Matt > Bill

Matthew Mullenweg is like the Bill Gates of Internet software. But then again, maybe he’s not. All of Matt’s software is Open Source (free to use, free to modify). Oh, and his software works. Did I mention he listens to his users? Or how about the fact that he answers every single one of his email messages? So I take that back…he’s not like Gates at all. He’s more better!

  • Matt is one of the most popular bloggers in the entire universe at Photo Matt.
  • He’s the lead developer for WordPress, the best blogging software available.
  • Dougal Campbell teammed up with Matt to launch Ping-o-Matic, your one stop for letting sites around the web know that you’ve updated your blog.
  • Over the holidays and out of the blue, he started a new piece of forum software from scratch, bbPress.
  • Just today I came across automattic.com, another domain registered to Matt. Not quite sure what he has in store here, but I now know that “Some things are automattic, some things aren’t.”

Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game

Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet GameMy friend Dave just bought me this book after he’d purchased the original Killer Poker. From what he’s said it really gets into the mind games that you play with yourself in poker. Just what I need lately. I hope it will help me to figure out why I think some of the things I do or act in certain ways. Watch out fish! My poker library is growing quite large lately. I have at least 6 books that I’ve yet to crack the cover on. I guess it’s time for more study and less poker play.


WordPress Plugins: Trackback And Pingback Moderation

These two plugins basically do the same thing, but I wanted to keep them seperate. When you turn one on, it will automatically place either all NEW trackbacks or all NEW pingbacks (depending on the plugin) into the comment moderation queue. It’s meant as a simple way to keep the spammers from getting these onto your site without you first approving them.

Note: This does not do anything for all of the old trackbacks/pingbacks that have already been added to your site.

More information on the WordPress Plugins page.

Trackback Spam

Now that I’ve gotten a handle on the comment spam taking over my blogs, I’m getting hit through other means. Trackbacks! I found a few hooks in the WP code that I can plug into, so tonight I plan to whip up a few plugins so that pingbacks and trackbacks can automatically be put into the moderation queue. At least that’s what I hope to accomplish.

I can’t really think of any other way to test on these two items. For comments, I don’t like using the moderation queue, but it doesn’t really matter all that much to me if a trackback or pingback doens’t appear on my blog for a few hours until I can let it go through. Maybe one of the great minds out there will come up with an idea, but this will at least be a temporary solution.