Category Archives: Blogging

WordPress Security Vulnerability

Blogging, Programming, Software

Some period of time after WordPress 2.1.1 was released, one or more of the WordPress servers was breached and the attacker edited the PHP source of a handful of files within the 2.1.1 download files.

The WordPress crew were fast to react to the news and have released a statement, which states that they have boycotted the release of WordPress 2.1.1 as they don’t know exactly when the attacker breached their servers.

The WordPress development team have also released WordPress 2.1.2 which is recommended as a mandatory upgrade if you previously upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 within the last week or so. I would expect that in the coming weeks, we’ll see some new security initiatives from the WordPress team to try and reduce the chances of this happening again in the future.

Blogging Is Meant To Be Personal

Blogging

Like most people, I read a lot of web sites and the majority of them I read because of their insight and personal opinion on any given topic. Of late, there have been a flurry of web sites that are automatically generating posts based of content on other web sites; such as del.icio.us.

I’m all for aggregation of content, its a really useful utility – however I don’t come to someone’s site to see a list of links to other web sites. I come to someones web site to read about a topic and if it happens to link out, well that is fine and dandy.

If you want to aggregate content, put the aggregated content into your side bar or in any location other than your primary content space. You should reserve your main content space for your own content or personal opinion on something – not for an aggregation.

Generating primary content automatically based on another web site, feed or service is just impersonal; don’t do it.

Akismet, Friends Forever

Blogging, Software

Akismet Spam Filter, Caught & Nailed 80,010 Spam Messages In Five MonthsIn the last five months, I have posted twice about the wonders of the free spam filtering service Akismet.

Since the last installment, another ten weeks have pasted. In the last ten weeks, approximately 30,000 new spam messages have been received and all of them have been blocked in one way or another. Since installing Akismet back towards the middle of last year, it has now dropped a whopping 80,000 spam messages at the door and it feels great!

You know what I’d like, I’d like it if the spammers were a little more intelligent. Clearly I’m running something on my site that is blocking their spam from ever reaching the public. If I were a spammer, I’d be keeping a close eye on what web sites my spam bots submit to and what sites it is getting through on. Essentially, if they are just brute forcing thousands of web sites – they are not being efficient spammers. At the moment, they could be spending the majority of their time spamming sites that the spam will never reach; instead of focusing their energies on the sites that spam is actually being registered on.

This can’t be a new idea but it sure seems as though the spam is relentless, even though it never makes it onto my live site.

WordPress 2.1 Plugin Compatibility

Blogging, Programming, Software

Since the recent release of WordPress 2.1, I thought I would proactively check all of my WordPress plugins for compatibility.

I was pleased to find out that through using the suggested plugin development practices that all of my plugins worked without changing anything. Whilst I was checking the source code for them over, I did squish a few small bugs at the same time; so there have been very minor upgrades to all of the WordPress plugins.

Happy blogging.

WordPress 2.1 Upgrade

Blogging, Software

This evening I went through the process of upgrading WordPress to the recently released 2.1 series.

As a force of habit, I follow the guidelines for upgrading WordPress. Depending on the site of your blog, following the guidelines can be a little time consuming; things like backing up your database an other important files. Regardless of that small inconvenience, I follow it through and I’ve not had a problem during any WordPress upgrades in the past. I’m sure that the day I don’t follow it through will be the same time that I encounter my first problem, so I’ll just keep following the guidelines and live a pain free life.

Once all the formalities of taking backups and unloading plugins was handled, the actual upgrade was painless and very fast. Once the new copy of WordPress was on the server, I went through and reactivated all of my plugins and made sure they were all still working with the new WordPress 2.1 source code and to my surprise, everything was functioning as expected.

If you’re looking to start a simple web site for yourself or a small company, I’d recommend giving WordPress a look for your content management solution. It really is an elegant and extensible platform for publishing that just works.