· Filed under Wordpress·
Recently a bug in certain versions of PHP came to our attention that could cause a security vulnerability in your blog. We’re able to work around it fairly easily, so we’ve decided to release 2.0.7 to fix the PHP security problem and the Feedburner issue that was in 2.0.6. It is recommended that everyone running WordPress 2.0.6 or lower
upgrade to this new version.Because this is a much smaller update than previous versions, you do not have to update all of WordPress’ files if you’re upgrading from version 2.0.6. Here is the list of files that have changed since 2.0.6:
- wp-admin/inline-uploading.php
- wp-admin/post.php
- wp-includes/classes.php
- wp-includes/functions.php
- wp-settings.php
- wp-includes/version.php
We know it sucks to have a release only 10 days after our last one, but we think it’s important enough for your blog to be secure to do it, and hopefully only having to change a few files will make the upgrade easier than normal.
Here are the changes that have been made since 2.0.6:
- Security fix for
dreZ8nus_unregister_GLOBALS() to work around the zend_hash_del_key_or_index bug in PHP 4 versions less than 4.4.3 and PHP 5 versions less than 5.1.4 with register_globals set to “On.â€
- Feeds now properly serve
304 Not Modified headers instead of mismatched 200/304 headers (a.k.a. the FeedBurner bug).
- Backport of another
304 Not Modified fix from WordPress 2.1
- Deleting WordPress Pages no longer gives an “Are You Sure?†prompt.
- After deleting a WordPress Page, you are now properly redirected to the Edit Pages screen.
- Sending an image at original size in Internet Explorer no longer adds an incorrect “height†attribute.
And just as a reminder, the next major version of WordPress (2.1) is due out by the end of the month, but the 2.0 branch of WordPress will continue to be maintained for several years.
· Filed under Design, Internet, Themes, Wordpress·
I hope everyone had a great holiday, I know I did.
2007 is an exciting year for me from a business and personal life perspective.
But I’ll stick to the business side of the story on this blog. Amsterdamn had an incredible growth last year.
And I’m planning to work even harder to release free themes for the masses.
Amsterdamn in 2007 will be this:
- Search Engine optimization
I have been reading a lot about SEO optimization lately. And I am going to implement the knowledge that I have gathered in my new themes.
Every theme from now on will be equipped with Search Engine Optimization. Hopefully your weblog will get more exposure thanks to this.
- Options page
Some of you already noticed that I started to use the WordPress Admin more and more. Every new theme in 2007 will get it’s own options page in the WP admin.
This way the users are able to edit basic things without having to edit the code. I have noticed that there a lot of novice users who use WordPress.
With this small effort I am able to make our themes (even more) user friendly.
- Neutral themes
At least 5 of our new themes this year will be “neutral”.It will be easy to edit them and give them your own personal touch to it.
With the options page it will be also possible to choose what you want to use. In other words more whitespace!
- At least 15 new themes
Last year we managed to release 15 themes. This year I am planning to release at least the same amount.
- WordPress
I will continue to release themes for WordPress. There is a chance that I will port our themes to other blog platforms.
If you are eager to do the job: e-mail me!
- Widgets Support
I haven’t paid much attention to widgets. Basically because I never use them.
But there seems to be a demand for them. Therefore every new theme will compatible with widgets.
- Amsterdamn
And some goals for my own website:
- By then end of 2007 Amsterdamn.org will be at least a PR6 (and maybe a PR7)
- I will enter the Technorati Top 1000 (now 16xx)
- Amsterdamn themes will have 35K downloads at the WordPress theme repository
- Our Alexa Rank will be lower than 150K
I’m looking forward to what 2007 will bring on the interwebs!
And here’s a new theme that I made last year:
Download | Test run
Don’t forget to leave a comment!
· Filed under Design·
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.
· Filed under Internet·
According to Kineda we’re part of the top 4000 blogs worldwide. After some calculations I found out that Amsterdamn is at place nr. 1700 of the 55-60 million (!) blogs worldwide. Hopefully we can make it to the top 1000 next year.
So what’s the A-list blogger list all about?
“The Very High Authority Group [A-List Bloggers]
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic. ”
· Filed under Internet·
One of the most powerful politic advertisements that I have ever seen.
· Filed under Internet·
· Filed under Design·
To use these custom userstyles, download and install the Stylish Firefox extension, and paste them into a newly created blank style. Alternatively, you can paste them into your userChrome.css file located in your Firefox profile folder.
- GoogleWebSearch.css
- GoogleImageSearch.css
- GoogleVideo.css
- YouTube.css
Source:
http://www.valacar.com/userstyles/
· Filed under Wordpress·
5) Deny Access to No Referrer Requests
When humans comment on your blog they have read the post and leave a comment. This of course leaves the referal from your blog. One easy way to block spammers is to check for the referal. Simply paste the lines below into your .htaccess file in the root of your webserver.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L]
What you need to edit:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php* – If you are not running a wordpress blog then you will want to change that to the file that gets the post for comments.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR] – obviously you want this to be your domain.
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L] – this is where you are redirecting them too. This probably does not matter since the automated spambots will not follow redirects.
Done!
4) Kill tor anonymous proxies
Thats cool people want to surf anonymously and all that but being that about 75% of my comments come from tor proxies its much easier just to block them.
simply go here and copy this to your .htaccess to block all the tor servers
3) Stop Comments On Older Posts
Spammers target older posts for 2 reasons.
A) they show up in search engines and thus they know:
- search engines value the page pr wise
- it could be relavent to the keyword they are trying to spam
B) You wont see it. – since the post is old its unlikely that you would ever notice thus greater chance of sneaking it by you.
You have a few options to fix this-
You can manually disallow comments for posts after x amount of days (ick)
If you have wordpress you can download this plugin
which will automatically close off comments and trackbacks after 21 days.
If you have some h4×0r skills you can setup a cron job (thats a automated task to us ninjas) that will edit your database directly checking for past posts and setting the comments and
2) Blacklist Repeat Offenders:
When some spammers do get in you can blacklist there ips so they wont ever be able to again… this process does suck a bit but its a option.
Again edit your .htaccess file:
order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.1.1
deny from 192.168.1.*
allow from all
Remember * represent wildcards
1) Rename your comment file
The default for wordpress is wp-comments-post.php by simply renaming this file to say… wpc.php then changing your theme to reflect the different location for the comment file you will ward off a TON of spammers. This will kill 100% of the automated spam bots.
Source:
http://www.shoemoney.com/
· Filed under Internet·
According to Techcrunch Stumbleupon is for sale for $50 million
Two sources have confirmed that the rapidly growing StumbleUpon recently approached at least one large Internet company to be acquired. The asking price was $50 million.
The deal doesn’t appear to have been widely shopped – one potential acquiror said that they met with the company recently, but only to explore possible business development deals, and that an acquisition was not discussed. I spoke briefly with StumbleUpon CEO Garret Camp this afternoon but he refused to comment, saying “we do not comment on rumors.†Fair enough.
The real story may be a disconnect between the company’s executives and investors. StumbleUpon has only raised a single seed round of financing – $1.5 million – and angel investors often informally shop a company, with or without the company’s permission, in the hope of an early cash out.
Whatever is going on, StumbleUpon certainly isn’t stumbling in its growth. It is now a significant source of traffic for many startups (an entrepreneur recently told me that 15% of his traffic last week came from StumbleUpon). Garret told me today that the company has 1.5 million registered users and an average of 3.5 million page views per day. They expect to be cash flow positive within the next few months.
