Archived Comment Thread
Please visit the new AZIndex Website for all the latest on the AZIndex plugin.
I have preserved the old comment thread below in case some people are still linking here, or coming back to find answers to old questions.
For new questions, comments, and feedback about AZIndex, please use the new Feeback page.
Comments are closed.
about 1 year ago
Hi Mike,
Just read your road rage account. You have a great descriptive handle of the English language and it’s a pleasure to read.
Right, onto more important things. I was pointed towards your plug-in after putting a post up on the wordpress.org forum. Instead of repeating myself you can see the thread here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/222446?replies=3
So I downloaded AZIndex in anticipation but I’m a little lost as to how to replicate the tree on my website homepage I alluded to in the WP thread (the website is my current one, my WP blog is being developed offline). Of course I understand that some styling is required with CSS but I can’t get the three tiers to function as I’d like. What’s happening is Country and Region are the same link, when they should be independent of each other, and Location (the third tier) isn’t a link. I’d like all three links to be clickable tiers.
Is this beyond AZIndex? Please let me know before I waste any more time playing around with it. Don’t think for one moment that I’ll bin it though – it’s a killer plug-in. Well done on the work.
Thanks in advance,
Jamie
about 1 year ago
I couldn’t find a support forum for this plugin so I’ll post my question here;
Is there a way to index by numbers? Specifically by integers larger than 9? I’m trying to put together an archive of product reviews arranged by price. I can eliminate the “$” sign no problem and the indexing agent is through a custom field but I’m returning an archive page that organizes the content by the first integer in a number and that is it, so say the prices $1.00, $10.00, and $100.00 are all categorized under a single heading of “1″. How do I fix this?
A workaround I’m thinking of I’m thinking of is instead categorizing by price ranges with headings in a custom field reading “Products Less Than $10″ or “Products Between $10 & $20″ and so on but I’d like it to be a little more precise…or not. What are your thoughts? Would you recommend my initial approach or this workaround approach and if the former any suggestions on how to implement it? Thanks!
about 1 year ago
@Rudolf,
Yes, you can index by numbers. I dit it on a site where the posts were to be sorted by the reference number of the products they presented.
You have to add these lines to the file functions.php in your theme’s folder:
< ? php // In your file, get rid of the spaces in the php start code on this line, and delete this comment
function my_numeric_compare($item1, $item2) {
return (intval($item1['subhead']) – intval($item2['subhead']));
}
?>
Adapt the code as needed — you might not want to place you sorting number as a subhead, for instance.
You can also read these previous comments:
http://englishmike.net/azindex-plugin/#comment-248
http://englishmike.net/azindex-plugin/#comment-341
http://englishmike.net/azindex-plugin/#comment-347
about 1 year ago
Hello,
Wordpress 2.7 is out – thats good news

AZIndex is not compatible – thats bad news
Please, please… wordpress is uncomplete without your fantastic plugin.
Andy
about 1 year ago
Just updated to Wordpress 2.7 today, and now when I click “edit” on any of my indexes, nothing happens. It just takes me back to the AZIndexes main page.
about 1 year ago
There is a real quick and easy workaround for getting to the Edit screen of AZIndex in WordPress 2.7;
1) Right click the Edit shortcut button and choose Copy Shortcut
2) Paste this in the address bar
3) Change edit.php to tools.php
4) Press Enter
Your string in the address bar should now look something like this;
http://www.yourwordpressblog.com/wp-admin/tools.php?page=az-index-manager&action=az-edit-index&indexid=1
The design looks a little bit messed up but at least your options are accessible again.
about 1 year ago
Just a little update on a better fix;
1) open az-index-admin.php in an editor (could be in the WordPress Plugin Editor even)
2) Locate the following line;
define(‘AZ_PAGENAME’, ‘edit.php?page=az-index-manager’);
3) Change it to;
define(‘AZ_PAGENAME’, ‘tools.php?page=az-index-manager’);
about 1 year ago
Thanks Roady! It works
about 1 year ago
On line 326 of az-index-content.php you have a span opening tag and a style closing tag. It fails XHTML 1.0 Strict, which is how I found it. There is another strict error that I haven’t found the cause of yet. Nevertheless, great plugin. Thanks
about 1 year ago
The other error is regarding the style definition in the middle of the HTML body. You can either solve this by editing the plugin to put it in the header or take out the entire style definition and put it in your css file.
