Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

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Carl @ ATS
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Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Hi Garvin,

I updated to the latest version of Serendipity a while ago and it has been working nice and smoothly since then (thanks very much), but yesterday I just happened to call up my blog on my mobile phone and an error message appeared that's new to me. Judging by past messages on this forum, it's linked with an old bug:
"Extended Property for Entries plugin (serendipity_event_entryproperties) is required for this theme, which is not installed or is inactive. Please install the plugin to fully utilize this theme."
(See the attached screen shot.)

I've just checked on my external server and the plugin is still there.

I haven't touched the installation manually for ages - I just installed the s9y update automatically and I update my Piwik plugin automatically from time to time. My server host did some maintenance a while ago, but I didn't notice any errors occurring after that.

The funny thing is that the blog appears the way it should in various browsers on my notebook, but the error message occurs on my mobile phone (a Samsung Galaxy A3 with Android 6.0.1 on it). Any idea why?

Regards

Carl
Attachments
Plug-in still in directory
Plug-in still in directory
plug-in.jpg (83.26 KiB) Viewed 8021 times
Error message on my mobile
Error message on my mobile
Screenshot_2017-07-31.png (68.98 KiB) Viewed 8021 times
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Update: I now get the same error message if I call up the blog using Opera (v41.0) and Chrome on my PC (after clearing the cache). This needs resolving ASAP, please, as any visitors I have will be seeing the same thing.

Carl
yellowled
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by yellowled »

Carl @ ATS wrote:I've just checked on my external server and the plugin is still there.
What do you mean by “still there"? Is there still a directory /plugins/serendipity_event_entryproperties/ in your installation? Is the plugin installed? Is it active? All of the above?
Carl @ ATS wrote:I haven't touched the installation manually for ages […] My server host did some maintenance a while ago, but I didn't notice any errors occurring after that.
Well, that could literally mean anything. Can you state or find out the current PHP and MySQL versions the web host runs on? (That might be important in case your web host upgraded either one recently.)

YL
zarzanola
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by zarzanola »

Agree with yellowled, we need some clarification on some of the info you said.
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Sorry for not replying earlier, Yellowled.

What I meant by "it's still there" was that the file is still in the blog directory on the external server I use, i.e. it hasn't been deleted. In fact, the whole installation of s9y seems to be intact.

The first screen shot I added in my last message shows you the file in the directory.

My web host has updated the PHP version to 5.5.38. The current SQL version is 5.7.15.

Regards

Carl
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Morning.

I have tried out two things to solve the display issue yesterday and today, but neither of them have made any difference:
(1) I replaced the "problematic" entry properties folder on my server with a copy from the current version of s9y that I uploaded from my PC, just in case the server version had somehow got damaged; and
(2) I got s9y to verify the correctness of the installation from the Maintenance section of the admin interface (everything was verified as being correct). I'm using Serendipity 2.1.1.

I am not a programmer and have not changed any of the PHP files. I can't say what's wrong. Yellowled has implied it may be to do with the current PHP version, which may be the case, but doesn't really add up as v 5.5.38 is not the latest version of it available.

I now realise what I initially said about the blog not being displayed in certain browsers actually applies to every browser with an empty cache; the "correct" versions of the blog I've been seeing were simply (and deceptively) cached data. Which means that any new visitors to the blog will have been seeing something different: an error message. :-(

I'll ask my web host about the issue today and see what they say as they recently upgraded the PHP versions in use on the server. Perhaps that will lead to some new insights. But I doubt it.

Regards,

Carl
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Problem solved! Thanks to a suggestion from Technical Support at my web hosting company, I changed the theme of the blog. I picked Bulletproof again and that's working fine.

So it seems there was a problem with Clean Blog, the theme I've been using for the last few months. If I understand the error message correctly, it needed a template file that wasn't available on the server for some reason; the mirror where the files were downloaded from didn't contain it. Phew!

Carl
template_error_Aug_2017#2.jpg
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thh
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by thh »

Carl @ ATS wrote:the mirror where the files were downloaded from didn't contain it. Phew!

