Unfortunately it wouldn’t even install, giving the following error:

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected $end in 
/(...)/wp-content/plugins/social-counter-widget/scw_stats.class.php on line 73

A quick check revealed that it was a mistyped php open tag on line 70 that caused the problems. If you need to fix it before the plugin author submits an updated version just change “<?” to “<?php” on line 70 of the wp-content/plugins/social-counter-widget/scw_stats.class.php file.

Recently I was trying to get an installation updated as well as some of the plugins. What should have been a straightforward task, turned out to be several hours of messing around with permissions and trying to figure out why even 777 isn’t enough for the updates to NOT fail and what user should own what.

Well it turns out that it’s only partly the fault of WordPress as it is an issue with the FTP server. Still some better messaging would be helpful…

There were mentions about a patch and fixes in potentially in the 3.2 WP version related to the error I was getting:

Could not copy file.: /public_html/wp-admin/css/theme-editor.dev.css

However only after stumbling across this page I found an easy and quick solution.

Turns out it was enough to just switch from Pure-FTPD to Pro-FTPD.

The biggest issue with this setting was the process of creating galleries. By default in NextGen you create the gallery on one page, upload the images in another, and then create new post yet elsewhere. But there had to be a way to at least merge the gallery creation with photo upload, especially considering a new gallery form consisted of a single “gallery name” field.Surprisingly enough after checking the code, both actions are actually processed in the same place. Thus by adding a new field on the photo upload form this time consuming problem could be solved:

Edit the file: wp-content/plugins/nggallery/admin/wp25/addgallery.php (line: 15)

// link for the flash file
$swf_upload_link = NGGALLERY_URLPATH . 'admin/wp25/upload.php';
$swf_upload_link = wp_nonce_url($swf_upload_link, 'ngg_swfupload');
//flash doesn't seem to like encoded ampersands, so convert them back here
$swf_upload_link = str_replace('&', '&', $swf_upload_link);

$defaultpath = $ngg_options['gallerypath'];

if ($_POST['addgallery'] || !empty($_POST['newgalleryname'])){
  if(!empty($_POST['newgalleryname']))
    $_POST['galleryname'] = $_POST['newgalleryname'];
  check_admin_referer('ngg_addgallery');
  $newgallery = attribute_escape($_POST['galleryname']);
  if (!empty($newgallery))
    $_POST['galleryselect'] = nggAdmin::create_gallery($newgallery, $defaultpath);
}
if ($_POST['zipupload']){

Edit the file: wp-content/plugins/nggallery/admin/wp25/addgallery.php (line: 263)

	<tr valign="top">
		<th scope="row"><?php _e('in to', 'nggallery') ;?></th>
		<td><select name="galleryselect" id="galleryselect">
		<option value="0" ><?php _e('Choose gallery', 'nggallery') ?></option>
		<?php
			$gallerylist = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->nggallery ORDER BY gid ASC");
			if(is_array($gallerylist)) {
				foreach($gallerylist as $gallery) {
					echo '<option value="'.$gallery->gid.'" >'.$gallery->name.' | '.$gallery->title.'</option>'."n";
				}
			}
		?>
		</select> <label>or <input type="text" name="newgalleryname"  /></label>
		<br /><?php echo _e('Note : The upload limit on your server is ','nggallery') . "<strong>" . ini_get('upload_max_filesize') . "Byte</strong>n"; ?>
		<br /><?php if ((IS_WPMU) && wpmu_enable_function('wpmuQuotaCheck')) display_space_usage(); ?></td>
	</tr>

Edit the file: wp-content/plugins/nggallery/admin/wp25/functions.php (line: 77)

if ($result) {
	nggallery::show_error(__('Gallery', 'nggallery').' <strong>'.$galleryname.'</strong> '.__('already exists', 'nggallery'));
	return false;
} else {
	$result = $wpdb->query("INSERT INTO $wpdb->nggallery (name, path, title) VALUES ('$galleryname', '$nggpath', '$gallerytitle') ");
	if ($result) nggallery::show_message(__('Gallery', 'nggallery').' <strong>'.$wpdb->insert_id." : ".$galleryname.'</strong> '.__('successfully created!','nggallery')."
".__('You can show this gallery with the tag','nggallery').'<strong> </strong>');
	return $wpdb->insert_id;
}