This page is provided for general comments on the Eclipse Crossword Integration WordPress plugin. If you have a support issue, please leave a comment on the Eclipse Crossword Integration – Support Page.
This page contains comments from the Eclipse Crossword Integration – Comments Page article.
Stephen Cronin is Manager of Online Service Delivery at a Queensland Government department & has been a freelance WordPress developer/consultant since 2007
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Hi I recently installed your eclipse integration plugin but the first page I created is giving me tis instead of the crossword:
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/beta9hp/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 134
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/beta9hp/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 141
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/beta9hp/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 146
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I have chkd the crossword that I saved in html. It is working fine stand alone.
Hi Manish,
I can’t seem to replicate this problem.
Are you using Eclipse Crossword 1.2.57? My best guess at this point is that you may be using a different version.
Is it possible for you to send me the URL to crossword itself, ie the URL that you entered into the shortcode, not the URL of the page where you want it to appear?
If you can do that, I’ll try to replicate the problem here.
Hi Stephen,
Our site is currently on a pwd protected development server so giving the link here wont work. I can send you the file by email. You can either give me your email id here or send me privately using the email-id used for posting this comment.
In the meanwhile, I’ll double chk the version that we are using.
The plugin looks very promising. I am sure it will work for us. Thank you for doing all the hard work and for providing support.
For the record, after exchanging emails with Manish, I got the following email from him:
So there was no problem with the plugin itself.
I have this plugin up and running without any problems.
A big thank you to you
one question though, I prefer the number system in the standalone puzzle (one number is used to label both across and down) is it possible to achieve the same in the plugin?
again, thank you
Hi Clinton,
I could parameterise it so the ‘new’ numbering could be turned off. I’ll put that into the next release – that might be a week or two.
I get the same problem here;
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string. in /home/gbs9520/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 134
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string. in /home/gbs9520/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 141
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string. in /home/gbs9520/public_html/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 146
Standalone it is working fine.
What about changing the htaccess? I have Eclipse Crossword Integration 1.02 and used eclipse software 1.2.57
Thanks for the help!
Hi All,
I’m not sure what the problem was and how Manish fixed it (and didn’t think to ask him!). I know Manish is still subscribed to this post, so hopefully he’ll notice this and be able to give us some more details.
Hi, when I initially ran into that problem, we were on a pwd protected development server. I was also getting a 401 error intermittently. When I removed the pwd protection for the site to test something, I noticed that the problem with the crossword disappeared. Then I reset the pwd to the site and the problem appeared again.
But I have myself run into this problem again. The site is not pwd protected anymore but we did put in some new rules in htaccess. I am not sure if it has occoured again because of that. I am investigating myself.
On further testing it looks as if the plugin is not able to read the crossword file.
// read file containing the crossword
$url = $values['url'];
echo $url;
$result = wp_remote_retrieve_body(wp_remote_get($url));
echo $result;
the first echo publishes the url correctly. And the url is correct too if opened directly in a browser.
But the second echo either publishes nothing or a 404 page.
It is but obvious that if the plugin cannot read the page, the strpos function later will throw errors. The stack is simply not there to find the needle.
Stephen can you now help?
Here a little feedback from me…
In the meantime, I have tried the plugin on 2 servers, with 2 different wordpress installments and 2 different templates. The plugin still won’t work. I don’t know php but if I can test something out just let me know.
Hopefully you’ll find answer.
Greetings from Belgium!
Hi All,
Sorry about the delay – I’ve been really busy in the day job…
I’ve been searching for some information that may help and have discovered a similar problem occuring with wp_remote_get() in wpmu. It may or may not be related.
I think I will switch from wp_remote_get() to file_get_contents() and see if that helps. I’ll make sure it works and post a new version of the plugin here in the comments. If one of you would then be able to try it, we’ll see if that helps.
Hopefully I’ll get that up shortly – if not, it may be 24 hours. Thanks for your patience everyone and for your help in tracking down the problem.
Hi All,
I’ve posted a new eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php file at:
http://www.scratch99.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.txt
Note I had to change the extension of this file from .php to .txt so I could post it there, without it trying (unsuccessfully) to run.