I chose for the last. Of course this means that you cannot use the editor supplied in the plugin anymore but you can still use your Theme Editor online (if you really want to edit everything online).
about 1 year ago
I have a problem
I make use this plugin months ago, but now after latest wordpress upgrade, I cannot find where is the plugin setting page, if I click “edit” on my old index, doesn’t happen. I try to deactivated the plugin, delete it and download it again, but I have the same problem.
Also, it only shows parent category.
Where is the problem?
Many thanks.
about 1 year ago
I really like your plugin. A very practical idea as people can more easily find useful posts. I just upgraded to WP 2.7 and am not able to create the index. Have tried a number of times. anyone else having this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
about 1 year ago
@Cruth and Estrella,
Read previous comments, Roady kindly explained how to fix it, a couple of lines above
@Mike
Absolutely fantastic plugin… The more I use it, the more I love it
about 1 year ago
Many thanks for your help. I have a new question but, I I am very much afraid that it has no solution. I am using ZDmultilang for English version. This plugin doesn’t distinguish between Spanish category or English category the only difference is in the URL
On Spanish
http://www.estrellaesteve.com/es/cocina/
On English
http://www.estrellaesteve.com/en/cocina/
Is there any way to create different index for the two versions?
Many thanks and Merry Christmas and a happy NEW YEAR
about 1 year ago
I dont know why the css for use two rows options doesnt work in my template. It always break the line.
about 1 year ago
I mean, columns
about 1 year ago
How I remove the link in subheading?
about 1 year ago
Cruth,
I’m using 2.7 and just tried to install it on another blog and it just keeps saying “no index pages found.”
I have it installed on another blog running 2.7 but it was installed prior to upgrading to 2.7
about 1 year ago
Sorry! Didn’t see the fix for this above.
The code fix to make it work with 2.7 is also posted on wordpress.org
about 1 year ago
The fix doesn’t seem to work for me. I get this error when I input the code:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘=’ in /home/baseb6/public_html/WordPress/wp-content/plugins/azindex/az-index-admin.php on line 49
The plug-in then deactivates. Any solutions?
about 1 year ago
excelent plugin …
only I will recommend to put in the custom css , and !important excalmation in the ul, li and ol in case of the theme overides this .
about 1 year ago
The Fix:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/228161
I just did it and it’s working fine.
about 1 year ago
content.php around line 152:
$heading = ‘…
What should it read to correct the missing anchor link? Right now it only outputs the hashmark as the anchor link and no character.
about 1 year ago
I am using wordpress 2.7 and I got “No index pages found” message under Manage Indexes. I think your v0.6.2 is not compatible with wordpress 2.7! Can any one hlep me on this matter?
about 1 year ago
Great plugin! I cant belive that I havent seen this one before. The “hack” above works great with WP 2.7. Here is mye page with the plugin: http://www.spillnett.no/alle-spill/
I think i will do some custom css to make it look a bit better.. You could add a standard option to have a line break line between each letter.. Like this:
A
__________________________________
content with the title A
__________________________________
B
__________________________________
content with the title B
__________________________________
Im not sure if this will look ok, when i post the comment…:P let see..thanks anyway
about 1 year ago
Mike, I hadn’t noticed before because the indexes that I use work just fine, but I can’t edit or make a new index since I upgraded to WP 2.7. I can’t get it installed with the built in WP plugin installer (I’m at work, no FTP here), so I haven’t checked if that would help.
