My New Computer Killing Boast

Blah blah blah pending review test

I have WordPress 2.3 installed at my hosted blog. All was sweet. I created a new blog in a subdomain, again running 2.3.

I try to log in and get no response from the main site. Grr! Support ticket time.

I got a response a little while later. a 510 error message from the web server saying my account had been suspended.

Oooookay…..

An email arrived explaining that my main install of wp2.3 was running the web server’s resources at 60% (on a shared server) and it topped out the server meaning the server rolled over and played dead. The host suspended my account so they could get the server running again. Ooops!

My account has been “un-suspended” and I am able to log into the FTP.

I think what killed it was trying to insert a footnote into a post. I had been using the old wordpress footnotes plugin which worked beautifully with 2.x previously. With all the code changes to 2.3 the plugin didn’t like it. FTPd and removed MOST of the plugins I was using and all seems to be hunky dory.

I’m not going to re-enable WordPress (killed with a simple index.html file at the moment) until I can log into the cPanel and remove all the spare database tables that old plugins (UTW for example) had created.

By the way, can anyone give me easy instructions on converting UTW tags to WP native tags? None of my searching (about three hours worth!) has turned simple instructions. Ta muchly!

PHP 5 Required?

The Hypertext Pre-Processor (PHP - Yes, I know it’s all screw, blame the developers!) programming language is what runs most of the web these days. WordPress, forum software such as phpBB, even Blogger, all use PHP as their language of choice for communication both with the end-user’s browser and the MySQL database that holds all of the post and comment information.

30 August 2007 saw the release of PHP Version 5.2.4 for download. Most people will not care. I do. Why?

Well, following a comment on one of my Facebook posts, I started looking at how to develop applications for Facebook. Purely for no other reason than I was being nosy. The link to Dapper that Sanjida gave bore no resemblance to Facebook at all. A quick Google search turned up the Facebook Developers Step-By-Step tutorial. Guess what. PHP5 is required to run through the Tutorial.

There’s a new blogging application called Habari that I would really like to try out. Ok, it’s only at version 0.2 right now but I like the sound of it. Guess what. Yep, PHP5 required.

So, if PHP is currently at 5.2.4 then why the hell are all my hosts still running 4.4.2 or 4.4.3? Am I using shit hosts or are all hosting companies this slow to respond??

It looks like the only way to get something that’s running PHP5 is to upgrade my XAMPP install on my local server. XAMPP is running 5.2.3 which is good enough for me.

Yet Another Reason To Avoid Blogger

We all know that Blogger is the root of all blogging evil. It’s been well documented in the past that Blogger has been hacked and malicious scripts, viruses and malware installed on users’ blogs.

BBC News is reporting today that Alex Eckelberry from Sunbelt Software noticed booby-trapped links on 27 August.

From the report:

Now many hundreds of blogs on the site have been updated with a short entry containing the link.

Mr Eckelberry said it was not yet clear how the links were posted to blogs. The bogus entries could have exploited a Blogger feature that lets users e-mail entries to their journal.

You would have thought that after the first three widely publicised takedowns that Google (who own Blogger) would have tightened security on the application. Apparently not.

Among the other recipients of spam e-mails generated by the virus are users’ mail2blogger accounts, which allow them to update their blogs via e-mail,” said the spokesperson.

The email addresses on mail2blogger accounts are stored in Blogger so that the system can associate the account with the email address. A simple (relatively of course) or an insider would be able to get said email addresses and pass/sell to the “gang”. This would mean two things:

1, The “gang” would be able to post the malicious scripts to blogs via cloaked email.
2. The “gang” would be able to email the script to the owner of the email address infecting their computer and causing it to pass on the script in the usual virus like manner.

I don’t know about others but I try my hardest to avoid blogs hosted by or running Blogger type software. Yes, I may be missing out on decent content but I just really can’t stand the interface, the spam advertising, the porn and the black templates of death.

My suggestions:

1. Avoid any blogs on blogger.
2. If you want to blog, use a decent service. Yes, it’s very restricted but so far there have been no reports of hacking into the system.
3. Get a Mac.

Your Facebook Status in your WordPress.com Blog

Do you use Facebook? I have done for about a month now and am rather enjoying it. It’s like MySpace without the Emos! My profile is here. If you’re using FB then feel free to add me. Let me know who you are by commenting here so I can tell who’s who though!

One of the facilities is the “Status Update” where you can tell your friends what you are doing/feeling/pondering/whatever you like. Think of it as a Twitter for Facebook. It’s not much use unless you want to let your friends know what you’re doing.

Well, thanks to Adam at Pomomusings there is a way to share your Facebook Status Updates on your blog. He has actually created a small plugin called Facepress Statuspress which, when used with the hosted version of WordPress will allow the blogger to display their Status Updates in the sidebar.

