Blogger will soon contain redirects to country-code URLs or ccTLD’s for all Blogger sites except for custom domains. For example, if you’re in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected to [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location. This causes an issue with IntenseDebate through the Blogger widget installation as different sets of comments will display depending on which ccTLD readers visit. They are strongly recommending that you move from the Blogger Widget installation to their Template installation which already addresses the necessary changes. Pay special attention to their instructions when making the move so you don’t lose any of your existing comments.
A few days ago, Sucuri mentioned that the Absolute Privacy plugin for WordPress contained a security vulnerability that would allow the ability to bypass the authentication mechanism and gain admin access to the application, that being WordPress. The plugin was subsequently pulled from the repository as there had not been any updates to fix the security issue for well over a year. Today however, the plugin can be found within the repository again as the security issue has now been fixed.
This looks like an easy way for you to link to your various social media profiles with some nice looking icons to boot. One thing worthy of noting is that this plugin will super cede the Social Profiles Widget which was also created by Nathan Rice. ∞
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a discussion revolving around those three magic letters GPL. It looks like we’ll be talking about it again considering that somewhere around 500 plugins run the risk of being purged due to their incompatibility with GPLv2. There has been an ongoing discussion within the past 11 months regarding various licenses and what is and is not compatible with what WordPress uses. It looks like the core team has been monitoring the discussion considering Andrew Nacins comment:
The core team plans to discuss plugin directory licensing once none of us are sick or traveling. So, expect an update here in the next week or so.
The arguments have been laid out, so no need to continue to do so. Not trying to stifle discussion, but, you have all made your points.
Jane Wells also participated in the tract ticket discussion:
I would think we would want everything on wordpress.org to have consistent and compatible licensing. If we’ve moved away from that, is Matt aware of it? (I wasn’t.) He’s always said in the past that anything promoted (including being hosted) on wordpress.org needs to be 100% GPL, and said that no one should ever have to wonder what they can/can’t do with something we host, because the license would be the same/compatible.
I also think the end goal for WordPress.org would be for consistency across the site with regards to licensing. No one should have to guess or worry about which license a particular piece of code is using if it’s being hosted by WordPress.org. At the end of the day though, it looks like license consistency is easier said than done.
It’s been awhile since I’ve visited WPDevel.WordPress.com which is the home of WordPress development updates and I’m happily surprised to see so much content from the folks who make things happen. The different teams that are working on various aspects of WordPress 3.4 are doing a good job of keeping not only the other team members up to date, but they are being transparent so that the public can view the progress and figure out what is going on. I hope the amount of communication on the site continues, the more transparent the merrier.
While most users of WordPress will know that to login to the back-end, you’ll need to visit /WP-Admin/ or wp-login.php, but what if you could change that to make it simpler to remember? WPBeginner has a small tutorial complete with a code snippet that you place within your .htaccess file that enables you to rewrite the WordPress Login URL into a custom URL. Telling clients to visit yoursite.com/login is a lot easier than that gobbily gook everyone has to deal with by default. Personally, I’ve just bookmarked the WP-Admin URL for my site and use that instead of remembering anything.
BloggingPro.com has a good starter article on tips for designing your blog. Within the article, Amanda mentions that while most bloggers get the writing aspect of the job, design is another beast entirely.
When people talk about the perfect blog, they always focus on content. The content of a blog is obviously extremely important, and in most cases the content is what decides whether a blog will be successful or flop like a fish out of water. However, the design of a blog is also extremely important. Many bloggers understand the writing aspect of the job, but it’s the blog design that causes frustration. Because creating a blog involves a little bit of web development and web hosting knowledge, so many writers feel a huge weight on their shoulders. Once bloggers have WordPress and other plugins mastered, they sometimes don’t even know where to begin when it comes to design.
She’s dead on. When I first launched WPTavern.com, I felt brave enough to hack away at a theme’s layout I enjoyed and applied my colors via the CSS file for the sites first design. It came out dark, with hues of grey and blue with colorful links. Not the prettiest site on the web but as a personal preference, I liked it. Then, I started searching around at the various WordPress commercial themes and noticed quite a few that looked like they would be perfect for the site. However, when I purchased the theme and tried to apply my vision, it never seemed to work out. I think I’ve spent about three to four hundred dollars on themes that I thought would be perfect but ended up being too complicated or not what I had in mind.
I cringe at the thought of redesigning WPTavern.com by myself because I’d much rather focus on content versus the design. I’ve dipped my hand into the design area enough times to know that I’m a stones throw from creating designs that are as wacky as the world of Dr. Suess.
How many themes have you purchased to fulfill your vision but ended up putting them up on the shelf?
Justin Tadlock has published ThemeHybrid 3.0. The site has been rebuilt from the ground up and sports a new coat of paint. Amongst the changes, one of the most notable if the restructuring of the documentation area. Previously, Justin was using around 150 different pages whereas now, he’s implemented custom post types. As an aside, congratulations to Justin for developing and releasing Retro-Fitted, a theme for WordPress.com.
Theme developers will now have access to a cool new starter theme that the WordPress.com theme team will be using on a routine basis when developing new themes. Not only is this great news for ALL theme developers, but how they are going about it makes me think they are also using this opportunity to experiment with GIT instead of working purely with SVN. I think some would argue that this is what the default theme should have been like within WordPress from the beginning but looking at how successful Twenty Ten has become, perhaps it was’nt such a bad idea.
This is one of the largest WordPress giveaways I’ve seen in a long time with a total value of around $9,000.00. Adam Warner formerly of WPModder.com is now concentrating his efforts on WP Pro Business which is a website aimed at providing the tools and knowledge to help propel businesses and individuals to success using WordPress. Adam explains the giveaway in a little more detail via the following video.
Adam is a good guy and did a great job with WPModder.com but if you’re wondering how he’ll use the data obtained from the giveaway, the following text can be read on the bottom of the giveaway page:
Information is collected through the supplied Rafflecopter.com widgets and (an optional) email subscription form. Entry emails are collected in accordance with Rafflecopter.com and AWeber.com terms and conditions. By entering this giveaway you agree to receive email communications from giveaway sponsors including prize notifications and new product updates.
You’ll have to decide before you enter on whether you want to go through the hassle and delete your email address from each sponsors list if you don’t win. Hopefully, it’s as simple as deleting one email address from WP Pro Business and that will cover the gamut for all future communications. Then again, you might not mind receiving an email here and there from the people sponsoring this giveaway.
IntenseDebate Phasing Out Blogger Widget Installation
By Jeffro on February 27, 2012
Blogger will soon contain redirects to country-code URLs or ccTLD’s for all Blogger sites except for custom domains. For example, if you’re in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected to [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location. This causes an issue with IntenseDebate through the Blogger widget installation as different sets of comments will display depending on which ccTLD readers visit. They are strongly recommending that you move from the Blogger Widget installation to their Template installation which already addresses the necessary changes. Pay special attention to their instructions when making the move so you don’t lose any of your existing comments.
Posted in News | Tagged blogger, comments, intensedebate