about 1 year ago
I’m trying to use the plugin to make a glossary of all the movies on my blog. What would be the best way to go about this? The titles of my post don’t all start with the titles of the movies so they are not listed in A-Z order by movie name. Is there a way to A-Z order by tags without having to enter each tag individually and to just include all tags?
about 1 year ago
Is it possible to exclude titles which begin with a certain word. Like ‘The Next President’ to Next President, The’
about 1 year ago
Hi Mike,
Awesome plugin but cant seem to get it to work in v2.7. Looked over your instructions a few times and when I click on “Manage Indexes (add new)” nothing happends.
Please advise.
about 1 year ago
Nevermind, should of read up.
Many Thanks.
about 1 year ago
in 2.7 you need to change the line 49 of az-index-admin.php…
define(‘AZ_PAGENAME’, ‘edit.php?page=az-index-manager’);
appears that it needs to be:
define(‘AZ_PAGENAME’, ‘tools.php?page=az-index-manager’);
works fine for me now!!!
about 1 year ago
Re post (sorry, maybe i wasn’t clear enough!): Many of my Dutch posts in the index start with de (the). Is it possible to automatically change the title to for example ‘President, De’ instead of De President?
about 1 year ago
I get the following error message on WP 2.7
AZINDEX ERROR: Invalid az-index short-code found. A non-zero id parameter must be specified.
Please notify blog/site administration of the problem.
(Message from the AZIndex plugin)
The code for the index is 2, so it is non-zero.
about 1 year ago
Hi there,
Did this just happen when you upgraded to WP 2.7? Are you using the latest version of the plugin, I released today (0.6.3)? Is the index still visible on the AZIndex administration page? Does the number you are using match the ID of that index?
Sorry to only reply with questions, but unless I have more information, then it will be difficult to help you. I tested the new version by installing it on my own blog here (which is now at WP 2.7) and it seems to be working fine.
Mike
about 1 year ago
Mike
I installed AZindex with Wordpress 2.7. I get a good preview of the page, but when I go to publish it, and then open the page, I get the following error message:
AZINDEX ERROR: Invalid az-index short-code found. A non-zero id parameter must be specified.
Please notify blog/site administration of the problem.
(Message from the AZIndex plugin)
I’ve tried deleting and re-establishing the index and clearing the cache. Any thoughts on what I should do?
Thanks
about 1 year ago
Hi, Worth. You are the second person to report a problem tonight, but when I try to reproduce the problem on my blog, and on a new install of WP 2.7 and AZIndex 0.6.3, everything is working fine. The only thing I can suggest, for now, is to try uninstalling the plugin (use the link on the AZIndex Admin page) and reactivating AZIndex from the plugin screen. Note you will lose all indexes you have defined — so only do this if you don’t mind recreating the indexes.
Is this a new installation of AZIndex, or were you upgrading from an earlier version?
At the moment, I can’t think of anything that would be causing this. It’s possible that WP 2.7 is interacting with the plugin differently in some way, but it’s not at all obvious what it could be at the moment, since I can’t see the problem myself.
I will check back in the morning to see if anyone else is reporting the same problem.
about 1 year ago
Mike, 0.6.3 solves the problem I described above.
An just as a request, I’d love to be able to handle letters like ä or æ better, either manually (like the characters to ignore) or by default, but ä becomes ae (or just a, because it’s not always German) æ, ae, ö o, etc.
about 1 year ago
Roy — glad the fixes worked for you. I hear you about the problems with non-English characters. It’s on the list of things to do, and now that I have started to look at the plugin again, I hope to do something about it soon.
about 1 year ago
Mike,
I did as you suggested and still got the same results. For the record, this was a brand new install (no upgrade). Also, the index numbers match between the index number on the Admin page and the text of the “live” page. What other info do you need from me?
