Timberline Employee Blog

Sometimes the caller id database that your dial-tone provider uses is never queried and caller id doesn’t work correctly.

I had a problem where the CID database had my name information submitted but I could never test correctly from. After a bunch a research on my own I found the answer to my problem. (We have a service contract with one of the local shoretel reps that was unwilling to help me, but I think this will be changing soon.)

I found over at shoretelforums.com the answer in two parts. First I needed the ;2E in my trunk dialing string. The ;2E selects ‘National’ for the caller id type. My system was defaulting to unknown which my dialtone provider finally told me was the root of the problem.

To add the ;2E to your string you will need to enter the Shoretel Director in support mode. At the Shoretel Director login prompt hold down CTRL and SHIFT, then click on the text that says ‘User ID’. You should now get a red *** Support Entry *** underneath the login box. Now log in normally.

Please do not change anything else than the following in support mode.

Under Administration, Trunks, Trunk Groups:
Open the PRI you want to change.
Scroll down to the bottom and edit your custom Trunk Group Dialing Rules.

 - Be shure to copy down exactly what is currently in the box if you need to revert your changes. -

Save your change and test.

Now that my CID string says national, my dial-tone provider is correctly popping the CID database. I can now properly test calls placed to internal ten digit DID numbers.

Sometimes VQAdmin gives a blank page when viewing the domains it manages. Open up your trusty phpmyadmin and open up the dir_control table in the vpopmail database. Zero out the cells in cur_users that have something other than 0 and you should be good to go.

My list of the most necessary plug-ins for WordPress 2.2.1 include:

PlugInstaller 0.1.95: Author’s Site, Repository
This is one of those features I missed from the other CMS/Blogging systems. It allows plugin installation without using a ftp client. The author now has cleared up the problems I found in an earlier version of this plugin.

WP-DB-Backup 2.1.2: Author’s Site, Repository
Ever need to refer to a backup? This tool allows you to backup the WordPress database, package it up neatly and email it to you or let you download it. It can even be setup to run on automatically.

Front Page Excluded Categories 1.0.3: Author’s Site, Repository
This plug-in make it possible to put only a certain category of posts on the front page. When setting up select all categories then remove the ones you want to show on the front page.

Google (XML) Sitemaps 3.0b7: Author’s Site, Repository
This is one of those necessary evils. You have a page. You have to tell somebody it is there.

Google Analyticator 1.5.3: Author’s Site, Repository
This adds the Google tracking code to your page. You must setup a tracking account for this to be of any use.

All in One SEO Pack 0.6.2.6: Author’s Site, Repository
Just telling people that you exist is not enough. You also have to tell them a bit about yourself. This plug-in helps you do that.

Social Bookmarking RELOADED 2.2: Author’s Site, Repository
This is based off of Social Bookmarks. It is designed to easily submit a page to one of the major bookmark / blog bookmark sites. This one auto centered and fit better in my themes than some other social bookmarking plugins I tried.

WP-o-Matic 0.2-beta: Author’s Site
Almost ready for prime time. It took a bit to be able to install this. Once installed it creates posts from rss feeds. See what I have already written about this plug-in.

cforms II 5.0: Author’s Site, Repository
Allows creation of multiple mail-to forms.

There are other great plug-ins available. These are the plug-ins that I would argue on having in the WordPress download.

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Here is a how to showing how to add RSS Feed Aggregation to Wordpress 2.2.

Required: Wp-o-matic, Wordpress-2.2

First, let us not find out what kind of fun it is to replace work without a backup.

About the wp-o-matic 0.2 beta archive. It was made on a mac and I had to use a program other than the built in Windows XP Zip Folders to extract the archive entirely. WinRar extracted without difficulty but I still had to erase the extra .DS_Store files and __MACOSX directory.

Wp-o-matic version 0.2 beta had a problem in the mysql field description. This was my first stumbling block. Fix this first even if your tables use the default wp_ prefix.

On line 334 of wpomatic.php version 0.2 beta, replace the hardcoded “wp_rssfeeds” with {$this->dbfeeds} .

Now locate the directory your theme is stored in and open index.php. Somewhere in index.php you should find <?php the permalink() ?> next to ‘read more’, depending on the theme you use. Change this to say:

<?php $a_wprss_link=get_post_custom_values(”wprss_link”); if(!empty($a_wprss_link)){echo $a_wprss_link[0];}else{the_permalink();} ?>

This uses the get_post_custom_values() to pull the link data from the post created by Wp-o-matic. If there is nothing in this field then the regular permalink is used.

Good. If you haven’t already uploaded the wpomatic folder to your plugin directory do that now.

Turn on the plugin. If your database tables do not start with wp_ and you get an error here reguarding the database, read the part above that you skipped over a little to fast. Other errors are likely directory permission settings. Try chmodding to 777.

Then go to Options/wp-o-matic and enter in a feed to test. If all goes well you have a working RSS Aggregation system.

Now the interface does not let you enter complicated urls like http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss;_ylt=A9j8eu.hUnlGwfcAtRfQtDMD; ylu=X3oDMTA3MTBsZGZsBHNlYwNhZG0-?ei=UTF-8&p=chrysler &c=&eo=UTF-8, so if you have phpMyAdmin installed use it to load the url. Wp-o-matic will then be able to pull feeds where it wasn’t before.

If you want would like to add a target=_blank for outside links only then enter the following inside the <a href> defination next to the code we entered above. Note the code we entered above will be sourounded by quotes so you need to paste this outside of those quotes so this doesn’t become part of the link.

<?php $a_wprss_link=get_post_custom_values(”wprss_link”); if(!empty($a_wprss_link)){echo ‘target=_blank’;} ?>

The idea here is to always open rss links in a seperate window and open internal links in the same window.

Let me know if this helps.