Rohan Kapoor

After being told off by mercime for not having a page for WordPress/MU Favicon, I finally got around to pulling it’s page out of Drafts and updating it to show the latest information regarding version 1.1.

It appears that it took me long enough to pull it together, but hey, I was busy. Anways better late then never.

The homepage for WordPress/MU Favicon is here.

And for anyone interested, here is the changelog:

I released version 3.0 of New bbPress Admin today! This version is mainly a bugfix release with no new functionality. You can see the changelog for more details.

You can view the plugin page here. Or download directly from the WordPress Plugin Repository here.

Currently version 3.0 is the most stable version with no bugs that I know of!

Enjoy

Currently there are (in my mind at least) four good spam protection plugins for wordpress and wordpress mu. Each one has their merits and I have used/am using all of them across sites.

First is Akismet. Akismet is created by Automattic, the team behind the creation of wordpress.org, wordpress.com, buddypress.org, and bbpress.org. All projects listed above are opensource except for wordpress.com and akismet. Akismet is probably the number 1 spam blocking tool for wordpress blogs and is truly amazing. It has just 1 problem, it requires an API key to use. So no problem, just go to www.wordpress.com and get one, right? Well yes, if you are running a small enough number single user blogs. The problem happens when you try to create a blog network or use a WPMU installation. You could hardcode your API Key into your plugin file but then you will get banned, very soon. Instead you need to purchase on of the Akismet Business or Organization Keys. Those are expensive and as I am using multiple sites with different wordpress and wordpress mu, I chose to use Akismet only on www.biologypowerpoints.com because it is a single site with only 1 blog installed.

Next is reCAPTCHA! In my informal testing on http://wpmu.zyrot.com it appeared that reCAPTCHA caught 99.9% of the spam. It works well as a spam prevention tool however the fact that it uses captchas is a really good reason to choose another spam protection tool. It also requires an API Key to function with however the API Key is available for free from http://recaptcha.net/. If you prefer a captcha based approach, reCAPTCHA is the tool for you.

After reCAPTCHA comes one of my favorite tools for Spam Protection, Bad Behavior. Bad Behavior seems to be doing a reasonably good job blocking spam on this wordpress mu site. It also requires an API Key which is free to get from it’s own website. It has worked well at blocking spam for me however it seems to be blocking quite a few legitimate users as well. It appears for my needs to be working but I may need to reconsider at some time.

Finally, the last plugin that makes this list is WP-SpamFree. Out of all the plugins on this list, WP-SpamFree is the only one that doesn’t require an API Key to function. This means that you just install the plugin and it works. WP-SpamFree has the most user-changeable options and has an extensive help system built into the plugin. For standard WordPress (single blog) users it works perfectly outside the box. However for WordPress MU users, it unfortunately allows the administrator of any blogs the options of the plugin. Most site owners don’t want this and as such I have modified WP-SpamFree so that it only uses the options that the site admin sets as the global options and that the options configuration page is invisible to all users except for the site admin. I’m waiting on a response from WEBGEEK before I officially release as a modified plugin.

To anyone with a Standard WordPress blog, I would recommend WP-SpamFree as the Spam Deterrent off Choice and for those using Wordpress MU, I would recommend WP-SpamFree MU (will be released soon)!

New bbPress Admin was officially updated last week to version 2.0. This adds a lot of stability along with a few other functions. The changelog details more…

2.0

• Second Version of bbPress Admin. It has been adapted to have a backend interface to set the forums directory.
• Looks Neater and is much easier to use.
• Works with WP/WPMU 2.8.2 and bbPress 1.0.1

1.0

• First Version of bbPress Admin. It is very simple and rudimentary at this point.
• Working with WP/WPMU 2.8.1 and bbPress 1.0.1

You can find the plugin at it’s homepage. Right now Version 2.0 is stable however there are a few small bugs that are being worked on! Version 2.1 is in BETA on SVN!

Additionally, the homepage of New bbPress Admin has been updated so that it shows the most recent information (almost identical to the information on the http://wordpress.org plugin page.

As part of my summer reading work this year, I had to read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The book begins with a bunch of boys crash landed on a deserted island. It’s kind of confusing in the beginning as it doesn’t state why the boys landed on the island and seems to rush at times. However after the first couple of chapters, the story line begins to make a lot of sense and you understand who the characters are and why they are there.

The book portrays people who are educated, young, and have the potential to become gentlemen. It shows that even the best/worst of us can’t handle a stressful situation for a long time. Slowly, all of the boys begin to go a little insane till they start attacking and even killing each other in a fight for survival. It shows how the basic neaderthal structure still exists within all humans even today and it just takes a little push to throw perfectly well civilized people off the deep end into the throws of chaos, confusion, and savagery. The sad part is that the Britesh Naval Officers who rescue them don’t understand that the boys are going insane and they continue to believe it’s just a game concocted by the boys to wile away the time.

Setting: World War II, Deserted Island, Around 1940

Main Characters: Ralph, Piggy, SamnEric, Jack, Simon

Overall: 4/5 – Would have gotten 5 if it wasn’t as vague in the beginning.

Recommended: Yes

I got this email yesterday,

Hey mate we are interested to hire you to fix our login/cookie problems. Please let us know if you are interested – we have a site with multiple wp blogs and a bbpress also. We want login/cookies to recognize after sign in on all pages. Currently working fine for blogs but not for bbpress. Thanks and please find me on yahoo/msn chat with the above nickname. Best >>

From what I can tell it was sent from the contact form located on the site. The problem you see is that there is no reply-to address. If the person you sent this email sees this, please try sending again or leave a comment with your email address. I would love to get back to you but I can’t without your email.

Thanks