Worth
about 1 year ago
Hi, Worth, thanks for the additional information. I have been looking through the AZIndex code and while I don’t know what the problem can be yet, it’s likely that the error message you are getting is a little misleading. The plugin can’t find the index, true, but not because it isn’t a valid one, but because there is some kind of database error when it tries to access the index settings from the database.
That’s just a guess, but looking at the code, any database error will cause that message to be displayed, but the question is, why?
So I have a few more questions (not solutions, yet, I’m afraid):
1. What version of PHP and MySQL are you using (don’t worry if you don’t know how to find out)? There have been a couple of problems in the past associated with a specific version of PHP or MySQL.
2. Try disabling the cache from the index settings (under Advanced Settings).
3. What happens if you copy the shortcode reference to a published blog post and try it there?
4. Can you confirm that the index works for unpublished (previewed) pages? More than once? (refresh the page to see what happens).
5. If so, what happens if you publish a page, and then unpublish it again — does it start to work again?
6. Have you tried disabling all the other plugins to see if that solves the problem?
Thanks for persevering with this, Worth. I know how easy it is to give up on a plugin when you can’t get it to work right away, so I greatly appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Mike
about 1 year ago
Is there a way to sort all of your post A-Z by their tags?
about 1 year ago
Hey Paul,
No, I’m afraid there isn’t, not easily anyway. The problem is that posts often have more than one tag, you would want that post to appear under each of its tags in the index, and the plugin isn’t really designed to work that way.
There are a couple of ways of achieving close to what you want, but they would require some work setting up:
1) If you only have one tag per post, you could place that tag in a custom field called “tag” and then sort on that custom field. If you have a lot of posts, that would be a chore to set up, but it would work. (There might be a plugin that might help you copy the tags over, though I am not aware of one.)
2) If you don’t have too many tags, you could create an index for each tag which would only include posts with that tag. If you have, say, 20 tags, then you would need 20 indexes. You could then one more index to contain only those 20 index pages (a super-index?) which would list the tags. The user could then click the tag to go to the correct index, then click the post name. Obviously if you have 500 different tags, this would be difficult to set up, but with a limited number of tags this would work well (and allow posts to appear under more than one tag).
Hope that helps.
Mike
about 1 year ago
Is there a way to have multiple entries from the same blog post appear on the list? (e.g. a post that contains several recipes). I tried creating a custom field and putting each recipe in it, but AZindex only pulls in the first instance of that custom field.
Ideas?
about 1 year ago
Sorry, Rick, the whole plugin is gear towards one index item per post. I’m afraid that if you want each recipe to appear separately in the index, you will have to give each of them its own post.
I took a quick look at your site — very nicely done — and all I can suggest as an alternative, would be to put an index title in a custom field that best describes the recipes in that post as a group (e.g. “Cocktail Recipes”) and then add another custom field where you list the names of the recipes in the post (e.g. “Mai Tai, Pina Colada, Martini”) which you can then use in the “Description” field in the index, so the user can see which recipes are described in the post.
What you are looking for is an index based on tags, which would allow for multiple index entries per post, so you would be able to add a tag for each recipe. It’s an interesting idea, but it would take a major overhaul of AZIndex to do it, so it’s not something I’m likely to be doing in the near future.
about 1 year ago
Fantastic plugin.
Good job on this one.
about 1 year ago
I love the idea of this this plugin and would absolutely love to use it, but after I activate it and go to the tools section to set it up i get the following error…
AZINDEX_PLUGIN_ERROR: The required AZIndex database table – wp_az_indexes – does not exist. Please deactivate then re-activate the AZIndex plugin to correct the problem.
I have deactivated it and re-activated it more then enough times and still no go. I’m running WP 2.7, any help would be greatly appreciated
about 1 year ago
ok after upgrading to the latest release of this plugin im still getting the same error
about 1 year ago
Rats — I thought it had to be the issue I just fixed. I’m back to being stumped. If you really want to try out this plugin today, then please try the older version 0.6.3 which, I hope, should work for you. You can find a link for downloading by clinking on the “Other Versions” link below the main download link.
