If you get a white screen after the Mollom Captcha step when trying to add a comment to your blog, then check your PHP errors logs. I was experiencing this problem, and looking into the logs showed the following:
[09-Feb-2009 11:11:53] PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_convert_encoding() in /sites/pyrosoft.co.uk/http/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-mollom/wp-mollom.php on line 1371
The mb_convert_encoding() function is part of the PHP mb_string module, so fixing this was relatively easy. As my server was running Centos 5, I could just use yum to install the mb_string functions:
yum install php-mbstring
And then finally, I restarted Apache:
apachectl graceful
Hi Paul! I used the mb_convert_encoding() function to support non-western character sets.
I’m going to give the plugin a fallback in the upcoming version so you won’t be confronted with a blank screen if you don’t have the plugin installed.
Thanks!
That’s great news – will be a better fix for people who can’t easily install the mb functions.
I was only made aware of the problem today when one of my blog readers notified me that he couldn’t leave a comment – how did you find my post so fast? 🙂
The Mollom people are constantly scouring the net for related news. So, he passed me your blogpost through Twitter.
Hi Paul,
I fixed your problem in the development version. You can give it a shot if you want to. Download the latest snapshot here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-mollom/download/
(Development version)
Thanks Matthias, I actually installed the Multibyte string functions to my server to get it working after my last post, so I can’t test if it has fixed it, but I will update all the same!