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UPDATE - People extracting with Winzip have been running into errors. Try winrar if you do.

What a long process this has been but the day is finally here. Let’s back up a bit and start from the beginning, shall we?

Many many many months ago I decided I didn’t want the typical “About me” page. Sure that way I could dictate what people knew about me and frame their perception of me, but what fun is that ;). I came across a script by a very nice guy, Dean who offered to give me his script! This was awesome. Dean’s script had the functionality I needed, but I wanted more functionality and wanted to put a database behind it rather than rely on files. I spent about 20 hours and wound up with a pretty neat script and launched it about 16 months ago.

It is pretty neat and i think it gives readers an interesting perspective into my personality that they wouldn’t see in my posts. Over the months though, I continuously had people asking me for a copy of it. I decided I should make it a plugin because i didn’t know of any like it out there. I finally did. My good friend Jelena wanted to start her blog last month and she wanted a copy too. All according to my evil plan, i talked her into helping me finish it. I remember when I told her the functionality I had left to do on it and she said.. oh 2-3 hours tops. We’ve spent well over 80 hours since then and finally have something that is hopefully worth to put out. That probably seems likes an astronomical amount of time but it really is a PITA to make it work just by dragging and dropping a file into your plugin directory. I have a new found respect for plugin authors. My last plugin was a breeze to make but the functionality was also very limited and didn’t require any interaction with the admin panel.

There is one big issue with it and hopefully you can help me figure it out. Upon activation, the plugin creates a page called “Ask Me”. Everything works as it should if you already have a page created. If you don’t however and you try to view your page at: http://www.yourblog.com/ask-me/ or http://www.yoursite.com/blog/ask-me/, you can’t find it. So what you have to do is create a test page and then delete the page and all is well.

I’m pretty sure the reason for this is when wordpress creates a page, it inserts the page into a specific table, but it also turns on a flag saying, “hey, we have pages!” I can’t figure out where that flag is, so if anyone knows, please let me know!

If you have Wordpress, and want a page like my Ask me page, you can download the plugin. For those of you who don’t read the ‘read me’… please do so. Report any bugs here!

65 comments for “Ask Me Plugin Finally Released - in need of nitpicking b… i mean testers.”

1

It would be nice translating into Portuguese. Is there a .po file?

January 1st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
2

Just lettin’ ya know it installed just fine on my WordPress 2.0 blog. I did need to use your create-the-page-manually trick to get its URL working, but after that it showed up. I’ll try to test it out later and see if it’s something I want to use. Nice job, writing plugins for WP is more work than it appears, I’ve looked.

January 2nd, 2007 at 5:47 am
3

Orlando - I’m afraid I completely overlooked the portuguese version. i’m working on the Farsi first, and then portuguese will be next!

Dan - Yeah, I’m pretty sure that there is a setting Im missing when I create the page, but my google ninja skills are getting rusty.

January 2nd, 2007 at 9:07 am
4

Hey,
Cool plugin indeed! Very fresh idea. You can actually do away with the whole creating a page thing (and requirement for Exec-PHP).
I’ve written more than a few plugins myself, and I can explain to you how to use WP’s permalink setup to create a quasi-page/post that doesn’t really exist, but when called (visitor goes to the URL) your plugin can output a page.
Drop me a line if you wanna know how.

January 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
5

Thanks sean, and I definitely will be emailing you. I never really looked into that part since there was a plugin that already did that. but if i could have it not rely on another plugin, that would be awesome!

January 2nd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
6

I’m so confused. I got ExecPHP running, tested it… works dandy. I tried AskMe and no go. Zip. Nada. I’m sure I’m doing something so obviously wrong, but I’ve been a long time in to getting it working and I’ve gotten no where. :(

January 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 pm
7

Let me send you an email Geoff. You can walk me through what is happening.

January 3rd, 2007 at 12:27 am
8

Hi Sara,

I tried installing your plugin, but there is a database creation error when I activate it. In the options/ask-me page I get the following error:

WordPress database error: [Table ‘trams.wp_askme_settings’ doesn’t exist]
SELECT Email, PerPage, PerPagePublic, FormAction FROM wp_askme_settings LIMIT 1

any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

January 3rd, 2007 at 4:00 am
9

Hey Pepe, it looks like the tables weren’t created or you wouldn’t be getting that error. send me an email to the email in the read me file and we can try to get together online so i can help you.

