Skip to main content
 

Hide Trackbacks - Hide ping- and trackbacks from your comments

Introducing Hide Trackbacks - You can have the benefits of track/ping backs (know when someone writes about posts) whilst keeping the comments clean and uncluttered.

After enabling the plugin, trackbacks and pingbacks are no longer shown on your posts and the comment count is updated correctly to reflect this. You can still access them via the admin panel. NOTE: Although the plugin officially requires WordPress 3.1.2 it might very well work on older WordPress versions (if it does please let me know).
Derived from original code created by  Honey Singh (used with permission of the author).

Installation is simple:

  1. Upload the `hide-trackbacks` directory to `/wp-content/plugins/`.
  2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.

Download link and information:
Wordpress.org Hide Trackbacks

 

[Patch] CodeIgniter Helper class patch for Textile

For those that do not follow me on twitter (@pacifika), I've created a patched version of Textile, the html generator alternative to Markdown, to make it easier to use in CodeIgniter projects. I have provided the patch and patched Textile on support forums of both projects.

[Patch] CodeIgniter Helper class patch for classTextile.php · Textpattern CMS Support Forum.

After patching, you can just use Textile like this:

$this->load->helper('textile');
$text = Textile("Dude this is *my* code!");

For more information read the post on the forums!

 

[Plugin: WP List Files] Fix: links don't work when blog not installed in root of site

wp-list-filesUpdate: This plugin is no longer available.

We’re using a customized version of WordPress as an electronic portfolio for students and we are using WP List Files to make documents available on the ePortfolio. Unfortunately the WordPress support forums seem to hide my topic (possibly because it's an older version) and the author is no longer supporting the plugin.

Due to time constraints, these plugins are no longer supported and will not be updated, ever! Unless you know what you’re doing, I strongly discourage using these on a production blog since they have not been tested since WordPress 2.5.

The plugin didn't work in version 2.0.3 that we are using because the wp_enqueue_script function does not exist in this version  (the codex page does not say when this function was added). Anyway after manually adding the JavaScript to the theme's head element the plugin almost worked fine - links didn't take our folder structure into account.

works:
joeblogs.com</dir specified in post or page>

doesn't work:
allblogs.com/blogs/joebloggs</dir specified in post of page>

Fix it by replacing line 231 to read:

$files .= '

  • wpurl').$item['link'].'">'.$itemName.''.

 

The hyperlink created for the item didn’t have the complete blog URL in it. It assumed the blog was installed in the root of the domain. After this fix the plugin works fine.

 

Amasan's WordPress Tweak Roundup

Made few tweaks to improve the blog in preperation for several drafts I'm currently working on. Here's a quick rundown for everyone that's interested in the wordpress blog platform.

  • Related Posts should show up to 5 related posts without too many false positives on single article pages. I like how this plugin scores posts on relativity and that I can set it to show nothing when no posts are related, which keeps the interface clutter to a minimum.
  • A single easy recognisable block of Google Adsense adverts has been added to single articles. You won't see it if you have Adblock Plus installed like myself, but it should give helpful suggestions on articles with a single subject and support hosting costs in the process.
  • Template tweak: Moved post-meta-information from under the title to the footer (tag/cat info) so that the header is better connected with the body of the post. There's enough clutter on other sites.
  • I've visually combined  categories and tags underneath articles. Category are used for url purposes and tags  to facilitate cross linking of subjects. No need for two lists.
  • I added a tagcloud to the site so you can browse the site and discover some other articles. I don't think browsing by time and month is useful to many people so that's been removed from the site. The only concern I have at the moment is that the cloud would grow to too big a list, so in the future I might just show the top 7 tags used. For now that's not a problem.
  • PHP Speedy. This is the most important reason why the site is so snippy.

There's more but I'll save them for another time.

 

Wordpress for iPhone Impressions

I'm currently testing the Wordpress iPhone app (WfI). It's great for a free app! However I noticed a few things that need to be polished:

  • It didn't retrieve the blogs categories from my blog and the category I added to this post wasn't saved.
  • The interface is a bit slow on the frontpage when clicking an option it doesn't turn blue immediately
  • There's currently (18th June 2009) no way to edit the blog's details after setting up, or ability to remove it that I have found. I changed my user's password but I cannot change it in WfI! An Edit button on the blog selection screen would definately help in this case. I'll have to remove the application and redownload it - maybe that helps.

Still it's a great way to do some writing while not at a desktop and I appreciate the offline mode for iPod Touch users.

 

Letter to Ministry of Sound

Dear sir/madam,
I am writing you to complain about the new ministry of sound website and the lack of data protection with regards to your users.

Earlier today I received an email notification about the new MoS website. The email also notified me that a new password was issued to use on the website. These are two characteristics of a phishing mail - in this case launching a new website and sending out new passwords, they could easily have been sent from a malicious source wanting me to login to their MoS-lookalike website and take my credit card details. You shouldn't send out a new password unless someone requests it on your website, because email can be forged. You also sent out my password in plain text email rather than on a secure part of your website. Anyone can read it and login to my account and purchase orders.

Also to my surprise while investigating the source of the mail, several of the links point to a http://www.c-f-1.com/ domain (update: this domain name no longer exists!), the name doesn't help to improve the trust in your email. To my astonishment the link led to a webpage with the html email, again with my password in plain sight. Have a look (link removed), I changed my password already. Let's wait for Google to index it so that anyone can search for my account information. They already found other newsletters.

Finally, I used mosdownload.com to buy my mp3s online. This site no longer works as an error comes up when it tries to redirect, due to a configuration error. My order history is gone, most of my profile is gone.

I'm very disappointed with your lack of security and care for your customers and unfortunately have come to the conclusion that I won't be using your service again, and I will recommend my friends and family to do the same, due to these trust issues.

 

TracFogbugzPlugin 0.9u-py2.5 Patch for Trac 0.11

If you use both VisualSvn + Trac (or another flavour of Subversion and Trac), and tried to integrate them with Fogbugz , you will have tried the TracFogbugzPlugin.

Trying to get this to work isn’t straightforward as it’s not compatible with Trac 0.11. You will come across the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\api.py", line 339, in
send_error
'text/html')
File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py", line 684, in
render_template
data = self.populate_data(req, data)
File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py", line 592, in
populate_data
d['chrome'].update(req.chrome)
File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\api.py", line 168, in
__getattr__
value = self.callbacks[name](self)
File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py", line 460, in
prepare_request
for category, name, text in contributor.get_navigation_items(req):
File
"c:\Python25\lib\site-packages\tracfogbugzplugin-0.9u-py2.5.egg\fogbugz\fogb
ugz.py", line 22, in get_navigation_items
yield 'mainnav', 'fogbugz', Markup('<a href="%s">FogBuz</a>',
self.baseurl)
LookupError: unknown encoding: >/">https://<<myurl>>/

To fix this line 22 needs changed, to read:

yield 'mainnav', 'fogbugz', Markup('<a href="%s">FogBuz</a>'%self.baseurl)

Or download the file below and use it as part of the installation instructions (if this is your first Python Egg you want to read about installing Trac plugins. ;)

Now it is loading but the plugin doesn't seem to work, haha.

Download: Patched tracfogbugzplugin-09u-py25