Widget's "MBCS" warnings? Give this workaround a try!

[Falco Stellare]

WORKAROUND FOR POSTRATINGS 1.30 USERS UNDER WORDPRESS 2.51 AND PHP 4.x

It's well known that the latest release of Postratings (1.30) sports little issues when used within a Wordpress 2.51 setup in a PHP 4.x environment, since it's meant to be used in a PHP 5.x environment. The most evident issue is the notorious behaviour of the Postrating' sidebar widget, which declares an impressive string of "MBCS" warnings able to totally spoil the look of your webpages. Aside from the warnings, Postratings works like a breeze even with PHP 4.x, it's just matter of getting rid of these annoying warnings.

If your provider cannot upgrade your PHP to the 5.x release, or if you somehow like to avoid this upgrade, and still want to use the amazing Postratings plugin for the Wordpress 2.51 release, there is a little hack to hide the loooooooong list of "MBCS" warnings you always get when enabling the sidebar widget: just open your home.php file (you can find it in the home folder of your current wordpress theme) and paste this snippet at the beginning of the php code:

error_reporting(0);

That's all. This will prevent the server to cast the awful warnings on your beautiful site's pages 

Please, know that this is not a solution, it's just a workaround to have your pages free of garbage, useless for your blog's users. The best way to actually solve the problem is still upgrade to PHP 5.x.

NOTE: if your server records error logs, please remember to clean them frequently, I suppose they're going to grow very fast with the tons of warnings always generated for every single page showing the widget visited on your blog...

Hope this helps, just my 2 cents for the issue...

[eac07740]

I came across the same error when I added:

<?php if (function_exists('get_highest_rated')): ?>
   <ul>
      <?php get_highest_rated(); ?>
   </ul>
<?php endif; ?>


So I chatted with my hosting company (Hostgator), and they told me to add the following to my .htaccess file:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php


It works fine now. No errors. Although I don't know if this solves the problem as far as error log reports.

Great plugin. Thanks!

[GaMerZ]

eac07740: Thanks, your method involves parsing all .php files using PHP5 =)

[YOUAREtehSCENE]

how, can i do this
I'm on dreamhost.com for a server/hosting place..

I did find

Htaccess/WebDAV
You currently have no configured directories on this domain
Set Up A New Directory

So, I clicked on that and this is what came up!




Anyone on DREAMHOST?

[GaMerZ]

I am on DH but their server suck (support is good) and hence I moved out even though I still got about a year contract with them.

Go to Domains -> Manage Domains -> Edit any of your domain. In the "PHP Version:" dropdown menu, choose 5.2.x

[YOUAREtehSCENE]

thanks bro.. why does it suck?

This is the first service, where i havne't had a cancellation, nor a tos and shit. which i'm happy with my pick. it was the first one on the page over @ wordpress.org/hosting i tried a few others and had problems, now it's been 2 months and its rad.. the only down side maybe you can help me. i get errors when i try to post, sometimes i get can't edit blah. or databass page comes up a white background saying can't find database, and it seems i believe its just me that this happends to. maybe its the bandwidth i can't upgrade my service just yet.. im paying like 165-175 for the serrive, anywho thanks again for the advice guy!

-Dave-

[GaMerZ]

I am paid $109 for a 2 years hosting. I got a warning a few times because my site was causing too much load on thier server and I am not even using up 1% of the bandwidth and diskspace they have given me. I hate host that oversell. Giving so much diskspace and bandwidth that is impossible to used up without causing too much load on their server.

Did you drop them a support on your issue? Their support is good nevertheless.

[laurent75d]

Hello,

I have the same 2 problems :
1 - The one MBCS in widget and in the dashboard when I click on Stats
2 - The second one as eac07740 mentionned (the php code give a parse error)

I'm working under WP 2.5.1 and MySQL 5.0 (and I can't upgrade to upper version like 5.2).

To solve the second problem, I paste AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php in the .htaccess but without knowing where to paste it. A bit more detail about it will be welcome.