Sorry for the inconvenience. I really don’t know what’s going on, apart from the fact that the AZIndex database table is not being created. Most others have been installing and upgrading with no issue, so there must be something different with your WordPress configuration that my plugin is not allowing for. I will keep digging.
about 1 year ago
maybe you can supply the sql to run manually in phpmyadmin
about 1 year ago
Heather — no need — in the rush to fix the previous problem I screwed up 0.7.2 even worse! Please try 0.7.3 to see if that works any better. It should appear on the WordPress Plugins directory in a few minutes.
about 1 year ago
I’m thinking that this plugin and I were just not meant to be, lol….
about 1 year ago
Does that mean it’s still not working for you? (v0.7.3?). I would love to know what version of MySQL you are using. I tested this on MySQL: v4.1.22 and 5.0.5.
Here is the SQL call to create the table if you would like to try it in PHPMyAdmin:
CREATE TABLE wp_az_indexes ( name text NOT NULL, idindex int NOT NULL, categories text, tags text, heading text, subheading text, description text, cols tinyint, headingseparator text, itemsperpage smallint, ignorechars text, nlslocale text, nlsequiv text, customcsssingle text, customcssgroup text, customlinks text, customsort text, options set('child-cats', 'include-pages', 'include-pages-exclude-posts', 'multipage', 'multipage-links-above', 'multipage-links-below', 'group-subhead', 'alpha-head', 'alpha-head-page', 'alpha-head-col', 'add-spaces', 'alpha-links', 'alpha-links-unused', 'alpha-links-two-rows', 'ignore-chars', 'non-alpha-end', 'nls', 'nls-equiv', 'nls-locale', 'custom-css', 'custom-css-striping', 'custom-links', 'custom-sort', 'disable-cache'), itemcache mediumblob, linkcache blob, PRIMARY KEY(idindex)) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;If that doesn’t work, then try taking “DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8″ off the end and try again.
about 1 year ago
Hi thanks for this plugin
testing it was easy and good,
but my mother speech is German,
we have special characters in our language
öäüß ÖÄÜ your plugin doesn’t show Ö it shows only O but this is not correkt and no German people search for O if it would like to read Ö because Austria =Österreich and not Osterreich
I know this special characters are heavy – e-mail clients can’t show them correct most of the time, and so on..
but workaround is Ö =Oe Ä =Ae Ü=Ue is this possible?
thanks
Monika
about 1 year ago
Monika, thanks for the information. I used the collation table from here: http://www.collation-charts.org/mysql60/mysql604.utf8_unicode_ci.european.html as a guide to what to do, and it folds the ÖÄÜ characters into the OAU sections in the index. There are separate tables for some languages, but not for German.
I understand your problem, but I’m not sure if I can do anything about it. My plugin does not have much control over how the index is sorted — I just use a function call (strcoll()) provided by the programming language (PHP) because sorting is so different in all the different languages.
I will take another look at German to see if there is anything I can do. Please check back here in a day or two.
about 1 year ago
thanks .. if not . I’ll found a workaround – a little sentence or so -with a blink in my eyes – and my user understand
I’ll come back
regards
Monika
about 1 year ago
Monika, I looked on Wikipedia and it says that there are three different ways to sort german indexes:
1. In dictionaries, the accented characters (ÖÄÜ) and placed next to the unaccented characters (so Österreich would come next to Ostrich).
2. In telephone directories and place name indexes, the accented characters (ÖÄÜ) are expanded (Ö =Oe Ä =Ae Ü=Ue) like you wanted above.
3. In some cases, the accented characters (ÖÄÜ) are placed separately either after the base letters (OAU) or at the end of the alphabet (after Z).