To load it, try either of the following:
OR
Please take great care before doing this and backup your site if possible as any mistake could break your site!
If some gets the chance to try this, please let me know if works. If it solves the problem, I will update the official copy of the plugin with the fix.
Hi there,
I’ve tried the new code and it still won’t work. Would the admin of this board pm me, I would give my webadress and then you can test it “live” and see what the problem is.
greetz
Hi Filip,
It 1am here and I have to get to bed. I’ll email you tomorrow with my email address (or you can email me by just replying to the new comment email you get).
I have two leads on this. One is an issue with Apache not resolving the domain name for localhost. The other is because we’re trying to open the file via a URL rather than an absolute path (which won’t work if allow_url_fopen is not set in php.ini).
I’ll look to ways around this in the morning. Thanks again for your patience.
I’ve never been to Belgium, but hope to get there one day!
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the new code but I was able to make the old code work by adding the ip address of the domain in the shortcode url (we are on a dedicated server) instead of the domain url. I have not tested the new code but does that help?
Hi Manish,
Yes that helps – it means the problem (at least in your case) is the first problem I mentioned to Filip. I’m doing some reading on it and will try to come up with a better way around this tomorrow.
Thanks for the clue!
I have another new version which will hopefully fix things. I’ve posted a new eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php file at:
http://www.scratch99.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/eclipse-crossword-shortcode2.txt
Note I had to change the extension of this file from .php to .txt so I could post it there, without it trying (unsuccessfully) to run.
To load it, try either of the following:
download the file by right clicking on the above link and choosing Save Link As (Firefox) or Save Target As (IE)
Rename the file from eclipse-crossword-shortcode2.txt to eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php (remove the 2)
upload the file to your server, overwriting the eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php file in the wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration folder
OR
Left click on the link above to open the .txt file
Copy the contents of this file
In the WordPress Admin area, go to Plugins > Editor
Choose Eclipse Crossword Integration in the Select plugin to edit box and click Select
Click on eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php in the Plugin files area
Paste the code from the .txt file (copied in the second step) and click Update file
Please take great care before doing this and backup your site if possible as any mistake could break your site!
If some gets the chance to try this, please let me know if works.
The technical explanation for those who are interested: I’m pretty sure that the problem is occuring because some servers have a problem with file_get_contents opening a URL instead of a file. Therefore, if the URL you’ve entered for the crossword is on the same domain as WordPress AND if your ABSPATH constant is set (which it is in most WordPress installations), the plugin now replaces the domain with ABSPATH. This should mean it’s trying to open a local path, which hopefully the server allows.
Hi Filip,
I think I’ve fixed it. The problem was with the shortcode – it had curly quotes (”) instead of straight ones (“). For example:
[eclipse-crossword url=”http://www.scratch99.com/wp-content/uploads/crosswords/eclipse-crossword-integration-demo.html”]
instead of:
[eclipse-crossword url="http://www.scratch99.com/wp-content/uploads/crosswords/eclipse-crossword-integration-demo.html"]
I changed the quotes and it seems to be working fine. Can you please check it?
Now that I know what’s causing this problem, I’ll try to fix it in a future version so that it fails gracefully – but in the meantime, please make sure you have the “normal” quotes.
Thanks for helping me track this down. Let me know if you have any other problems.
Your script is working wonderfull now! Thanks for all your help. Maybe you can fix the example link on your “how-to-use” page (http://www.scratch99.com/wordpress-plugin-eclipse-crossword-integration/) – (now with the correct quotes).
Greetz!
Hi Filip,
Glad to hear it’s working. I’ve fixed the example – thanks for picking this up and sorry for the confusion (it was the normal quotes in the post, but WordPress was helpfully converting them to curly quotes).
Hello Stephen,
IT WORKS! I used the new code from your example page and the plug-in is working fine. Thanks for your persistence. Althea
Hi Althea,
Thanks – if you have any other trouble, let me know.
