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Hello All,
In this little how-to, I will explain exactly how you should go about getting the very (in?)famous Popularity Contest Plugin by Mr. Alex King working with WordPress 2.7.
Compatible up to: 2.3.1
I referred to this plugin as ‘infamous’ because, while the plugin itself is very popular, it lacks support for the latest version 2.7 (last checked, it supported every version upto wordpress 2.3.1)… I don’t blame Mr. King, nor complaint about ‘keeping up to speed of things’. As he must have a life besides developing plugins (FOR FREE).
So, this is where users take over and try and fill in the role, until there comes an official update (or newer version) of the plugin from Mr. King himself.
Fatal Error--Caused by Version incompatibility
Now, when I first installed this plugin on my brand-spankin’-fresh-new install of wordpress 2.7, this produced a ‘Fatal Error’ and the plugin would not activate. Understandably so… classifying this plugin as an incompatible type. So, I did what any avid and enthusiast user would do… google’d it!
After a lot of (re)searching, I came across a site that, apparently, took over the development of this plugin and added some more on top of it. The website, Guatewireless, described the process of installing this plugin in, order to make it compatible with wordpress 2.7, as follows:
First, Exectue the following SQL against the database where you installed your wordpress copy. (My host provides a very nice interface of phpMyAdmin… so if you have that at your disposal, I would definitely recommend using it.)
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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `<strong>PREFIX</strong>_ak_popularity` (
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`post_id` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`total` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`feed_views` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`home_views` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`archive_views` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`category_views` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`single_views` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`comments` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`pingbacks` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`trackbacks` INT(11) NOT NULL,
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`last_modified` DATETIME,
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KEY `post_id` (`post_id`)
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) ENGINE=MyISAM;
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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `<strong>PREFIX</strong>_ak_popularity_options` (
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`option_name` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
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`option_value` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
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) ENGINE=MyISAM;
Pay close attention to the “PREFIX” that appears in bold, in the above code block. You MUST change this to reflect your own prefix. If you are unsure of what prefix you used, check out other tables within the wordpress database… default should be “wp”
Next, download, extract, and then upload the extracted popularity-contest.php file into the plugins directory:
Finally, go into the admin area, and click on “Plugins” menu option on the left. Find the plugin you uploaded and activate it.
Provided you followed this how-to exactly to the point, you should have a ‘Compatible’ version of the plugin up and running!
If you have any questions, please ask in the comments, and I will try my best to answer them in timely fashion.
Popularity: 14% [?]
1 Comment Received
February 16th, 2009 @4:51 pm
Your are Great. And so is your site! Awesome content. Good job guys!
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