So, here’s a list of the WordPress plugins I’ve installed since my previous list:

• Archives by Selected Categories^{^} – although I like my normal archives list, I also wanted to have a page that listed all of my entries by what category they’re in. This plugin does the job nicely and was very easy to set up. I’ve modified the code slightly by adding jQuery “Show All” links to each of the categories.
• Clean Archives Reloaded^{^} – I didn’t like the default way that WordPress shows archived entries, so I set about looking for a plugin that would display my archives in chronological order but in a nice and clean way.
• Different Posts Per Page^{^} – set how many entries are displayed on different views: 3 on the home page, 5 on a tag view, etc.
• flickrRSS^{^} – when I was using my own CMS, I used a Flickr parser to display my most recent Flickr photos. I liked the script but couldn’t get it to work nicely with WordPress, so I went in search for a plugin that was very similar to the previous script I used. I came across this one and I like it; it displays as many of your photographs as you want and doesn’t have any unnecessary code floating about.
• WordPress Database Backup^{^} – this plugin will automatically backup your WordPress database and send the resulting *.zip to an email address you specify. You won’t have to worry about backing up your database ever again!
• WordTwit^{^} – this will send a link and the title of all new blog entries to your Twitter account.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin^{^} – this will add a list of similar posts at the bottom of the current entry on the single view.

A short one this time, as I’ve been finding it difficult to find plugins that I actually want to use and work with the current version of WordPress.

This is my list of the Plugins that I’m using on my site right now and why I use them. I’ve only listed the Plugins that actually add something to my site (improved functionality) or are useful (for example, by cutting down the amount of time I have to waste maintaining my site).

• Askimet^{^} and Bad Behavior^{^} – these work best together; Bad Behavior stops almost all spam from invading my blog. Anything that gets through is caught by Askimet and, while it’s waiting for me to decide whether or not the “spam” is actually a legit comment, it keeps it off my site.
• Broken Link Checker^{^} – I have a full time job and, I’ll admit, checking through every single page of my site, looking for broken links, is tiresome and just plain boring. That’s where this Plugin becomes very useful for me; I install this Plugin and it keeps an eye on links for me. When I open up my admin panel, I get a little message saying that “there are [x] broken links”. As well as that, it warns my visitors that a link isn’t working by putting a line through it until either I remove the link or update it.
• FeedWordPress^{^} – this Plugin works by grabbing the RSS Feeds of your chosing (Tumblr^{^}, Twitter^{^}, Flickr^{^}, Del.icio.us^{^}, etc) and displaying them as individual blog entries on your website.
  Sometimes I can’t blog from this site but I can post entries to my Tumblr account^{^} using the email function on my phone (don’t ask why I can’t just email it to my “WordPress only” email account…it’ll take too long).
• NoFollow Free^{^} – whereas most anti-nofollow Plugins will just strip nofollow from all of the links, this one can be set up so that only people who have commented on your site [x] times will have nofollow removed from their link. I don’t want to give out a free rankable link to just anyone – only my regs.
• Plugins Used Plugin^{^} – a nice, simple Plugin that lists all of the Plugins I’ve used. I don’t want or need a big nasty table taking up most of the page, telling everyone what each Plugin does; what version it is, etc.
• Search Excerpt^{^} – this improves the search function bundled with WordPress already, by showing the relevant part of the post as the excerpt.
  Without this, it would look like some of the results weren’t relevant, as you wouldn’t be able to see if I really did mention the search term within the post.
  Here’s an example for when you search for “Myke”.
• Theme Test Drive^{^} – this theme allows you – and only you – to view the new theme / layout you’re making for your site. It wasn’t until I got this Plugin that I realised just how long it was taking me to create new themes / layouts for my site.
• WordNote^{^} – this adds a little “notes” section in your Dashboard and you can use it for whatever you want. For example, right now, I have a list of posts that I would like to write out at some point and a list of things I need to do.

What are the most useful Plugins that you have installed right now?

As much time and effort I put into that entry, I’ve noticed that a lot of questions probably aren’t answered as well as they could have been. Some of these aren’t exactly questions but I feel they’re worth discussing.