January 3rd, 2007 at 6:48 am
10

[…] ilovecode » Ask Me Plugin Finally Released - in need of nitpicking b… i mean testers. Q&Aのページを簡単に作るプラグイン (tags: wordpress plugin faq) […]

January 5th, 2007 at 4:28 am
11

[…] Yes that’s right, the wonderful Sara and Jelena have completed the WordPress plugin Ask Me. It has been long awaited by many, especially myself (sorry for bugging you heaps Sara ). But the wait is finally over and now we get to enjoy it to our hearts content! […]

January 5th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
12

Yay! Thanks guys! You’re the best!
Sorry for bugging you so much Sara!

January 5th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
13

Hi,

I installed your plugin but can not get it working.

The page created shows the same text as it does on your site, check it out here:

http://www.naatan.com/?page_id=108

When clicked on the link on that page I get a 404.. I did the create new page thing but this doesn’t work.

I’m not using permalinks, just regular file based links..

January 6th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
14

Thanks for the plugin and the effort and time put into it..wow, simply amazing.

So that’s why Jelena has been so busy..hmmm…

January 7th, 2007 at 11:27 am
15

Nathan - You will see in the readme, that it specifically asks you to use a permalink structure as the action that the form is given is from the get_permalink() function. The only way around it right now is to modify the code itself.

Moses — nice seeing you and thanks for your kind words :)

January 7th, 2007 at 11:36 am
16

Hello,

I have to same problem as Pepe above, and I have already sent you an email about it. Hopefully we can get it worked out. :) Hope to hear from you soon.

January 7th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
17

[…] As far as this site goes, I’m in the process of installing the new Ask-Me plugin. It was released a few days ago, and it looks really cool, but I keep getting an error with it in my admin panel. I’ve contacted the creator and now I’m waiting on an email back from her.:( I hate having technical difficulties - they piss me off. If anyone has it and is willing to help me out with it, please email me! […]

January 8th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
18

Hum, I’ve read the read-me like 12 times, and the “ask me” link, on the “ask-me” page isn’t working. I’ve changed all settings and the permalink structure as well…

Any ideas?

January 10th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
19

I hope to work on the next version this weekend which will have some fixes. I will email those of you that had problems then.

January 12th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
20

I found out, I tried another php exec and it worked! :)
Now I just had to fix the form as it looks awful ;) Thanks for a nice plugin!

January 13th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
21
22

Hello!

I have a problem with the plugin. :( After activation when i click on Ask me in the admin panel, i get this message:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare askme_install() (previously declared in /www/htdocs/angisw/blog/wp-content/plugins/askme.php:40) in /www/htdocs/angisw/blog/wp-content/plugins/askme.php on line 38

What could be the reason?

greetz, Angi

January 15th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
23

Well, I’m stumped.
I’ve got working just fine. But on my Ask Me page, all I see is code! Looks like the page isn’t recognizing the html tags… I don’t know if this has anything to do with this plugin or if it’s something else on my site…
http://energypaws.com/WordPress/?page_id=148

Any thoughts?

January 19th, 2007 at 4:21 am
24

[…] Having Sara join the team will most certainly benefit the Search-This readers. It’s nice to get the female perspective on things and Sara isn’t one to hold back her opinion. Just look at her new WordPress plugin simply titled “Ask Me” which allows users to forgo the typical “About Me” page of their blog and replace it with a “Ask Me” section that allows readers to get a more intimate view into the blogs author. […]

January 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
25

never mind.. I’m a dope.. my markup plugin was activated…

This works BEAUTIFULLY!

January 19th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
26

Very cool. You can check it out on my blog at http://thedarkestevil.com/ask-me/.

January 24th, 2007 at 10:39 am
27

[…] I’m sure this affects a lot of plugins; I know it affects my Ask Me plugin! Book it: del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, YahooMyWeb […]

January 29th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
28

I was desperately looking for a plugin like yours! Thanks so much, I’ll install it right now!

January 29th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
29

Argh! I SO want this Plugin to work, because it’s just that durn cool! However, I’ve been unable to fix it. (Neither has my tech guru, since my skills like outside of the code arena.)

But nice job on the creation! It’s SUCH a cool idea!

January 30th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
30
Olli

Hi,

i had the same problem like Angi, with wordpress 2.1 - i have simply activated the function for wordpress 1.5, cause the script run two times and that error appeared.

now i can modify the settings in the admin panel, but i don’t know i run ask-me on my site, so everbody can use it. it doesn’t appears anywhere. in the readme was written that a page will be created, but i don’t find this page. where will it appear? in addition i tries to call the site witz /ask-me/ or /blog/ask-me/. Nothing worked…

sorry for my bad english :( but the script is very nice and i will it on my site. :)

February 12th, 2007 at 3:28 am
31

Hi, i’ve installed exec php and your ask me plugin. I love the idea, but I can’t seem to get it showing up. I tried creating a page called Ask Me, and then deleted it as per the instructions, but still nothing there. Any assistance appreciated :) thanks, Ainslee

February 12th, 2007 at 6:30 am
32

Ask me - Plugin installieren…

Da ich schon mehrfach per email oder über mein Ask me gefragt wurde, wie man das Plugin dafür richtig installiert, hier mal eine kurze Erläuterung für alle, die ebenso wie ich nach dem aktivieren des Plugins von ilovecode.com folgen…

February 14th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
33

Hello!

