The latest version, 2.03, of WP-Print failed to work on my Wordpress 2 installation. An older version of WP-Print did work, one without all the new installation instructions. Simpler is better.

I’ve used the WP-print plugin since the inception of my Wordpress blog in about May 2005. After my recent update to Wordpress 2, I noticed that WP-print was broken. The break was on posts other than the post that appears on the homepage. It would print the homepage fine, but not the other posts.

I would get 404s when trying to print other posts. WP-print was throwing out 404s upon the “Printable Version” link being clicked.

I was still using the first version of WP-print I had downloaded in mid 2005. In the meantime, there were several later versions, but I never before had reason to go looking for those updates.

So I tried the latest version, 2.03, and that version was much more involved to install. Jeez, WP-print now includes a special plugin directory, and you actually have to “Activate” it. We didn’t have to do such a thing before.

So I went through the process, and even had to change the code I use to invoke the WP-print function. I tried it.

Well, I got a printable page, not a 404. Some progress. But at the top of the page was an error message. The error message referred to a “rawurlencode” enocode error, something about how a string was expected in parameter 1, in classes.php line 1651. I checked everything I knew how to check, and could not isolate the problem.

So the latest version of WP-Print will not work on my Wordpress installation.

I fixed the problem with WP-Print. Here’s how

I run another Wordpress site, a new site, at MissouriJobLaw.com. The WP-Print feature works beautifully on MissouriJobLaw.

• I deactivated the elaborate new WP-Print plugin in the admin panel.
• I deleted the WP-print.php file from the RadMod wordpress root directory.
• I copied the older (Feb 26, 2006) version of WP-print.php that I was using on MissouriJobLaw
• I pasted the WP-print.php file into my RadMod Wordpress root directory
• I did not bother to “activate” WP-Print in the Wordpress admin panel, because you didn’t have to do that with older versions of WP-print.
• I put the following code into my loop on RadMod: < a href = "/wp-print . php?p = < ? php the_ID (); ? > ” TARGET = “_BLANK” > (Printable version) < / a > [Close up the spaces to use the code] [This is always how you called WP-print in the older versions]
• Problem solved!!!!!!!!!
• Oops - one slight problem: WP-Print contains a line of code to display the URL that is being printed, and these URLs (the permalinks) get mighty long, and scroll off the page. I could not figure out a good way to get the permalinks to line-break. So I deleted the line of code. Here’s the line of code I deleted: < p align="left" > URL to article: < b > < a href=" < ? php the_permalink() ? >” > < ? php the _ permalink () ? > < / a >< / b > < / p > [Close up the spaces]

Want to grab the version of WP-Print that works for me as of March 27, 2006?

WP-Print older version removed printing the permalink. Change the filename to wp-print.php and place the file into your blog’s root directory, and use the code above to invoke it.

Here’s hoping the above entry solves someone else’s problem.