List of questions answered

• Dry skin around piercing
• How to make a sea salt solution for your ear
• How soon can you change a new ear piercing?
• Turning new ear piercing
• Can an ear piercing seal up in an hour?
• How to clean an infection from ear piercing
• How to clean newly pierced helix? / How to clean newly pierced ear?
• Can you use contact solution on ear piercings?
• How long should you clean a new piercing for?
• How many times do I clean newly pierced ears?
• What to do – ear piercing not healing?

Dry skin around piercing

This is usually caused by either cleaning the new ear piercing with the wrong solution, by over-cleaning or not removing the excess solution from the site of the piercing.

Don’t use alcohol-based products to clean your new ear piercing, as it will dry out the surrounding skin and make it uncomfortable (itchy!) and unsightly. There’s a very good reason why using stuff like Surgical Spirit hurts – it’s not supposed to be used!

Don’t clean the new ear piercing more than twice a day, unless you have some pussing going on, or if the new ear piercing regularly comes into contact with something dirty (hands / fingers, hair, etc) – if any of these are the case, then clean the piercing up to three times a day.

Always remove excess solution from the site of the piercing – not doing this can eventually cause the area to become dry. You can do this the same way you clean the piercing but DON’T rub the area.

How to make a sea salt solution for your ear

Fill the kettle up and start boiling. While you’re waiting, get a large CLEAN measuring jug, a CLEAN teaspoon and some sea salt (NOT rock salt or table salt or any other type of salt!).
Measure out about ¼ of a teaspoon of the salt and pour it into the jug.
When the kettle has boiled, pour out about 300ml / half a pint of the water into the jug.

Sit and wait for it to cool down – I like my water to be warm, so I wait around half an hour. My sister likes her water cool, so she waits for about an hour.

How soon can you change a new ear piercing?

This depends on the placement of the piercing – a lobe piercing can be changed after around 2 ½ months but a helix piercing (“top of the ear” piercing) needs to have at least 3-4 months to heal.

The first time you want to change the jewellery in your ear piercing, you should go back to the piercer; it costs very little (it costs around £2 here) and they make sure the jewellery is clean before they insert it.

It’s really best to wait for as long as you can stand the jewellery.

Turning new ear piercing

Don’t twist or turn the jewellery in your new ear piercing! Doing this is kind of like picking your scabs; as the piercing is healing, there are going to be tiny new scabs inside the wound, where you can’t see or feel them. These tiny scabs will “stick” to the jewellery. By twisting the jewellery, you are effectively picking at all those tiny scabs and then rubbing them into all of the newly opened wounds; you’re increasing the chance of your new piercing becoming infected.

Your jewellery will not get “stuck” into one position if you don’t twist or turn the jewellery – all of those tiny scabs I mentioned will eventually be removed by your body.
You’re not “helping the hole form” or “helping the healing process along” by twisting or turning the jewellery – by twisting or turning the jewellery in your new ear piercing, you’re hindering the healing process and making it go on for much longer than it needs to.

Also, it’s really gross.

Can an ear piercing seal up in an hour?

Depends on how old the piercing is and if it has an infection.

An unhealed piercing can – and will – heal up very quickly. This is why you should wait for as long as you can before changing the jewellery.
When I was eleven and had just had my first helix piercing, I decided that I was bored with the jewellery already and wanted to change it, despite the piercing only being a week old at the time. In the time it took me to take out the original “stud” and try to put the new one in, the hole had partially closed up. My mum had to help me force the new “stud” into the hole and I ended up with a lovely infection as a result.

How to clean an infection from ear piercing

Bump the cleaning up to three times a day, using a sea salt solution and make sure you keep your hair up!
If the infection is still present after a week, go back to the piercer, as they can tell you what to do and where to go next. Unless the piercer (and no one else!) says otherwise, do not remove the jewellery! You need to keep the jewellery in, otherwise the wound will close up and keep the pus inside your ear. If the pus has no where to go, it will then rot and will create an even bigger infection.

If your ear seems fine and then suddendly swells or “puffs up”, go straight to the hospital, as this could be a very serious infection. If you’ve knocked it and it suddenly swells or “puffs up”, you don’t need to go to the hospital, but you do need to be more careful.

How to clean newly pierced helix? / How to clean newly pierced ear?

Make up a sea salt solution and use clean cotton buds / q-tips.