Just installed the askme on a new blog, wp 2.1. May it be that wordpress 2.1 doesn’t work with the askme plugin? :(

greetz, angi

February 15th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
34
Olli

Ok, Ask Me doesn’t run with 2.0.8 and upper…

February 18th, 2007 at 2:11 am
35
Olli

Hmm… i have made some changes in the script. Now it works on Wordpress 2.0.8. I still testing it and show you the link later, if it works good.

February 18th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
36

Hello :)

We found out how to fix the plugin for working with 2.1. If you’d like to see it, you can Download the changed Version on my page. I hope thats okay, of course we did not change the author informations.

Also I translated your great plugin into german and made it available for Download on my page. Its the only ask me plugin existing, I think, so it is very popular. ;)

greetz, Angi

February 21st, 2007 at 4:53 pm
37

THX for a great plug in, had som issues before with it but thx to Angi they all got sorted out. I would gladly if any like to have it do a translation to Swedish. At the moment im running it in English just in case some foreigners should drop in… ;)

Once again thx!

February 24th, 2007 at 8:36 am
38

Yeah, I haven’t installed 2.1 on my blog yet for a few reasons and one of them being do I have the time to fix all of the plugins I wrote :p

Thanks to everyone who has helped on this! Developing anything open-source is definitely a team effort :)

February 24th, 2007 at 8:41 am
39

I LOVE your plugin, i’ve used it for my blog (currently version 2.1 and working great) i have a Feature suggestion for future versions (if any), many users would like to Respond the answers i gave them, and i might want to answer again.. this could be great feature if you could enable ReAnswering or commanting on the actual answers.

February 28th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
40

Hello,
Do I have to create ask-me folder manualy on my ftp?

Regards

March 14th, 2007 at 4:53 am
41

hi there,great code!ive installed ur code an everything works finie.

btw i got a problem with the stylesheet
i have copy the things into my css file,but nothing is changed on my actual page,

any recommendation?or shud i put div.ask_me on every parameters?

thanks!

March 15th, 2007 at 1:03 am
42

ops sorry,ive worked it out!thanks for the great code ;)
have a nice day..

-regards from malaysia

March 15th, 2007 at 1:35 am
43

First, I’d like to say that this plugin is brilliant and so much more convenient than regular ask me scripts when utilizing wordpress.

I tried changing the random phrases because I only want ONE phrase to appear…However, it didn’t work out because the old ones were still showing up. How could I fix this?

April 4th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
44

I have WP2.1 and I’ve already contacted Angi about her rendered version, but I was wondering if your version is now fixed for 2.1? Is it still a problem? If not, then I’m having trouble with it.

My problem: I’ve installed Exec PHP because it wouldn’t create a new page and I thought that was the issue (I had previously installed PHP Exec). But after that, still no page. I even created then deleted a new page, but still nothing. I can see the options though.

April 9th, 2007 at 7:57 am
45

No maria, I haven’t updated it yet unfortunately :(

April 9th, 2007 at 11:02 am
46

When I changed my email address in the settings, I no longer get the notifications when I get a new question. I’m using Angi’s version, she told me to ask you.

April 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 am
47

OK, I installed Exec-PHP and tested that it is functioning, then uploaded Ask Me and activated it. In Admin I see the Ask Me code on the page that was created, but if I go to the page - http://www.weboptimist.com/ask-me - I see a mess of HTML code instead of a form.

I’ve got WordPress 2.0.7 running.

Any ideas?

April 29th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
48

Duh, never mind. I scanned the other posts again and found the one about a markup plugin. I’ve disabled it and now see the forms.

April 29th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
49
Scott Allegretto

Hi,

Is this plugin still incompatible with WP 2.1? I’d really like to run this, but even with Exec-PHP cannot get it going on my blog.

April 30th, 2007 at 11:30 am
50

Hey Scott. I will send you an email. I installed it successfully on 2.1.3 successfully.

April 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
51

First let me commend you on making such a wonderful plugin! I have been looking for something like this in ages! Now I thought it would be helpful to share my experience in installing this plugin since others have probably run into the same issues.