Doesnt work when integrated. The counter moves into the main table for me, except once it worked, but the xwprd was huge (bigger than when visiting the actual URL). Maybe it’s a css conflict. Heres a screenshot of what I mean. Any help appreciated…
http://i42.tinypic.com/4t2bdc.jpg
Hi Cei,
Do you have a URL for this where I can look at it? Ideally I need the URL of the page where the crossword is going and the URL of the crossword itself. If there’s anyway you can provide me with those, I’ll try to identify the problem. Thanks.
Hi Stephen
The code works fine for me thanks but I am unable to see word positions on grid probably due to theme. Any suggestions as to how I can solve this.
http://www.stfergalsbray.ie/?page_id=148
Thanks
Hi Ian,
Sorry about the delay. I can see that it’s not highlighting the characters – I’ll look into it.
Hi Ian,
Okay, I’ve had a quick look. It seems to be conflict with the CSS. You can fix it by editing your style.css file, which is in the following location:
http://www.stfergalsbray.ie/wp-content/themes/stfergalsnew/style.css
and removing the following block which starts on line 1490:
.art-article table, table.art-article .art-article tr, .art-article th, .art-article td {background-color:Transparent;
}
However, please note the following two things:
1. You should make a backup of the file before you make any changes (in case things go wrong)
2. I know this will fix this issue, but I can’t guarantee that this won’t affect a different part of the site, so please check it thoroughly.
If this is enough information for you then great, but if you need further help working out how to do this, let me know.
Hi Stephen
Thanks for reply. I believe I have done as you suggested correctly but there doesn’t appear to be any change. Further advice would be appreciated. Thanks again.
Hi Ian,
I just looked again now and it seems to be working for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer 6 (I didn’t bother testing any others).
Can you please check again? You may need clear the browser cache, which is normally done by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing F5.
Hi Stephen
It is working. Sorry, I thought I cleared cache. Thanks again for plugin.
Hi Ian,
Glad to hear! Let me know if there’s any further problem.
Hi,
Love the idea of crossword intergration and have tried this out. I can get the eclipse crossword working on site with no problems – I installed the plugin so could have a crossword as a post (plus the timer and top five function) but when the crossword loads the crossword grid (only the answer grid) stretches over the page (can only see the left hand side of the crossword grid).
I have found settings in the pulgins css file to change width of the question box etc but nothing to reduce the width of the answer area (i.e. the actual crossword).
Any ideas please?
Hi George,
Do you have a link to the site I can look at? It’s probably just a CSS conflict. If I can see it, I can probably tell you how to fix it.
Cheers,
Stephen
Hi..
I’ve installed your plugin and it is working fine except the timer which give me this error:
Message: ‘document.eci_submit_time.eci_time’ is null or not an object
Line: 73
Character: 3
Code: 0
URI: http://www.mysite.no/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/includes/eci.js?ver=3.0.2
Do you have a solution for this?
regards from Norway
sijo
Hi Stein,
I haven’t heard of this before, but I’ll look into it over the next day or two – thanks for reporting this.
Cheers,
Stephen
Ok. I’ve tried both FF 3.6 and IE 8 with same result.
Hi Stein,
I can’t make this problem happen here. Do you have a link to the site where this is happening so I can take a closer look? (the URL in the error message points to a parked domain..)
Cheers,
Stephen
Hi..
Did you find any solution on my problem?
Hi..
I changed the url since I was only testing this. But here is a link you can try:
http://www.dyg.no/iDyroy/?p=1194&preview=true&preview_id=1194&preview_nonce=e9ee9e7823
Great plugin, however I am having issues with German Umlauts. I am creating crosswords with German language content and regularly use clues that contain German characters with the umlaut (äöü). The crosswords work perfectly fine directly from the outputted file from the Eclipse Crossword software, but when added in by your plugin, all the umlauted characters turn into a ?. If I W3C validate the page, it comes up with the following error:
“Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 277 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.
The error was: utf8 “\xDC” does not map to Unicode”
I do not get that error message if I validate other blog posts that do not contain a crossword.
If I can get that fixed, the plugin would then be working 100% brilliantly
Hi Stephen,
Any thoughts on my problem with the German special characters?