Knowing what WordPress.com bloggers are like for Gucci widgets, I thought I would explore the possibility of displaying Status Updates on wp.com blogs. And it’s easy! It uses the RSS feed for your Status Updates. You can find the RSS feed like this:

1. Go to your Facebook Profile.
2. Click on the Mini-Feed bar so you can see all of your recent activity.
3. Click “See All” on the top right of that box.
4. Under “View” on the right, you’ll see a long list of “Stories” - click on “Status Stories.”
5. Underneath the list, you will now see “Subscribe to these Stories - My Status.”
6. Right click on “My Status” and Choose “Copy Link Location.”

Come back to your wordpress.com blog and follow these steps:

7. Go to Presentation -> Widgets.
8. Scroll down the page and find RSS 1 or RSS 2. If you have already used both of those then scroll down a little further and increase the number of “RSS Feed Widgets” appropriately, save and re-load the page.
9. Drag the selected RSS widget to an appropriate location on the sidebar.
10. Click the configure button on the widget and paste in the URL that you copied in step 6.
11. Click away from the widget and then press “Save Changes”.

When you view your site you should now see your Facebook Status updates in all its glory on your sidebar. You can see mine on the right. I changed the number of items to display to “1″, otherwise it was taking up half the sidebar.

Why The Theme Change?

I was using Redoable Lite, but realised at lunchtime that there’s no method to get to older posts not on the first page. Hence, the sudden theme change. This is Freshy. Still not perfect, but at least readers can get to my older (though not necessarily better!) posts.

I might one day cough the dosh and get the CSS upgrade, switch to Sandbox and design something truly shitty and unique.

Thankyou for your understanding.

Sandbox Went to 1.0

I just noticed that Scott (in a comment on Ryan’s post about 2.3) has released version 1.0 of Sandbox specifically for WordPress 2.3.

Sheesh! Something else to play with! :)

WP 2.3 Beta 1 Available

Ryan Announced it here, Official notofication here.

Can’t talk, playing. Will let you know my impressions soon.

Download here.

Crashing Internet Explorer

I hate Internet Explorer. So do thousands of others.

I found a little script that will, when used will crash Internet Explorer.

for (x in document.write) { document.write(x);}

Wrapped within script tags this will every time crash IE. Cool huh!

Well, no not really. On the site where I found this the poster suggests inserting this script in a page and then sending the link to your friends that you know are still using IE. As all it’s going to do is crash their browser, all you’re going to do is piss them off.

Unless you explain (before you give them the link!) that Firefox will handle it properly and this is yet another reason to switch to Firefox.

It would be very sensible NOT to put this on a page with high traffic. It’s just going to drive traffic away from your site, not force them to change to Firefox.

Similarly, how many people do YOU know that have installed Firefox having seen that bloody annoying message at the top of a blog when surfing with IE:

You’re using IEx. Some features are disabled for IE users because it sucks. Please use Firefox and come back again.

Yes, IE sucks. No, I can’t install Firefox at work and no, I won’t be back, thanks anyway. Listen to me, MAKE THE F*****G SITE COMPATIBLE!

WordPress Still The Best

Well, it is. Yes, I am biased. Yes, I run all my sites with a WordPress backend. Why?

Well, Matt mentioned that MovableType 4 had been released. In a moment of pure boredom on a Sunday morning I thought I’d have a play.

It sucked. It took nearly 10 minutes to download the 4.9mb zip file. Expanded that came out to 18mb when expanded. WordPress took a whopping 9 seconds to download and an even more unreasonable 3.93mb when expanded.

I have a local XAMPP installation on my server, sat next to me in my office. I use it to play, in situations exactly like this. The MT Quick install instructions said:

Copy the mt-static directory from your local computer to the Web root directory on the Web server.

Open the cgi-bin directory on your Web server. Make a new directory within it named mt. Copy all of the other Movable Type installation folders and files to the mt directory.

I’m sorry, cgi-bin? PERL? What, no MySQL? This isn’t looking good guys. I might be wrong but surely this means you’re storing all the blog data in flat files?

Nope, can’t be arsed with that. Where’s the delete button… Ah, there it is. And MT on my server is history.

And that, even with all its faults, fanboys, haters, hackers and everything else is still THE blogging platform of choice. Best bit? You don’t have to pay to get support.

Turkey Bans WordPress.com

We know it’s already happened in China, the government banned surfers from getting to wordpress.com (along with many other sites), and now, according to Doctus a judge in Turkey has decided that wordpress.com should be blocked there too.

Just in case you can’t read Turkish (like me!) the text says

Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no 2007/195 of T.C Faith 2.Civil Court of First Instance.

As yet the reason for the decision is unknown. If I hear anything I will post more about it. Thanks to Tansu for the heads up.

There are over one million blogs here at wp.com, think of what the country is missing out on by blocking it. I really hope that Turkey overrules this as it is the minority of wp.com blogs that are opposing Middle Eastern laws and rules.