You dip the cotton bud into the solution and let any excess drips … er, drip. Then place the cotton bud against the site of the piercing and roll it gently towards the end of the jewellery, while keeping it in place. Do this all around each side of the piercing (you should have two sides – front and back) and use a clean cotton bud each time.
Once you’ve cleaned, use a clean and DRY cotton bud to remove the excess solution from your piercing. If you leave it on, the salt in the solution can cause dryness.

Can you use contact solution on ear piercings?

NO.

How long should you clean a new piercing for?

For as long as it takes but make sure you clean the piercing for at least the recommended amount of time. You can get that information from your piercer – just phone them up or go into the shop.

How many times do I clean newly pierced ears?

Twice a day for at least the recommended amount of time. This depends on the placement of the piercing and you should really ask your piercer for this information.

What to do – ear piercing not healing?

Most piercers will offer free “check-ups” on the piercing you have had done with them. If you feel that your piercing is taking too long to heal or doesn’t seem to be healing at all, you should go back and see them.

I don’t have any degrees or qualifications on the subject of body piercing but I’ve put myself through it enough times to know what you should do to get those piercings healed up nice and quickly.

What NOT to clean with and why

A lot of the aforementioned articles will tell you to use some sort of alcohol-based solution, such as surgical spirits. NEVER use these as they can dry out the surrounding skin, causing it to become sore and dry.
Alcohol-based solutions actually damage the skin cells it comes into contact with, killing them off and making it easy for an infection to get in.

You also shouldn’t use tea tree oil to clean piercings with. Although it has anti-bacterial properties, it’s a *bit* harsh to be putting on your skin twice a day, every day; when I did this, my piercing started looking like I’d put a cigarette out on it; the tea tree oil had burnt the skin surrounding the piercing!

It’s a good idea to not put any type of oil on a new piercing, as it can create a sort of seal around it, stopping the air from getting to it, stopping the solution you SHOULD use from getting to it and stopping the gunk from getting out.
Not having gunk come out of the piercing may sound nice but what do you think that gunk’s going to do, if it can’t drain out of the piercing? It’ll start to rot. Not so nice, is it?

What you SHOULD clean with

Instead of using any fancy lotions and potions that could actually cause more damage to your piercing, you should use a sea salt solution.
Some piercers will send you out with a sea salt solution but others will just give you a slip which will tell you how to make your own.

A sea salt solution can be made at home and costs next to nothing. The best part is that you can adjust the amount of salt you use, so if your ears start to look a little dry, you just add less salt.

How to make the sea salt solution

What you will need:

• A kettle
• A jug – with measurements written on it
• A tea spoon
• Sea salt (which can be bought from health food shops and supermarkets and is very cheap)

Fill up your kettle and turn it on. While you’re waiting, grab your jug, a tea spoon and your sea salt. Measure out a quarter of a tea spoon of your sea salt and pour it in the jug.
When the kettle’s boiled, pour about half a pint / 300ml / 30cl of the boiling water in the jug.

You need to wait for the water to cool down; you don’t want to scald the new piercings. I like the water to still be quite warm, so I usually wait about 35-40 minutes before I clean my piercings. My sister likes it cold, so she waits at least an hour.

How to clean the piercing

You should use a cotton bud / q-tip (you know, those things people stick in their ear holes to “clean them”) to clean the piercings with. I buy the ones meant for babies, as the cotton is wound one more tightly and doesn’t look like it’ll fall apart when I get it wet.

Dip the cotton bud in the solution you’ve just made up, making sure NOT to touch the end that will come into contact with the piercing. Tap the stick part against the rim of the jug, to get rid of any drips and excess water.
Place the cotton bud against the jewelry and gently, softly roll the cotton bud around the edge of the piercing.
For every piercing, you will have an entrance and an exit. Make sure you use a NEW, CLEAN, UNUSED cotton bud for each. If you drop a cotton bud or accidentally touch it, discard it and get another one.

When you’ve cleaned the piercing, you will have a little wet patch surrounding each piercing. You will want to get rid of the little wet patches, as they contain salt (dry skin anyone?). Dry off the same way you would clean the piercing but make sure that the cotton bud is dry.

If the area surrounding the piercing starts to look a little dry or flaky, then reduce the amount of salt you add to the solution. For example, I actually use a little more than half the amount that’s recommended, because I started having some dryness and flakyness going on around my piercings.