Cheers
Pete
Hi! I searched the widget section actually looking for a word puzzle. Is there any chance that you could do something that integrates with a word puzzle? There are a few word puzzle generators out there that are free and I like one in particular I think the name is penguin. More work for the future! I have downloaded the widget for the crossword puzzle. I have yet to install it. Will let you know how it works! Thanks, Dawn Kelly
Hi Dawn,
Sounds like a good idea, but I’m too busy to be able to so anything about it for the foreseeable future. Maybe someone else will pick up the ball.
Hi,
I’m running WordPress 3.0.4 with atahualpa theme.
I just get a blank post when using the eclipse plugin.
http://blog.chatbella.com/?p=1393
Having read the above posts, I use the correct “”, so the problem seems to be elsewhere.
[eclipse-crossword url="http://blog.chatbella.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/UK_cities.html"]
The crossword runs when not part of wordpress (http://blog.chatbella.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/UK_cities.html).
Can u help?
Thanks.
Hello friend, your plugin is very usefull, but, unfortunatelly it’s not working for me on time function of JavaScript at this webpage:
http://www.infodicas.com.br/jogos/palavras-cruzadas/palavras-cruzadas-informatica-facil
The clock is always set to 0 (zero) and I get some JavaScript errors on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Can you fix it?
Hi Guilherme,
Sorry about the delay in responding, I have virtually no time to spend on support at the moment. I’ve had a quick look and I can only assume that there is a conflict with one of the other JavaScript files running on your site (there seem to be a total of 36 JavaScript files running on that page). Unfortunately I don’t have time to troubleshoot that further at the moment – sorry.
I am having a problem with the plugin, I had it up and running before and it was great we love it. However now it is not it is running over my theme the best way to know what i am talking about is to visit the site http://www.jpianews.com maybe it is not compatible with the theme?
How’s it going matey. I was testing this plugin out for a client who wants to do something with crosswords and all I get when using the shortcode is:
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/seoforbu/public_html/testbed3/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 134
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/seoforbu/public_html/testbed3/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 141
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /home/seoforbu/public_html/testbed3/wp-content/plugins/eclipse-crossword-integration/eclipse-crossword-shortcode.php on line 146
Nothing has been edited, your plugin is out of the box as is the html file.
Any suggestions?
Hello,
First of all, congrats and thanks, this is a great app. It is the only one I found with all these great features, and the finished result is very good. I will however make a few comments. I am pretty new to this app, so maybe some issues I found are just me being a newbie.
1 – manual creation:
I create my crosswords manually so as to leave as few blanks as possible. Clues come after. I do not think Eclipse crossword allows anything else than automatic word placing. Manual word placing, or even, live editing (i.e. starting with a blank grid, and adding words manually, entering clues as you go) would be ace. For the crossword given in example (it is my first and only so far), i used excel for placing, created a dummy .ecw grid, and edited the .ecw in my text editor to place the words. It is rather error-prone, but finally that hacking worked.
2 – French crossword formatting
In France (I am French), crosswords are not exactly the same as in US/UK. We generally use a square or rectangular grid, blanks are colored black, and we do not put the numbering inside the grid, with numbering on the side (check examples). I took the liberty of editing your JavaScript. Normally we even use a different numbering scheme foe across and down (roman for one, arabic for the other). In the example I renounced doing that for quickness and simplicity. It would be great if the sotware could give that formatting as an option. Also, we do not use accentuated characters in crossword, but web page allows their use. It should convert é and è and such to plain E. It currently converts them to accentuated capitals which makes verification fail.
3 – WordPress plugin
I did my crossword for a wordpress site. It appeared the wordpress plugin looked rather ugly, probably because of theme incompatibility, but also because there was numbering inside the grid, that made it appear uneven. I did not find an option to remove it from the grid. So I used an Iframe instead, which also allowed me to do some code adaptation (french translations)
4- Localization
It is all in english so I did some translations in French (you are welcome to steal them)
5- HTML safe
I had to use PSPAD to convert accentuated character to HTML safe code. Could the HTML export of the soft do that automatically?
Here is the example I am talking about. http://boucherie-ovalie.org/2011/11/09/les-jeux-du-mercredi-mots-et-ligaments-croises/
It is a bit “quick and dirty” because put together in a rush. Anyway you have made a great, great, great app. Thanks !