For the first point, do you mean the index.php when you are talking about the home.php file ? And secondly where exactly do we have to paste this code error_reporting(0); ?

Thanks a lot for your help !

[GaMerZ]

Try pasting

Code:

error_reporting(0);

in your wp-config.php after

Code:

<?php

[laurent75d]

So I did it and I had an error code when I tried to login.

Method Not Allowed
The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL /wp-login.php.

So I undid the modification of the .htaccess and it gave the same résult as before... which is :
Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /homepages/30/d28191523/htdocs/laurent_WP_blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-postratings/wp-postratings.php on line 573.

Don't want to abuse of your time but since I upgraded in WP 2.5.1, I had to disable more than half of my plugins and it's really a loss of time trying to repair something will go wrong at the next release... I start sincerely to be depressive about it.

[GaMerZ]

An easier way is to ask your host to switch to PHP5. PHP4 is going to end this year. It is not a WP2.5.1 problem, it is the the latest version of my plugins.

[laurent75d]

My host is already in version PHP 5.0 but it's not the latest release which is I think 5.2.

So practically what can I do ? Is it possible to download an older version of your plugins even if now I'm under WP 2.5.1 ?

[GaMerZ]

This problem should be solve in PHP 5. You sure your host is running PHP 5? Or rather is your account on PHP5?

[laurent75d]

To be sure I made a screen copy in my host admin panel


The first database is my blog and it shows MySQL 5.0 and the other one (an old program not running anymore)  is still 4.0.
Last Christmas when I moved my blog to WP, I directly choose the highest release of MySQL when I created the database.

So what can I do else ?

[GaMerZ]

Eh that is MYSQL 5 and not PHP5. I am refering to PHP5

[laurent75d]

I'm sorry Lester about this misunderstanding.

After request, my host told me that PHP 4.5 was running and that they will upgrade in a few months... I just have to keep quiet untill then.

On the other hand, everyone does not have the possibility to get the last upgrade so please don't stick too much to latest versions... or keep old version indicating with which PHP version it's running.

Thanks a lot for your great job !

[GaMerZ]

Hmm, but PHP4 is really old and it is going to be gone in 2 months, http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/06/09/warning-cannot-yet-handle-mbcs-in-html_entity_decode/. It is like using Windows 98.

[passegua]

WORKAROUND FOR POSTRATINGS 1.30 USERS UNDER WORDPRESS 2.51 AND PHP 4.x

It's well known that the latest release of Postratings (1.30) sports little issues when used within a Wordpress 2.51 setup in a PHP 4.x environment, since it's meant to be used in a PHP 5.x environment. The most evident issue is the notorious behaviour of the Postrating' sidebar widget, which declares an impressive string of "MBCS" warnings able to totally spoil the look of your webpages. Aside from the warnings, Postratings works like a breeze even with PHP 4.x, it's just matter of getting rid of these annoying warnings.

If your provider cannot upgrade your PHP to the 5.x release, or if you somehow like to avoid this upgrade, and still want to use the amazing Postratings plugin for the Wordpress 2.51 release, there is a little hack to hide the loooooooong list of "MBCS" warnings you always get when enabling the sidebar widget: just open your home.php file (you can find it in the home folder of your current wordpress theme) and paste this snippet at the beginning of the php code:


I do not see any home.php file inside any theme folder !

Please help me, I do not have php 5.0 and I do like this plugin. Thanks

[GaMerZ]

Open up wp-config.php, put

Code:

error_reporting(0);

right after

Code:

<?php

[Transmute]

This is WAY weird.

I have put this plugin on 20+ blogs ... I had to use the .htaccess solution on all of the sites (same servers) and on some it works fine on others it does not.

All sites have the .htaccess solution, the latest version of WP and the latest version of the plugin.

I have tried the error reporting (0); solution in the config.php file, index.php and sidebar.php at various times and neither solution worked to remove the error list.

Anyone have any ideas?