You should clean your piercing twice a day, every day for the healing period. If you’re not sure what the healing period is, ask your piercer.
If you develop an infection, clean your ears three times a day but NO MORE than that, otherwise your piercing may become dry and sore.

What you should and should NOT do with your new piercing

• DO NOT turn or twist the jewelry. The jewelry WILL NOT get “stuck” if you don’t and your ear WILL NOT “eat” the jewelry (unless you get it so infected it swells up to gigantic proportions). By twisting or turning it, all you’re doing is pissing off your ear even further, causing new tears to open up in the piercing and reopening old ones.
• DO leave the starter jewelry in the piercing for as long as possible, unless it’s causing irritation (IF this happens, go back to the piercer and have THEM change the jewelry). For the first jewelry change, go back to the piercer and get them to do it for you.
• DO find out the gauge you’ve gotten pierced at and try and only buy jewelry at that gauge; you were pierced at that size for a reason.
• DO keep your hair away from your ears for as long as possible after getting a new piercing. Just like fingernails, it doesn’t matter how often you clean your hair, it will still contain dirt. You don’t want ANY dirt in your new piercing.
• DON’T cover the piercing with a plaster; air needs to be able to get to it.
• DON’T touch the jewelry unless you’re cleaning it. Even then, make sure you’ve JUST washed your hands with anti-bacterial soap.
• DON’T pick off the crusties or try to force them off while cleaning. I know it’s gross having to walk around with your hair tied up and having these nasty little scab-like things on your new holes but you’ll only risk damaging the piercing or causing an infection if you push too hard. If anyone mentions it or makes a big deal out of it, tell them to “get lost” (using your own choice words ).
• DO NOT remove the jewelry if you develop an infection. When there’s an infection, there will be pus. Your jewelry gives the pus a way out of the piercing, preventing the infection from worsening.

Look after your new piercing and you should have no problems.

MagpieRSS basically uses your site as a feed reader. If an RSS feed is just a list of updates from a site, you can use your site to show updates from another site.

To install it, first you need to download MagpieRSS^{^}.
It’ll probably download as a .tar.gz file which you probably won’t be able to open. This doesn’t matter; you won’t need to open it anyway. As always, when you’ve downloaded it, scan it to make sure it’s virus free.

Upload the .tar.gz file to your root directory. You might as well do this in your cPanel because you’ll need to use it in a moment anyway.
Once uploaded, use the File Manager in your cPanel and view your root folder (usually called ‘Document Root’).

If you’re using the fancy file manager, check the checkbox next to the MagpieRSS .tar.gz file. If you’re using the basic HTML file manager, click on the name of the file.
Click the “Extract” button.

You’ll now find that you’ve got a new folder, called “magpierss”.
You don’t need to do anything else; it’s now installed.

FOR NON-WORDPRESS USERS:
Before you can use this on your site, you’ll need to install MagpieRSS; this script grabs the parsed feed from MagpieRSS and displays it in a visitor-friendly way. (Don’t know how to install MagpieRSS?)
WordPress users don’t need to install MagpieRSS.

Download the Last.fm.txt file (right click on the link » Save As) and open the file in Notepad.

Press Ctrl + G and type in 12 (this will take you to line 12).
Change /home/USER/public_html/magpierss/rss_fetch.inc to the server path where the rss_fetch.inc file is. If you don’t know where it is, just change USER to your cPanel username.
WordPress comes with MagpieRSS installed, so if you will be using this with WordPress, you will need to point the path to go to /home/USER/public_html/wp-includes/rss.php

Go down to line 16 and change /home/USER/public_html/cache to the server path where your cache directory is. If you don’t know where it is but you installed MagpieRSS in your root directory, just change USER to your cPanel username.

Next, go down to line 19 and change http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/lirae666/recenttracks.rss to the URL of your Recent Tracks feed. (Unless you want to display what I’ve been listening to!)
You can find this on your profile, just above the “Recently Listened Tracks” list:

Go down to line 22 if you want to change the amount of scrobbles you wish to display on your site. (I think the most amount of scrobbles you can show is 10.)

For now, leave line 25 as it is. This just sets how many hours ahead or behind your server time is, compared to Last.fm’s server time.
If you find that the times are off, change +4 to how many hours off the times are.
For example: if the time the track was played is showing up as 9am, when you played it at 11am, change +4 to +6. Similarly, if the time is showing up as 11am, when you played the track at 9am, change +4 to +2.