Being the control freak I am, I installed the plugin via its own folder into my plugins directory, the read-me file included. This made it impossible for the plugin to work its magic - it could not create the tables, nor could it create the page. To solve this, I simply moved the plugin into the base of the plugin folder (that is it would be found in wp-content/plugins/askme.php instead of wp-content/plugins/askme/askme.php). The lesson learned from this first mistake is that you should not rename or misplace the file. It simply will not work.

I am running WP 2.1.3. At this point to my knowledge, the ask-me page was not created. I even created my own ask-me page, but this didn’t work. What I did then was signed into my CPanel Account, navigated to PHPMyAdmin, chose my WordPress database, chose the wp_posts table, clicked Browse, and lo and behold, there was the invisible ask me page!

The trouble was, some of its fields were not appropriate (at least for my version of WordPress) to make it an adequate page, so it was ignored altogether after its creation. I simply compared the fields with a page that had been created from the WordPress interface and changed anything that did not match up. If I remember correctly, the main fields to change were post_type, in which case I changed it from post (as it had been configured by the plugin) to page, and post_status (from static to publish). Note that the guid field is also empty. Voila, my ask-me page was up and running!

I hope this was helpful. This plugin certainly will be. Again, Sara, I thank you! By the way, I totally agree with the suggestion in comment 39!

May 1st, 2007 at 9:08 am
52

Morning Asia. Thanks for that great write up and I actually discovered that yesterday morning myself when i was helping a user out with his installation. I meant to update the ask-me file then, but had a very busy day. Let me do that now before I forget! Thanks for the reminder!

May 1st, 2007 at 9:17 am
53
Scott Allegretto

This might be a possible bug report:

When a user enters a singular e-mail address, i.e. yahoo.com, gmail.com, it’s okay, but if they enter twcny.rr.com or something like that, it kicks it for being invalid format.

is there a way to correct this, or make e-mail optional?

May 1st, 2007 at 7:05 pm
54
Nadia

Thanks a million for this incredible plugin - I’ve been looking for something just like this to help manage the Q&A section on a site I did for an athlete. Also - I never would have gotten it up and running on 2.1.3 without Asia’s detailed post, so thank you for that!

It works great, but for some reason when I post a test question, I get MULTIPLE emails notifying me of it. Like 3 different emails, before the question even gets responded to. Likewise, if I go in and type an answer to the question, then when I go back to the Questions list in the admin, there is a duplicate there - so in other words, the unanswered question and the answered question are listed as two separate items.

Is there a way to fix this? I don’t know why I’m getting duplicate entries - it’s only in the admin. The output on the actual page is fine. I’m also concerned about the emails because with a lot of traffic getting 2-3 notifications per question could become a real problem.

Thanks! I’d appreciate any troubleshooting help, and would even be willing to pay for some assistance with this, as the plugin’s pretty much perfect for what i need.

:) thank you

May 3rd, 2007 at 5:43 am
56
Somebody

Ask me working with version 2.2.1 Wordpress?

June 30th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
57

I don’t know how to:
a. Disable the WYSIWYG rich editor within the user options (at the bottom of the page)
b. Disable “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically”

Because there is no options page for Exec PHP version 3.2. Or am I just missing something?
And is there a different Exec PHP program that I could download?

Thanks!

August 6th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
58

Hey Megan. This is actually in the edit user profile options at the top. Not in the exec-php options.

August 7th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
59

FYI.. this is working for 2.2.1 yes.

August 7th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
60

I’ve been wondering…. is there a way I can show on the page how many questions have been asked and answered?

August 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
61

how I can put field validation to not receive any spam? I sugest that you put this in the next version

October 11th, 2007 at 12:31 am
62

Hi All..

I really love this plugin, and its exactly what Ive been lookin for, soo.. I tried create the test page and that seemed to work, but… I was also getting the leaving a comment box underneath ask a question box

But as soon as I go to edit the ask me page to switch off comments for that page, then click on the ask me page again, the text is there but the ask me form is gone as well?..

I went to Angi’s site to try and get the modified version but I couldnt find anything.

Ooooh I really want this to work.

Im using wordpress 2.3.1

Many Thanks

Martin

December 14th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
63

I have just updated the main post:

UPDATE - People extracting with Winzip have been running into errors. Try winrar if you do.

January 6th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
64

Hi there!
I’m having one issue with this, I hope you can help.
I installed it and couldn’t figure it out so I decided to unistall it. However, even after uninstalling it, the “ask me” page shows up on my list of pages. How can I remove it?

Thanks!

March 19th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
65

Any chance of updating this plug in so it is compatible with Wordpress 2.5. I am getting the following error on the admin page

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare askme_install() (previously declared in /home/*****/public_html/wp-content/plugins/askme.php:40) in /home/*****/public_html/wp-content/plugins/askme.php on line 38

April 1st, 2008 at 4:47 pm

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