Carl
template_error_Aug_2017#2.jpg
Yes, unfortunately netmirror doesn't work reliably. Better switch to s9y.org or github (in the Spartacus plugin configuration).
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Thanks, thh.

I've just changed the Spartacus configuration to s9y as it was set to netmirror by default (that needs changing, guys!). Thanks for the tip.

Regards,

Carl
Don Chambers
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Don Chambers »

Carl - are you again able to use Clean Blog as your template?
=Don=
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Morning Don,

Well, yes and no. I've reset the template for my blog to Bulletproof, which is what I used before Clean Blog, and that now gets displayed in Google Chrome (and in Avant Browser, which is faster). But when I view the blog in Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Edge, it still gets displayed using Clean Blog. I've emptied the cache in these two browsers several times, but it hasn't made any difference and I don't understand why. I'll ask the forum about it shortly in another post.

Incidentally, since I changed the source of my s9y installation from netmirror, the blog has been available all the time again; that did the trick. I think netmirror ought to be taken out of the source options right away as unreliable availability is a "cardinal sin" for a blog.

Regards

Carl

P.S. Although I like the clarity of Clean Blog and the images it uses, it doesn't display the sidebars I've set up, at least not in the configuration I was using; only my blog posts are displayed. Have you tried it out yourself yet?
Don Chambers
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Don Chambers »

I think I can help....

First, the error you originally mentioned:
"Extended Property for Entries plugin (serendipity_event_entryproperties) is required for this theme, which is not installed or is inactive. Please install the plugin to fully utilize this theme."
This is triggered specifically by the Clean Blog theme. The theme checks to see if that specific event plugin is ACTIVE.... Yellowled asked you if it was installed and active... the plugin folder can exist on your server, but still not be installed or active. Does the plugin exist in your list of ACTIVE event plugins?

I checked your site with my cell phone - it is also using the Bulletproof theme.

Not sure if you saw it, but configuration instructions for the Clean Blog theme can be found here.

Finally - part of the "Clean" design was to eliminate sidebars completely. I have thought about making sidebars a configuration option as I did in the Timeline theme. I'm not sure if sidebars would look good in the design, but perhaps a footer "bar"..... let me chew on that for a bit.
=Don=
Carl @ ATS
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Re: Error message about plug-in appears on mobile phone

Post by Carl @ ATS »

Hi Don,

Thank you for replying. I see you're the programmer who created Clean Blog (and the Timeline template for s9y), so you'll know it inside out.

It looks to me as if the entryproperties plug-in was installed on my server (because I can see it there in FTP mode as part of the whole s9y installation), but I hadn't activated it by installing and saving the plug-in from the admin interface, as you and YellowLed thought. I've just gone through the list of all the event plug-ins again and installed it properly from the interface, so I presume I could select Clean Blog again now and it would work correctly, i.e. netmirror is not at fault after all. Is that right? :oops:

Looking at the configuration options in the entryproperties plug-in, none of them are familiar, so I guess I missed installing this one at the time; I just selected the Clean Blog template from the template changer plug-in. It got displayed properly for a while before the error message came along, though, so I'm puzzled about the real reason for that appearing.

I also omitted to read up on configuring the template, which I probably ought to have done. I can see there are lots of possibilities outlined in that description, and it also mentions the need for the entryproperties plug-in that I overlooked.

One of the reasons I like Clean Blog is exactly because it is so clear -- uncluttered and "nice and tidy". At the same time, though, I'm used to a blog having sidebars, and as you can see from the way my blog's now being displayed in Bulletproof, I put some information in my sidebars that was meant to be useful to readers, such as a dictionary look-up feature, links to featured dictionaries and list of archived blog posts. These don't appear in Clean Blog's default appearance. Would it be possible to incorporate them somehow in future? In a way that fits in with the overall design? Perhaps by letting visitors click on headings to expand a sidebar that's otherwise "folded away" -- a bit like the idea of hiding and unhiding the horizontal ribbon in Word. Just an idea.

Best regards

Carl
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