Now resave the file as “last.fm.php” and upload it to the root directory of your site.

To show the list on your site, all you need to do is include the last.fm.php file in your sidebar: <?php include("/home/USER/public_html/last.fm.php");?> (change USER to your cPanel username).

I sort of gave up on the idea until last night, when I joined Twitter^{^}; I wanted to display my twitters on my site. I found a JavaScript snippet that would do it for me but it kept killing Internet Explorer, so I kept looking around and found a script called TwitBlog^{^}.

TwitBlog requires Magpie RSS^{^} to be installed; the script is actually pulling your Twitters from the RSS feed and displaying it in HTML format and the RSS feed is parsed with Magpie RSS. (Don’t know how to install MagpieRSS?)

I then Googled ‘flickr rss parser’ and came across a script called GetFlickrPHP^{^} (the link no longer works, so you can download a copy of GetFlickrPHP from here), which did the whole ‘display in HTML format’ thing for me.

To get it working, I had to find my Flickr ID^{^} and then modify the variables, near the top of the script. This is what my variables are set to:

# set what type of tag you're pulling from flickr
# 0 = tag; 1 = user; 2 = group pool
$tagtype = 1;
# set the tag to pull from flickr (tag, user or group pool)
# example: "cats", "44124462494@N01", "circle"
$tag = "46498153@N00";
# set default value for number of pictures to show
# (flickr show maximum of 10 photos in feed)
$num_items = 9;
# set to true to use medium pics, otherwise it uses small
$mediumPics = false;
# set location of Magpie RSS files
# require_once('magpierss/rss_fetch.inc');
# require_once('magpierss/rss_utils.inc');
require_once('/home/user/public_html/magpierss_installed/rss_fetch.inc');
require_once('/home/user/public_html/magpierss_installed/rss_utils.inc');
# use image cache & set location
$useImageCache = false;
$cachePath="http://www.thebishop.net/news/cache/";
$fullPath="/home/tbishop61/www/news/cache/";

Easy! I just wish someone had done this before me and talked about it!

You must already have some knowledge of using “PHP Includes”.

Getting Ready

The first thing you need to do is to set up a new folder in your root directory called “styles”. The “styles” folder is where all of your different stylesheets should be placed.
When you add new stylesheets, name them “style1.css”, “style2.css”, “style3.css”, etc.

• root directory
  • styles/
    • style1.css
    • style2.css
    • style3.css

Once you’ve done this, you can upload the “styles” folder (containing your stylesheets and any images) and move onto the next step.

Coding

First, we’ll need to make the file that will control how many styles you have, which style is the default, allow the user to change style, etc.
This file will be called “styles.php” and will be uploaded to your root directory.

Download stylesheetswitcher.txt.

You’ll only need to edit the first chunk of coding:
$path = "/home/YOURUSERNAME/public_html/styles/";
$defaultstyle = 2;
$totalstyles = 3;

• Change YOURUSERNAME to your site’s username. Since you already use includes, you should know your site’s username.
• $defaultstyle = 2 – change the number to the number of the style you want to be the default (self explanatory, really).
• $totalstyles = 3 – change this to the number of styles you have…

You will not need to edit anything else in that file.
Reupload the file now. Please.

Open up your header.php file and add this to the top of the page (before anything else):
<?php include("/home/USERNAME/public_html/styles.php");>

Now replace the “link” to your stylesheet with this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/style<?php print $currentstyle;?>.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

Unless you’ve screwed up along the way (unlikely since you’re most definitely not skim reading this, are you?), everything should work perfectly.

Switching The Stylesheet

There’s a reason why “styles.php” is included into every page; the visitor can change the style with no preview page crap and they won’t lose the page they’re currently on. Woohoo!

Anyway, the link to change the style is “?switchstyle=[stylenumber]“.
Example:
<a href="?switchstyle=1">Name Of Style 1</a>
<a href="?switchstyle=2">Name Of Style 2</a>
<a href="?switchstyle=3">Name Of Style 3</a>
These links can go on any page since you’re including the file which switches the stylesheet in the file which is included into every page.

Good point. Except, when I was asked to write the iframe / frame skinning tutorial, it was for someone who wanted to be able to switch between iframes and frames on their site. Something which couldn’t be done by just changing the CSS.
Someone else asked me to modify it so they could use the method in their div layouts, which I – obviously – did.
And now, I’ve written up a Stylesheet Switcher tutorial.