Unfortunately, the sorting used in AZIndex only does number 1, and not 2 or 3. However, I do have an idea which might help you. I will post another comment (or a new blog post) later. You might be able to use a custom sort function to get what you need.
about 1 year ago
Monika, I wrote a comment explaining how you can convert the ÖÄÜ characters into Oe Ae and Ue before the index is sorted (option 2, above), but I lost it somehow. I will write a new blog post this weekend to explain how you can do it.
about 1 year ago
AZINDEX ERROR: Invalid az-index short-code found. A non-zero id parameter must be specified.
Please notify blog/site administration of the problem.
(Message from the AZIndex plugin)
about 1 year ago
Nonaoco — if you go to the AZIndex settings page, do you see your index settings or a red error message? If you installed 0.7.2 you may have lost your index settings (my fault). If you haven’t done already, try installing 0.7.3 and recreate your index (you will get a different index id, so you will have to change the id of the index in the page displaying the index.
about 1 year ago
Hi Mike
I am running the latest WordPress on BlueHost (so I assume up to date MySQL too) and just upgraded (twice) to the latest of AZIndex. Whereas before things were working wonderfully, now it appears that it lists all the posts that start with a capital letter then starts again alphabetically with the posts starting with a lowercase letter.
about 1 year ago
Charles, yeah, this plugin is getting complicated to regression test correctly. I see the problem. There is a workaround — if you go into the settings and turn on the National Language support option, then the lowercase characters will be sorted correctly again.
I will fix the problem as soon as I can, but you will understand if I take my time making sure I don’t break anything else!
EM
about 1 year ago
Thanks Mike
I tried the workaround but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Do I have to toggle more than just the main tickbox? (there are 2 sub-boxes)
Thanks for what you’ve done and I look forward to when you’ve had time to get a fix together.
Cheers
about 1 year ago
Darn it — it definitely works for me, just tried it again. Are you sure your index page isn’t being cached? Try clearing the cache (from the main AZIndex settings page) and maybe your browser cache and, if you are running WPSuperCache, that too.
You should not have to select the national language sub-options.
I’ll work on getting the fix in soon.
about 1 year ago
Well, I hadn’t cleared my browser cache but I did disable WP-Cache and clear the AZIndex cache. …
Instead of clearing my Firefox cache I poped it up in both IE and Chrome, no joy.
Ah well…
I’ll check back here later to see if you want me to do any other diagnostics.
Cheers
about 1 year ago
No need (I hope). I just created (yet) another version of AZIndex — 0.7.4 — which should popup on the repository in a few minutes. You might have to turn off the national language support option again, but the plugin should sort the lowercase letters in the correct order again, now. Please let me know what you find.
about 1 year ago
Sorry to be away from the conversation for a few days (busy weekend).
As if by magic things are working perfectly now. But I know it isn’t by magic, it’s by your care and attention.
Thanks!
about 1 year ago
Hello, I have got one problem. When I want to activate your plugin, this arrow accures:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare az_add_admin_page() (previously declared in /var/www/anst/projektfolder/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/azindex/az-index-admin.php:73) in /var/www/anst/projektfolder/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/azindex/az-index-admin.php on line 74
about 1 year ago
Hey Andy. It looks as though you might have two copies of the AZIndex plugin in your plugin directory somehow. If you can, take a look in your /var/www/anst/projektfolder/htdocs/wp-content/plugins folder and see if you can find any extra copies of az-index-admin.php (and az-index-cache.php and az-index-content.php) and delete them.
The error message you are seeing is because WordPress is trying to load two copies of az-index-admin.php.
I hope that helps.
EM
about 1 year ago
Hi EM!
Sorry I can’t help to track the issue with error – everything is fine at my end, but I just want to ask if it is possible to list the site tags with your great plugin? I mean unordered list of tags with alphabetical links?
thanks
about 1 year ago
Hi K, glad it’s all working! At the moment there is no way to add tags to the entries. I was working on some template code which would allow you to include things like tags and categories but then I went and deleted it all by mistake
I do plan to add that feature at some point, so keep watching.