the categories or pages will load, I just get a 404 error. Using netfirms and 1.0 beta 2 version of the plugin.

BTB:

20080324 07:10

oh yeah, I updated nothing fundamental…just finished off updating a pages content last night and cruised around the site no problem, went to bed and woke up today with none of the permalinks working.

BTB:

20080324 07:27

oh and my other site on netfirms which I havent touched in a few weeks is also on the fritz with permalinks http://www.exposedmusic.com/

joel:

20080324 07:45

Hi BTB,

I see what you mean. Lucas, I just visited your site and it appears to be working normally again. Care to share what you had to do? You still have pretty permalink functionality.

As of now, I’m not on Netfirms anymore, so I can’t really try to replicate the issue. If any more users are having an issue, please let me know and I’ll see if anyone will allow me access to their account to troubleshoot.

Abi:

20080324 09:02

Hello Joel, Having the same issues as BTB and Lucas, Pretty Permalinks not working anymore, were working perfectly until today at noon local time (South America).

joel:

20080324 10:36

For those of you having problems with Netfirms Permalinks no longer working, please try this:

Log into WordPress.

Goto Plugins and disable “Netfirms Pretty Permalinks”

Goto Settings > Permalinks and revert to the default, non-pretty permalinks

Go back to Settings > Permalinks and set your desired permalink structure.

I’ve tested this on my brother’s Netfirms account (since I’m no longer with them) with a stock WordPress 2.3.3 and 2.5 RC 1 with success with PHP4. It seems as if Netfirms has finally updated their servers to work with WordPress out of the box, seemingly making this plugin obsolete. Happy day for you Netfirms users! :-)

I didn’t try this with PHP5, so I don’t know if the plugin is still needed for that. One thing I did notice is when I first enabled pretty permalinks, then enabled the “Netfirms Pretty Permalinks” plugin, the plugin still worked. It’s not until WordPress created a new .htaccess did the 404 errors start popping up. So if you’re using PHP5 and permalinks don’t work without the plugin, try removing the line in your .htaccess that ends with !index.php

Please visit http://www.joelika.com/2008/03/24/266 for more information.

Jesse:

20080327 12:37

Sorry about the late answer. I just want to confirm Joel’s last post. Permalinks are working with Netfirms. I have had WordPress installed and operational for more than a month now with no problems. I have installed from the zip distribution and also through netfirms cpanel automatic installer.

Freaky People Productions » Blog Archive » Netfirms supports pretty permalinks:

20080327 10:55

[…] all, it seems that Netfirms has decided to support Wordpress permalinks without having to resort to this plugin hack. Unfortunately, it also broke the existing plugin, which Joelika managed to figure out before […]

Toby:

20080329 11:25

Bless you!

Your plugin worked like magic.

Thanks again!
http://www.marketingforphysicians.net

George:

20080419 05:19

Awesome plugin, thanks a lot. It took me a while to find your blog but it was all worth it.

Cheers,
George
http://www.bloggeorge.ca

“No input file specified” error:

20080423 09:05

[…] file specified, with a blank page. I was trouble-shooting the problem, and found that disabling the Netfirms Pretty Permalinks plugin fixed it. I blogged about this in January, as Netfirms wouldn’t support URIs without […]

Dustin:

20080509 02:13

So Netfirms upgraded from Apache 1.1 to Apache 2 and this plugin looks to no longer be needed.

Thanks though for providing it!

koleszka`:

20080510 11:55

hi

I just google you site looking for an answer for the same problem with permalinks and netfirms.Was really happy seeing that i am not the only one:) Unfortunately plugin didn’t work but you gave me some ideas where should i look for a solution. It’s definitely nettfirms issue and i manage to make permalinks work for me but only with php4 which sucks big time.
For anyone looking for a solution and don’t mind php4:
Permalinks in wp will only work with PHP4 enabled in your control panel, at least in my case.
My .htaccess look like this:
# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php
RewriteRule (.*) /index.php/$1 [L]

# END WordPress

thanks!

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