1. Topics Covered:

    * Setup Errors
    * File Permission Errors
    * Stats Tracker not working
    * Known issues & workarounds

    Last updated: 16th March, 2010

  2. Setup Errors:

    When first installing OIOpublisher, setup errors may be flagged up. These are perfectly normal, and are to let you know that there are certain things you need to do to complete setup of the script. You should only receive these messages when installing in “standalone” mode.

    1.) Fatal / Parsing error:

    This error occurs when you have edited the config file, but used invalid php code. The most common cause is that you have not entered the plugin url or database details inside the quotation marks provided, or you have accidentally deleted a quotation mark.

    2.) Fill in the plugin_url variable where indicated:

    This error occurs when you have not filled in the url of your OIO install directory in the “plugin url” section of the config file. Also remember that the url should not end with a trailing slash.

    3.) Fill in the database connection info where indicated:

    This error occurs when you have not filled in all four of the fields required in the “database” section of the config file.

    4.) Cannot Connect to database:

    This error occurs when you have filled in all four fields in the “database” section of the config file, BUT the details are incorrect. Check that the host, username, password and database name are all exactly the same as the values in your web hosting control panel.

    5.) Please make the directory writable:

    This error occurs when either the “cache” or “uploads” directories cannot be written to by the web server. You’ll need to login to the web server using an FTP client and change the permissions of these folders. Navigate to the directory you installed OIO in, and right click on the directory the error relates to. You should see a menu option called “file permissions” (or something similar). Select that option to bring up the permissions menu.

    >> Tutorial on changing permissions available here

    First, try switching the permissions from 755 to 766, and see if the error in OIO disappears. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to try 777 instead.

    Please be aware that setting a folder’s permissions to 777 is a security risk. Properly configured servers should allow a directory to be writable with permissions set to 755 or 766. [more info]

    6.) A “memory exhausted” error

    This error can sometimes occur when activating OIO as a WordPress plugin. If your blog already consumes a lot of memory (eg. using lots of plugins), then you may run out of memory trying to use OIO. To fix this problem, try increasing the memory in your wp-config.php file using the line of code below:

    define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', "64M");

    Last updated: 18th October, 2009

  3. File Permission Errors:

    File permissions can cause a lot of headaches, and is by far the most common cause of strange behaviour (eg. website slowdown, a crash, or scheduled tasks not running).

    Each file and folder you upload to your web server is given a set of permissions, indicating how they can be accessed. Wrongly set permissions can mean files become inaccessible.

    1.) How To Check

    To check file permissions, login to the web server using an FTP client and right click on the file or folder you wish to check. A menu should appear, from which you can select / edit file permissions. [step-by-step guide available here]

    2.) Checking Files

    The OIO files (ending in .php) should all have permissions set to 644.

    3.) Checking Folders

    Most folders in OIO (eg. admin, include, templates) should have permissions set to 755. Some folders (eg. cache, uploads) may require permissions set to 766 (or 777), however OIO will let you know if that’s the case, so make sure everything is set to 755 initially.

    Even if the files and folders within OIO itself are set correctly, you should still check the permissions of containing folders (eg. public_html, wp-content, plugins). If any of those folders are set to 777, try changing them back to 755.

    4.) .htaccess file

    If you have an .htaccess file on your website, it can sometimes affect whether pages are found or not (eg. through the use of rewriting rules). To check whether an .htacces file may be the cause of the problem, rename it temporarily to something like .htaccess.old and see if the problem continues to occur.

    A common example is that WordPress users may have inadvertently uploaded an .htaccess file to the “plugins” directory, which causes all files inside that directory to be inaccessible from the web. It should therefore be removed to ensure OIO works correctly.

    ——

    You can also search the main forum for other possible solutions.

  4. Why are no stats being recorded by OIO?

    Remember to make sure you have the latest version of OIO installed before continuing.
    Important: default ads cannot currently be used with the stats tracker.

    Diagnosing the problem

    Firstly, login to your OIO admin area and navigate to Ad stats -> Live Stats section. Click on the “impressions” link in that section and see if any data is being recorded.

    If the answer to the above question is no, then go to the “Live stats logged” heading, otherwise go to “No live stats“.

    Live stats logged

    > WordPress plugin users

    a.) Check that your WordPress theme contains a “footer” hook. For more information about this, see the WordPress.org docs.

    b.) Do you have a WordPress caching plugin installed? If so, turn off the caching plugin completely and check the OIO live stats to see if anything is being recorded. If the answer is yes, try clearing the cache and re-enabling it.

    > Standalone users

    a.) Are you displaying ads using OIO’s php ad code? If so, you need to ensure you have OIO’s header and footer theme hooks added to your page. To do this, login to your OIO admin area and you should see the quick start guide at the top of the main page. Click on the “ad code” link, followed by the “3rd party website” integration link. Follow the instructions there.

    If none of the above resolves the situation, let us know. Please include as much information as you can about your OIO install (WordPress or standalone, php or javascript ad output, any caching plugins used, your website url etc).

    No live stats

    a.) Before proceeding any further, check out the file permissions tutorial. It’s almost always the cause of any issues relating to failure of scheduled tasks (which affects stats tracking).

    b.) In your OIO admin area, check the Ad stats -> Overview section for any error messages shown in red. If you see one, follow the instructions on that page.

    c.) Navigate to the home page in your OIO admin area and scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see a section called “scheduled tasks”. If any of the numbers there are negative, it means that OIO cron jobs aren’t being run properly (which means your stats won’t be processed).

    In such cases, you’ll need to run the cron test provided with OIO, which can be run from your browser. Remember to change the example url below to match the url you have installed OIO at:

    http://mywebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/oiopub-direct/test.php?do=cron

    Once you’ve run the test, let us know the results in the forum (or if there aren’t any results) along with the main details of your OIO install (WordPress or standalone, php or javascript ad output, any caching plugins used, your website url etc).

  5. Known issues & workarounds:

    This information relates to unresolved issues in the current stable release (v2.4). They are being actively investigated.

    1.) An “invalid request” error appears in the admin area

    If you see this message when trying to update settings in the admin area, you’ll need to make a small change to the configuration file.

    Open OIO’s “config.php” file and add the following code snippet near the bottom of the file:

    $oiopub_set->csrf = false;