For the old proceedings/programme pages of old events, we were seeing character errors like this:

Thomas L�we

So to fix this I introduced into the configuration.php file the following:

$db=mysql_connect('localhost','username','password') or mysql_die();
mysql_select_db('DBname',$db);
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$db);

—
PHP.net reference here.

This solution is to create a local HTML file from the dynamic www.ewea.org/navigation-file generated by Typo3, that can be rsync’d to other servers so that they may include it in their templates as local files, speeding up the page creation process (and bypassing a huge latency issue we had with the EWEA 2015 programme pages).

#!/bin/sh
curl -L -o /var/www/html/sites/www.ewea.org/navigation http://www.ewea.org/navigation-file
rsync -avze "ssh -p 10022 -i /root/.ssh/main_prv_key" /var/www/html/sites/www.ewea.org/navigation [email protected]:/var/www/html/
rsync -avze "ssh -p 10022 -i /root/.ssh/main_prv_key" /var/www/html/sites/www.ewea.org/navigation [email protected]:/var/www/html/
rsync -avze "ssh -p 10022 -i /root/.ssh/main_prv_key" /var/www/html/sites/www.ewea.org/navigation [email protected]:/var/www/html/

This is scheduled to run daily at midnight via cron

On the receiving server, the following code is then used to display the navigation on the website.

<div id="navigation">
	<?php // INCLUDE EWEA MENU
	include("/var/www/html/navigation");
	?>
</div><!-- end #navigation -->

There are three components to the system:

• A) The exhibitor upload page
  This is a password protected page in the Exhibitor Zone only registered exhibitors have access to.
  http://www.ewea.org/offshore2015/exhibition/exhibitor-zone/press-services/
• B) The public listing page
  This is where anyone can view the approved press releases.
  http://www.ewea.org/offshore2015/media-and-press/exhibitors-press-releases/
• C) Administration page
  This is in the back end of WordPress, where you can edit, approve and delete press releases.
  http://www.ewea.org/offshore2015/wp-admin/admin.php?page=fm-edit-form&sec=data&id=15

A) The exhibitor upload page

The first thing we need to do is build the form using the “WordPress Form Manager” plugin.
We create a form with the following fields: “Company name”, “Document title” and “Select document”. We also add a note field to display additional information about accepted file formats and file size, etc. Pay attention to the upload document section as to restrict the document types.

We also add a “Private Field” at the bottom of the “Form extra” tab. This is what our administrator will use to approve each press release.

Once you have created the form, add it to the exhibitor upload page with the following shortcode format:
[form form-XYZ]

B) The public listing page

We include a simple PHP script into the WordPress page to pull data off the database. The code I used can be obtained here.

To summarise, the script will need to be modified in the following places:

1. Database name
2. Form table
3. User (an account with read-only access just to the form table was created for this application)
4. Password
5. The blob variables in the loop

C) Administration page

The administrator logs into WordPress and navigates to the Submission Data tab of the form being used.
Using the checkboxes and the “Edit selected” function from the dropdown list of actions, the admin can edit…

and approve each press release.

Here is a PHP script I made to display the contents of a workshop registered participants table.

<?php
// STATE YOUR VARIABLES
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$user = "workshops";
$pass = "FV8sbyJuJ7bdT5Rj";
$db   = "workshops";
$sql  = "SELECT * FROM `wp_workshops_fm_data_15` LIMIT 0, 100";

// ESTABLISH THE CONNECTION
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$cxn=mysqli_connect("localhost","$user","$pass","$db");   //Declare the mysqli connection parameters.
$cxn->set_charset("utf8");   // Define the default character set.
if (mysqli_connect_errno())  // Create a check for connection, if nothing then die.
  {
  echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
  }
$result = mysqli_query($cxn,"$sql");

// GET NUMBER OF ATTENDEES
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$rows = mysqli_num_rows($result);
printf("<h2>Current number of registered attendees: %d</h2>",$rows);

// CREATE THE TABLE
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
echo "<table>
        <tr>
                <th>First name</th>
                <th>Last name</th>
                <th>Job title</th>
                <th>Organisation</th>
                <th>Country</th>
                <th>Email address</th>
        </tr>\n";

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result))
  {
  echo "        <tr>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . "<b>" . $row['text-526647958e563'] . "</b>" . "</td>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . "<b>" . $row['text-5266498080c9d'] . "</b>" . "</td>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . $row['text-52664992cbe3f'] . "</td>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . $row['text-526649a164f02'] . "</td>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . $row['text-526649bb26849'] . "</td>\n";
  echo "                <td>" . "<a href=\"mailto:" .$row['text-526649d2a727a'] . "\">" .$row['text-526649d2a727a'] . "</a>" . "</td>\n";
  echo "        </tr>\n";
  }
echo "</table>";

// CLOSE THE CONNECTION
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
mysqli_close($cxn);

?>

Here’s how to include the EWEA navigation file in templates for microsites:

<div id="navigation">
<?php
// INCLUDE EWEA MENU
$naviURL = "http://www.ewea.org/navigation-file/";
if ($fh = fopen($naviURL,"r"))  {
   fpassthru($fh);
} else {
   echo "<p>Unable to load menu.</p>\n";
}
?>
</div><!-- end #navigation -->