Monthly Archives: July 2009

The mystery of the disappearing WordPress comments

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I love hosting my WordPress blog on my own site. It provides me with so much freedom and perks, one of which is the ability to download and install whatever theme I choose. However, I should remind readers that there’s always a flip side to the coin, as I discovered about two months ago. The problem was this—my readers’ comments showed up properly in my blog posts, but comments which were supposed to be in my other pages (My Music, About Me) mysteriously vanished into virtual obscurity whenever I changed themes. What compounded the aggravation was that practically every new theme that caught my fancy had this problem manifesting itself, as if to spite me for being so hooked on playing with themes. It got so bad that I was soon limited to just a few themes which worked right for all my pages. Upgrading to the latest WP 2.8 didn’t help at all.

Heck, even the default WordPress theme became “infected” and I was getting more frustrated as the days and weeks passed. I googled and binged and searched the WP support forums, to no avail. So I decided to post for help here. Luck was with me, because Nazcar gave me a speedy reply and solution. Thanks, Nazcar!

Add this line of code into the Page template (page.php) of the theme, after the last </div>:

<?php comments_template(); ?>

Save the page up, that’s all there is to it!

I had to do this for every theme that swallowed my comments, but it was worth it. Now I can use any theme I like, provided I remember to add that line of code into it. I wonder why theme creators don’t add it to their themes in the first place?

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The Yamaha P85 Digital Piano

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Yamaha P85 Digital Piano

I was thinking about how nice it would be to play for weddings, cocktails, birthdays, etc. to earn more money (and to enjoy myself too) Thing is, most Chinese weddings here are loud, boisterous affairs, where people usually talk like they can’t hear each other, others get drunk, and the band (there’s usually one) tries its hardest to drown everybody out. Still, I’ve played for a wedding or two where the bridal couple didn’t want any of this nonsense, instead opting for some nice instrumental piano music in the background. However, they have had to fork out extra money to hire a digital piano for me, as I don’t have a portable one myself (I’m not going to lug my CVP-105 Clavinova by myself, that thing would kill my back) So this didn’t seem to be like an ideal arrangement if I wanted future gigs.

It was this shortcoming that made me scout around for a portable digital piano and a few weeks ago, I was in one of the shopping malls here, and stepped into a music store. There it was—the Yamaha P85. I’ve used a lot of Yamaha instruments in the past, and I love their sound and build quality. The P85 is indeed slim and inviting, so I sat down and began to play. And the sound—wow! The thing about digital pianos is that the sound won’t change with age, not like an acoustic one. You have to like the sound from the onset, because you’ll be living with it for the rest of its life with you. The P85 is equipped with only two 6W amplifiers, but the sound was gorgeous—very full-bodied and authentic (well they were sampled from a concert grand). A big plus is that the entire keyboard touch replicates that of a grand piano too, so it was most pleasant to play and imagine that I was performing on a grand piano. Very nice. The P85 weighs about 25 lbs. I think I could manage that without breaking my back, and probably could stuff it into my small car.

I talked to some of my contacts here and they told me that yes, there is a market for a solo pianist at weddings, etc. But I’m going to wait and see whether any gigs show up on the horizon before I plunk down my hard-earned cash for the P85. It costs about RM3000 ($850 USD) I’m also thinking of trading in my aging Korg PA-50 keyboard, as I don’t use it that much. I’d rather play straight piano.

So if any of you are getting married here in Penang, or would like some nice piano music for any event or occasion, do get in touch with me, and I’ll see what I can do.

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My Guestbook page is up

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Strange how some things hit you just because you deserve it. I was working on a client’s blog recently when he requested that I put in a guestbook for him. I’d never put in a guestbook for a WordPress.com blog before, so I did some Googling and Binging (Microsoft’s new search engine is not bad) and found a very nice and free guestbook at Slide. Instructions were straightforward and easy to follow, and with a few clicks of the mouse, my client’s blog had a guestbook—he was happy, I was happy, everything’s good.

Then it was as if someone threw a brick at my head and shouted, “Hey you dork! Your blog is already over a year old—where’s your guestbook?” Oh man, that voice was right—I’d not even thought about putting a guestbook in my blog, aw this is silly of me. I searched through the WordPress plug-ins since I’m hosting my own WP blog. There were a couple of guestbook thingies, tried one or two, hmm not too interesting or attractive for that matter.

Went back to Slide, did my own customizing and came up with a pretty nice guestbook. Tried putting it into a new blog page, and that was when the trouble started. I just couldn’t get it to work! Instead of displaying a guestbook, all that I could see were the lines of code. It was futile trying to do it in the WP admin, so I tried Windows Live Writer instead. And you know what, just copying the HTML code and pasting it into a new page won’t work, no matter how much you cuss. The trick is to create a single-cell table, and then paste the code into it. Even so, you have to select the Paste Special command in order to get the HTML to show up. I did this, and voila! Here’s one neat (at least to me) Guestbook in my blog.

The great thing about the Slide guestbook is that visitors and readers can choose to upload a picture and paste it into their guestbook entry. This beats all the other boring guestbooks which only allow text.

I hope you’ll sign my guestbook here. Thank you!

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