OpenID logo

Upon upgrade for Wordpress 2.8 and sometimes even without it I have encountered an interesting problem: when trying to login using OpenID (or add OpenID via admin panel) I was getting this peculiar message: OpenID login failed: Invalid openid.mode ‘<No mode set>’.

As you know, my Wordpress theme ioni2 is highly customized so I though at some stage that this would be a problem within the code, but the solution was just a few clicks away, really.

What happened?

I would input any OpenID (http or https), be redirected to the OpenID provider site (say, blogspot), confirm my identity and then be redirected back. This is where the blog would give me the error so it was clearly the plugins fault.

Interestingly enough, any similar OpenID plugin would produce the same results. Yadis, Another OpenID plugin – all of them. So I figured out – the problem was not with the ioni2 theme but rather with the underlying server configuration!

Moreover I have seen this problem only and exclusively with Hostgator. For instance Bluehost, where my other projects are hosted, does not seem to have it. Line by line comparison showed that their configurations although difference, are more or less alike. So.. support call!

Solution:

It appears that OpenID was triggering a mod_security rule set by the hosting company:

[*] Rule ID: 340163
[*] URLS Affected: /openid/consumer
[*] Description: Remote File Injection attempt in ARGS (MM)

So the solution was to whitelist the domain within this serverrule. Just request your hosting support something like:

I am running Wordpress and OpenID plugins. OpenID is a well-known standard (you can check it at openid.net) and very secure open-source project, same as Wordpress. However it seems to trigger mod_security as it considers is as a intrusion.

Please whitelist my domain

This should solve the problem of No+mode+Set in OpenID.

Moreover, I believe that the same goes for any server configuration with Drupal, Joomla and any other CMS which relies on this absolutely wonderful DiSO plugin

ioni Pagination in action

One day I was just had enough. I was tired of Page Navi plugin. It uses excessive code, unnecessarily calles database and generally is not at all so customizable. So I have decided to make my own pagination plugin – and use only native Wordpress code.

Basically you just have to upload the plugin to your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it using the standard Wordpress routine

In you theme, wherever you want to put the pagination, put this code:

<?php ioni_paginate();?>

This will insert the <div > id=”navigation” at the place of insertion according to default settings – or your changed ones.

However if you want to make things a bit more secure – make sure you insert this code:

<?php if (function_exists(‘ioni_paginate’)) ioni_paginate();?>

This will also check if the plugin is actually activated, so I suggest you use this code instead of the short one.

Download ioni Paginate

Clean design is fine; but I need ideas: so, shall we move the Search to the top or leave it totally away, to utilize the Ajax style search for Wordpress? Hard to tell, but I think that something will come up any time soon!

Now I have this idea about the formatting of ioni2: The Tags, Archives, Search and Category pages should be the same – since they pretty much list posts; however the main difference would be the Left Sidebar where I would put corresponding links that are semantically connected for the best SEO.

And I plan to create one plugin like Amazon reading one, but for the local store, which may or may not prove to be an interesting experiment