Tag: code

Tag, You're It!

Nick Momrik20 Comments

Since I started using Flickr earlier this month, I’ve falling in love with tags. Using categories in WordPress has always been a burden, so made the move to rid the site of them. Using tags is much better way to classify things in my opinion. You can view a heat map or full list of the tags used here at MDV.

While looking for a plugin to do the job I found quite a few, but they were all done wrong. Just bout every tagging plugin out there for WP used the meta data to store tags. I just didn’t get it. All of the functionality is already built into WP with categories, so why not just use what is already there?

After much searching I finally found a solution. All it takes is a simple edit to post.php and one plugin file.

WordPress Fights Spam

Nick MomrikLeave a comment

As I mentioned on Friday, I had deactivated my spam prevention plugins. It’s been about 60 hours, but all of spam fighting techniques that are built into WordPress are working extremely well.

One thing I noticed however was pingbacks automatically being approved. I had trackbacks moderated by a plugin I wrote, but otherwise they would have been approved also. Since they weren’t from sites in my link list, they should have been going to moderation. Well, this morning I took a browse through the code for 1.5.1 (I’m using the latest and greatest) and I found a bug with pingback and trackback white listing. WP was marking every PB and TB as white listed. It wasn’t ever possible for them to not be white listed, so I fixed the code and submitted a patch. Now I’ve even deactivated my Moderate Trackback plugin since I don’t need it either.

MtDewVirus and 2 Hole Cards are now completely free of all spam prevention plugins. I keep a few there for emergencies, but they aren’t activated at the moment.

If you’re curious about my settings in WP, here they are:

  1. Anyone can register = OFF
  2. Users must be registered and logged in to comment = OFF
  3. An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below) = OFF
  4. Comment author must fill out name and e-mail = ON
  5. Comment author must have a previously approved comment = ON
  6. Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than 5 links.
  7. Blacklist comments from open and insecure proxies = ON
  8. Comment Moderation words = NONE
  9. Comment Blacklist words – I do have 7 words listed here. Contact me if you want them.

That’s all there is to it.

I Code

Nick Momrik1 Comment

Today was the first day in a long time that I didn’t want to leave work at 4:30. I’ve been coding a program for the past week and because of the short work day I didn’t get time to work on it until almost 4:00. I was just getting into the zone and found out where my bug was when a co-worker mentioned it was time to go home. Time flies when you’re doing what you like.

I’m pretty excited about the program and it helps to remind me of what I really love doing. The program is written in VB.NET and interacts with a SQL server. It basically pulls records about everyone affiliated (students, faculty, staff, alumni, etc.) with SVSU from a text file, compares it to the data in the database used by our call tracking software (HEAT), and updates the database. I’ve had plans for this program dating back 6 months ago when I requested the data files. It’s just a shame it took 6 months to get someone to spend 10 minutes out of their day to add a few lines of code to their script that would FTP me the daily download file.

Forward

Nick Momrik7 Comments

I’m pretty happy with the way the design turned out. I call it Forward because of it’s relation to my life right now. We can usually tell what is over our heads and what is under our feet, but we don’t always know what’s right in front of us. For instance, just look at the header and footer images. You might not be able to tell, but both images are cut from a photo I took in Philadelphia last year. I purposely didn’t use any of the middle section. What you find in the content of this site is always changing. It’s the unknown. This new design also comes at a point in my life where I hope to be moving forward very soon. My “master life plan” is finally coming into view.

I still have a lot to do with the site and other things related to the release of WordPress 1.5. The next item on my to-do list is to convert all of the plugins I’ve created so that they work with WP 1.5. This shouldn’t take too much time. I also need to prepare MDV-Archive for release. What’s this? Just browse through the archives and you’ll see they don’t function like the archives on most WP sites. It really shouldn’t be too difficult to get this released, so it may come before the plugins. I basically just need to edit a few lines and offer the files for download.

On the home front, here at MtDewVirus, I’m going to put up an extensive about section. It’ll be complete with information about yours truly, the history of MtDewVirus, an explanation of how things are accomplished in Forward, and an FAQ. If you have any questions about Forward, the site, or anything else please post a comment and I’ll be sure to take it into consideration.

One thing that may change with Forward is the font used for the image headlines (not the font in the header image). I’m not sure it fits in. Let me know what you think.

I should also mention that Forward was built on top of the default theme (Kubrick) that now ships with WP 1.5, but is highly customized.

Change Of Scenery

Aside Nick MomrikLeave a comment

MtDewVirus realy needs a change of scenery…I just haven’t wanted to spend the time on a new design though. WordPress 1.5 has entered the gamma stage, so it shouldn’t be long before the final release. Maybe that’s when I’ll work on some changes around here since there are some new features that I’ve planned to […]