If all of your layouts use exactly the same HTML, you should use a stylesheet switcher.
For those of us who change the HTML of our layouts, then we need to skin our sites.

You must already have some knowledge of using “PHP Includes”.
(Skinning is basically the same as using includes, you just have a few extra lines of code, is all.)

Getting Ready

The first thing you need to do is to set up a new folder in your root directory called “skins”. Inside “skins”, add a numbered folder for each different skin you have; if you have 3 skins, the folders will look like this:

• root directory
  • skins/
    • 1/
    • 2/
    • 3/

Within each numbered folder, you’ll need to have a “header.php”, “footer.php”, your stylesheet, the iframes / frame page (the one with all of the codes) and layout-specific images you’ll be using.

Once you’ve done this, you can upload the folders and move onto the next step.

Coding

First, we’ll need to make the file which will control how many skins you have, which skin is the default skin, allow the user to change skins, the path to the header.php, footer.php & frames.php files, etc.
This file will be called “skins.php” and will be uploaded to your root directory.

Download iframeskins.txt.

You’ll only need to edit the first chunk of coding:
$path = "/home/YOURUSERNAME/public_html/skins/";
$header = "/header.php";
$footer = "/footer.php";
$frames = "/frames.php";
$defaultskin = 2;
$totalskins = 3;

• Change YOURUSERNAME to your site’s username. Since you already use includes, you should know your site’s username.
• $header, $footer & $frames will not need changing.
• $defaultskin = 2 – change the number to the number of the skin you want to be the default (self explanatory, really).
• $totalskins = 3 – change this to the number of skins you have…

You will not need to edit anything else in that file.
Reupload the file now. Please.

Go through every single page on your site and replace your header include (the one at the top of every page…) with this:
<?php
$rootpath = trim(strip_tags($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));
@require("{$rootpath}/skins.php"); @include "$headerfile";
?>
What that basically does is grab the server path and makes sure it’s clean, then requires that the “/skins.php” file be included before including the header file.
(If “/skins.php” doesn’t exist, the page will stop loading.)

…now replace your footer include (the one at the bottom of every page…) with this code:
<?php @include "$footerfile";?>
That just includes the footer file.

You’ll also need to make a page called “enter.php” or something; this page will hold the code for your iframes / frames layout.
Add this code into the page:
<?php $rootpath = trim(strip_tags($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));
@require("{$rootpath}/skins.php"); @include "$framesfile";?>
That is all that will be needed in the “enter.php” page; the <html> <head> <title> <title> </head> <body> ... </body> </html> tags will be in the frames.php pages.

{If you want a centered iframes layout, you’ll need to have the centered iframes code in the “frames.php” file [which will be included into the "enter.php" file...] and make a new file in the same folder called something else, like “iframes.php”.}

Unless you’ve screwed up along the way (unlikely since you’re most definitely not skim reading this, are you?), everything should work perfectly.

Changing The Skins

The link to change the skin is “?switchskin=[skinnumber]“.
Example:
<a href="?switchskin=1" target="_top">Name Of Skin 1</a>
<a href="?switchskin=2" target="_top">Name Of Skin 2</a>
<a href="?switchskin=3" target="_top">Name Of Skin 3</a>
These links should go on your splash page or something; when the user clicks the link, they’ll be redirected back to the page they just came from…which might cause some confusion if the links were placed in an in-frame page and then redirected to just that page; no actual layout.

Miscellaneous

You can show the visitor which skin they’re currently using by inserting this snippet wherever you want:
You are currently using skin number <?php print $currentskin;?>!

You could also have an image that changes with the skin the person is using:
<img src="http://site.com/skins/<?php print $currentskin;?>/image.gif" alt="short description" />

You could even insert custom layout information in your sidebar (or something):
<?php @include("{$rootpath}/skins/{$currentskin}/info.php");?>

You should be aware though that $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] can be easily spoofed by a nasty visitor (I’ve also noticed that it refuses to work with AwardSpace.com).
If you’d rather be safe than sorry, delete this line:
$rootpath = trim(strip_tags($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));
and replace:
{$rootpath}
with:
/home/YOURUSERNAME/public_html
You’ll need to know your absolute path though.