Popularity contest plugin and WordPress 2.6
One of my favorite plugins is Alex King’s Popularity Contest. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with the latest WordPress release 2.5, nor Wordpress 2.6
Fixing Problem #1
By doing a little searching on WordPress.org Forums I found this post which explains how to fix the Fatal Error problem I’ve been getting. What you need to do is change the line 59 of the popularity-contest.php file from this:
require(‘../../wp-blog-header.php’);
to this:
@require(‘../wp-blog-header.php’);
Ok so, that fixed the fatal error problem, and those of you who had the plugin installed prior to updating to WordPress 2.5 shouldn’t have any other problems.
However, if you’re installing the plugin for the first time you might be getting another error ‘Table ‘database.wp_ak_popularity_options’ doesn’t exist on line: 124‘.
Fixing Problem #2
You can choose to create the database manually like Ken McGuire explains in this article.
That works, but it’s a little complicated, so I came up with my own solution.
All you need to do is open the ‘popularity-contest.php’ file go down to the line 1528 and change this:
if (isset($_GET['activate']) && $_GET['activate'] == ‘true’) {
for this:
if (isset($_GET['action']) && $_GET['action'] == ‘activate’) {
That’s it, you shouldn’t have any other problems now. Enjoy!
[ Popularity: 10% ] Tags: plugin Home








Oktober 29th, 2008 at 3:15 am
You absolutely rock for making this post!! I have been searching high and low for ways to fix my popularity contest plugin. I’ve tried multiple ways to fix it with no relief until I found your article. Thank you so much for the help!!
Now I can get on with finalizing the layout of Empire Coaching since that side of the page is working again. Feel free to check us out and thanks again!!
You’re a blog saver.
Here’s to your success,
Brant Hindman
Empire123.com