Trackback Spam

As of its most recent version, b2evolution has a problem with trackback spam. Several b2e users (including Whoo and Graham) have suggested renaming the directory that contains (among other things) the trackback script. In theory, this should eliminate spam from bots but should not effect legitimate commenters and pingers. Here’s a perl script I wrote… Continue reading Trackback Spam

MySQLicious-based del.icio.us Sidebar Item

Walter Cruz told me about MySQLicious, which mirrors your del.icio.us bookmarks in a MySQL database. I think it works much better than my previous del.icio.us sidebar solution, which used Magpie to snarf the del.icio.us RSS feed and built the sidebar item from the RSS feed. Here’s the setup as I’m using it: Setup MySQLicious according… Continue reading MySQLicious-based del.icio.us Sidebar Item

Category list modification (b2e)

Similar to the change I made to the blosxom categorylist plugin, I modified b2evolution’s category list module to only list a category if there are posts in that category. I also inserted a space between the checkbox and the category item. This change goes in the file: {YOUR_BLOG_ROOT_DIRECTORY}/skins/_categories.php Here’s a running tally of the diffs.… Continue reading Category list modification (b2e)

Bash script: ted

I just wrote a little bash script, “ted” (for Tracking EDitor), which I am loving. You call ted like you would call your usual text editor, and ted backs up the file you’re editing, appending the originial timestamp as a suffix. Then, when you’re done editing the file, ted runs diff to keep a running… Continue reading Bash script: ted

Google Advanced Operators

David Pogue blogged this fabulous link, which is a quick reference to some advanced Google usage techniques. There were a few here I didn’t know about: ~word searches for “word” and its synonyms X..Y searches within the range of numbers from X to Y

Error Page for e107

Formally submitted my three-part fix for the error page distribution with e107. If you (1) setup the e107 error.php file as your ErrorDocument and (2) try to fetch a page NOT in your e107 installation root that causes an error, the display of the resulting error page is mangled because the server doesn’t know where… Continue reading Error Page for e107

TrackBack Ping for e107

Fixed the TrackBack ping function in e107. The plugin doesn’t create all the database fields, so manually add the field ‘trackback_blogname’ as the last field (I made it type VARCHAR(150)) in the ‘e107_trackback’ table of your database.

Blog spam

Blog spam is becoming a serious problem. This site has been up for less than a month, and already I’m annoyed by one type of blog spam: referral spam. Another kind is comment spam or trackback spam. Good discussion and some suggestions are on the b2evolution forums here, and my referral spam solution is here.