P2 Theme Changes Author Name

  • vanfossen · Member ·

    I’m using the P2 Theme and it lists my full name, Brent VanFossen, on bylines, in the sidebar widgets, everything is fine until I get to the author page. There I’m suddenly Brent MacKinnon, someone I’ve never heard of. I’ve verified my name on my Profile. It’s not the latter. I’ve switched Themes and it shows me as Brent VanFossen on every page including the author page, so it looks like this is a bug in P2. My wife and I are the only users on the blog, and there isn’t a MacKinnon between us. :D Any ideas? Suggestions? Help?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • thesacredpath · Member ·

    Can we get a link to the site where this is happening so we can take a look? The site linked to your username is using the connections theme.

  • lorelle · Member ·

    http://candletraders.wordpress.com/author/brent/

    I’m taking the site out of privacy as it is currently in test mode for a private blog. (husband’s site)

    This is one I’ve never seen before. Can’t imagine what template tag would grab the wrong last name in the Theme. It’s specific to P2.

    Thanks.

  • lorelle · Member ·

    This is what we see on the author page:

    http://candletraders.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/this-is-the-error-were-seeing-with-the-p2-theme/

  • lorelle · Member ·

    More author issues on P2.

    The author link from the author list widget for you goes to the name of http://candletraders.wordpress.com/author/vanfossen/ which reports page not found.

    Author bylines go to http://candletraders.wordpress.com/author/brent/ for the same author.

    Totally confused. Why would these be two different links? Shouldn’t they be the same?

    Is P2 creating an author link using only the first name instead of the username or complete name?

    This might require some serious digging into the Theme. I’ll download a version and look myself.

    Thanks.

  • vanfossen · Member ·

    Things are getting more complicated, so I hope someone can help us figure this out deeper in the code of the Theme.

    username: brent goes to http://brent.wordpress.com/ which is Brent Mackinnon, a dead site from 2009.

    username: vanfossen is ours and all links within the site should go to vanfossen, right?

    So this is what I’m thinking. P2 is grabbing the first name of the author for the byline link to create the author page URL. Since that is “Brent,” WordPress.com automatically pulls up the username “brent” which is Mackinnon.

    With me?

    The author list widget pulls in the usernames of the actual registered authors of the site to create the links to the author pages. P2 isn’t recognizing that so it reports a page not found.

    Still with me?

    We can’t be the only ones having this issue with WordPress.com and P2. But then, maybe we are.

    Ideas?

  • mmadfan · Member ·

    This is a very odd problem. I’m afraid I can’t help you, though a more experienced volunteer might be able to. Perhaps you should contact staff: http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/

    Enter anything into the search box, then below it, there will be an “answer” to your search, and below that, a contact form will open up.

    I would be interested in learning the outcome of this — it’s interesting, though I’m sure it’s just frustrating to you!

  • lorelle · Member ·

    I’ve contacted them directly.

    To update this, either someone is trying to work on it or something odd is going on.

    The byline is now /author/brent-2/ which removes the Mackinnon last name and shows the author’s posts, but doesn’t show a name in the heading.

    The Author List widget still links to /author/vanfossen which shows 404 page not found error.

    Again, both should go to the same place as they are both the same person on the site and there isn’t a second author on the site with the same name. Very strange.

    I’ve tested a couple of Themes and this issue is only on P2.

  • ipstenu · Member ·

    It happens on P2 no matter the site: http://ipstenu.wordpress.com/author/brent-2/ for example

    I would speculate something’s corrupt on his ID.

    Which explains NOTHING about the /author/vanfossen … except that https://en.forums.wordpress.com/profile/vanfossen redirects to https://en.forums.wordpress.com/profile/brent-2 so perhaps in that redirect is the source of the headache?

    All idle spec without a single DB call to back me up.

  • mmadfan · Member ·

    Thanks for the update! That’s a very weird sort of error, but P2 is a different sort of theme from most, so that’s why it likely is happening there & not to others?

  • andrewspittle · Staff ·

    I’m not sure what’s causing this to happen yet but we’re looking into it. I’ll keep you all updated as I know more.

  • lorelle · Member ·

    Andrew, you know I adore you! This is just one more reason why. :D

  • andrewspittle · Staff ·

    Always happy to help lorelle. :)

    The long weekend has slowed progress here but I’ll be checking in early this week on where things stand.

  • lance · Member ·

    This was a very odd one to debug. :)

    But, I was glad for the challenge.

    It turns out there are several things going on here, only one is related to P2.

    1. Author pages for users not on the current blog should return a 404, not show you their full name. This was the only P2 bug, it’s now fixed.

    2. Everything else related to /authors/brent/ and /authors/brent-2/ was more of a WordPress quirk, not a P2 theme bug. In fact it was a very weird data conflict due to you (Brent) being one of the oldest WP.com users, ever. (Congrats on being an early adopter!)

    You signed up way back in the day when the “nickname” and “user_nicename” were tied together. WP changed the way it handles user_nicename since then; now it’s the same as your user login, a lower-cased slug, essentially. So all along your user_nicename should have been ‘vanfossen’ but since you’d been using ‘Brent’ as a nickname, your user’s entry for ‘user_nicename’ was incorrect. At some point, probably based on a code upgrade, WP.com tried to create you a user_nicename with the value of ‘brent’ — but it was taken by another user already, so it made it ‘brent-2’ instead.

    All URLs for your user on WP.com should now use ‘vanfossen’: the WP.com forum profile, any author URLs (with any theme), URLs in Author and Author Grid widgets that you seen in a sidebar, etc. It’s kind of your permalink around WP.com, and it’s working correctly now.

    Let us know if you see any other issues.

  • lorelle · Member ·

    Yeah, great to have those resolved. And yes, I (and hubby) were alpha/beta testers for WordPress.com back in the “old days.”

    We’re having all kinds of fun issues with the P2 Theme, multiple authors, and invites, but I’ll search the forums first and post new threads if I can’t find resolutions.

    Thanks so much! Always glad to help break things. And thrilled when others fix them. :D

  • lance · Member ·

    Yay for breaking things. That’s how we know what to fix. :)

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