ringmaster

What I want to do before 2.0 gets off of my desktop is put up a bug database. I’m kind of hesitant about using wp-plugins at this point because I can’t figure out how to get Tortoise SVN to checkout two projects to one working directory. Yeah, maybe I should just use two working directories, but I’ve already got WordPress installed so many times on this system it’s crazy…

Sorry if that’s all greek.

Anyhow, 2.0 is WP1.5-only. 1.1 will stay around for the 1.2.x’ers. There are too many good plugin hooks in 1.5 to have to back-port.

This post is also not a promise that the 2.0 code will ever see release. I’ve got a billion projects going on right now, some WordPress, some not. The OSA project (augmented spam filtering for WP1.5 with p2p spam wordlists) is pretty high on my priority list right now. I want people to test the GeoPlugin, which is a replacement for the Geo features that you lose when you upgrade from 1.2-1.5. I’m considering a small plugin for FFAF this month that limits user posting to certain categories based on their user level. I’ve got this other crazy project that’s like a micro web server that you run on your desktop to enable file-sharing. I just got a contract offer yesterday (for $$) to maintain a site that I might actually decline so that I can finish all of this crap and clear my mind of it. And every time I stop by the forums I end up reading/replying for hours instead of doing actual coding… Gah!

Busy busy.

But yeah, I’ll take on testers as soon as I get some of the technical bits (like, how to version control/distribute the plugin) taken care of.

Exhibit doesn’t display anything in an excerpt. You might be able to get it to do so, but you’ll have to tinker a little with the Exhibit code.

Look in the exhibitimg/exhibit10p.php near the top. You’ll find this line:

add_filter('the_content', 'exhibit_content');

Try adding a line right under that reading:

add_filter('the_excerpt', 'exhibit_content');

That should do the same thing to the excerpts as what is done to the content. Note that I have not actually tried this, but it seems like the logical result.

Why this new breed of comments has no links:
http://www.asymptomatic.net/archives/2005/01/18/1225/got-new-spam-tactic-figured/

The “miracle” of filtering spams that have no links (via many of the spam filter plugins available) is enabled through Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs), not by some mystic heuristic/bayesian algorithm.

Basically, the plugin takes the IP of the spammer and uses it when making a DNS request from someplace like sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org. (Note that this is not the same thing as an email RBL, which would be significantly less effective.) That site has a database of IPs that were used to send comment spam, usually via open HTTP proxies. If the IP is in the list, it reports that info to the plugin, and the plugin filters the comment.

Blacklisting IPs works, but you’re not benefitting from the work done by others who already have expansive lists of bad IPs. Install one of the spam filtering plugins and let it do the work for you. A good filter will cache the IP results so it doesn’t make duplicate requests to the RBL, and can still work if the RBL is inaccessible for some reason. A better filter could help report new bad IPs to the RBLs.