It differs from other “Related posts”-plug-ins, which are based on automatic content analysis. What ever the content analysis algorithms are and how ever the configuration options used,  resulting related post lists are mostly just a bullsh$%.  That’s is understandably, then these plug-ins have same problem like search engines and other content analysis tools . In the reality of our age (It is 2009 A.D.) – computers cannnot understand any semantic of human written articles.

So what is the solution for an good Related Post Plugin? Of cause simple to do it manually!

You say it much work?  No!, with Micrkid’s Related posts Plugin, which  provides very comfortable AJAX driven interface, it becomes fun! It’s becomes so easy and quick as providing tags. You decide what is related to the actual post by creating meaningful related post list.  Try it out!

That is because their URL are stored as absolute path by WP which are currently refer to old domain.  Can anyone write an SQL (MySQL) procedure that looks through all post, searching for some URL lieke http://holbreich.de and then changes them to http://alexander.holbreich.org?

Can anyone of the readers do somethng like this? Is there maybeeven some kind of plug-In which doe simmilar job?

Furthermore I took a dessision to be independet of Alex King Populatiry Contest Plugin, therefore my next Plugin version will use own DB tables. As you maybe noitice my Popular List has changed, that is because of using new tables which means drop of old popularity statistic
Finaly, i consider to maintan all of my Worpdpress and similar stuff includig wPopularity on other Blog with some friend of my. Of cause I tell you about it, when it’s done.

Nevertheless I have some ideas on improvement of W-Popularity Plug-in. I think we should give up compatibility of DB-Tables with Popularity Contest Plug in. As i think that should eliminate all possible inter-operation problems with the Plug-in of Alex King, including those activation problems, some of you have report in the comments to my ???????? ????? ????????.

I started already work on version 0.9.4 but i will release it after I’m back again.

I have fixed this problem now. Please use newest version of W-Popularity Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

No other functionality was changed in this release.

Google is kindly enough to try contact you i such case, when they about to throw your site out of the index because your site is malware infected or even is a malware distributor. In such one unlucky case you get the Malware Notification. Normaly this Notification goes to following addresses of your domain.

• abuse@
• admin@
• administrator@
• contact@
• info@
• postmaster@
• support@
• webmaster@

Therefore you are good advised to listen to at least one of them on your own domain.

The Malware Notification Mail points you to some affected URL’s (In my case there where two). Alterantive the same information could be found in Google Webmaster Tools

As next, you have to investigate the cause of this notification and clean your site. In best case you should find and fix the bug which was used for infiltration.

As you maybe remember my side was already attacked in the past, so I do not wander as much that such thing happen. Also in my case i did found the modifications on some post, where commented iframe with a linked to a bad site with and .php script was included. Maybe just some tracking or something like that. I wonder if such construct works still in any modern browser, but I’m not expert in such.

However as I think I also have found the source of the problem. I do not exactly understand how could it work in my case. But i seems to be the bad Trojan (By Antivir): HTML/Crypted.Gen.

Dancho Danchev describes a similar case. Maybe someone can tell me how exactly it worked in my case.

However. Now I have the newest version of Wordpress, newest Version of Plug-Ins and clean posts. I have notify Google through Google Webmaster Tools to check my site again. Hope they’ll do it in the nearest time.

Ok , I know I begin with the introducing of the My wife’s Blog. It’s about books, travel and geography, because my darling do study at the Faculty of Geography. You might find it also interesting even when you will not find there many articles about IT However her English is much better than my

Back to this blog. As you know Wordpress 2.5 is out. And somehow there are no security updates at that time. How it comes? Did the Wordpress guys didn’t their work really good this time?   Seems to be. So I consider to upgrade in the next time.

While the Popularity Contest Plugin does not support widgets natively, you need to code your templates to show most popular list of post on the Sidebar. My Widgetized Popularity Contest Plugin – short W-Popularity solves that, by providing dynamically widget for it.

Here are the features of the first public version of my W-Popularity Plugin:

• Enables Most Popular Widget
  • Configuration of several parameters
• Compatibility to Popularity Contest Plugin Database (if Tables are already there, the plugin work on them).
• Better performance through small improvements

I do not intend to change calculation logic in the near future, so that is stays compatible, but some other improvements. Please let me know if you desire some…

Download it directly from here Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file. or from download page .
Then enjoy the easiness

Nearly every Worpdress blog would have something like Meta section in the sidebar, every link there should be marked as nofollow. Unfortunately there are not coded in one widget, they are distributed over two files in the standard wordpress installation.

Yo need also update two files:

1. /wp-includes/widges.php
2. /wp-includes/general-template.php

In the widgets.php you need to ad rel=nofollow inside of the function wp_widget_meta(), so that result of this looks like this:

function wp_widget_meta($args) {
extract($args);
$options = get_option(‘widget_meta’);
$title = empty($options['title']) ? __(‘Meta’) : $options['title'];
?>
<?php echo $before_widget; ?>
<?php echo $before_title . $title . $after_title; ?>
<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” rel=”nofollow” title=”<?php echo attribute_escape(__(‘Syndicate this site using RSS 2.0′)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Entries <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>” rel=”nofollow” title=”<?php echo attribute_escape(__(‘The latest comments to all posts in RSS’)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Comments <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
</ul>
<?php echo $after_widget; ?>
<?php
}

As you see, wp_register() function is called here, and therefore we need to modify general-template.php file. Excatrly the mentioned method, so that it looks like this:

function wp_register( $before = ‘<li>’, $after = ‘</li>’ ) {

if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
if ( get_option(‘users_can_register’) )
$link = $before . ‘<a href=”‘ . get_option(’siteurl’) . ‘/wp-login.php?action=register” rel=”nofollow”>’ . __(‘Register’) . ‘</a>’ . $after;
else
$link = ”;
} else {
$link = $before . ‘<a href=”‘ . get_option(’siteurl’) . ‘/wp-admin/” rel=”nofollow”>’ . __(‘Site Admin’) . ‘</a>’ . $after;
}

echo apply_filters(‘register’, $link);
}

Notice that I have added only nofollow relation and nothing more.

However that is not the best solution cause, when these files have been changed in new version you have to patch them all manually. unfortunately, there is no mechanism to preserve standard widgets to be not be updated as i think unless of creating own meta-widget plugin, but this is to much for this purpose. What do you think about?

Update: There is already a plugin for it.

One of the Important aspects is properly made page for the search engine optimisation point of view. I don’t wanna cover these point in this article, if interested, you can read Wordpress SEO – The Beginners Guide by Joost de Valk’s, which is good introduction in the theme. I just wanna cover one of the aspects of good page and that is Meta-information.

Every page of your blog has to provide title attribute and meta attribute keywords and maybe even meta description, which helps Search engines to better “understand” what is on that page. Unfortunately there is no adequate support for meta description by default in Wordpress. So we need a Plug-In.

HeadSpace2 – Plugin

The HeasSpace2 PlugIn homepage is one of the popular in that field. The installation is easy, no template hacks are needed, copy and activate as usual. The configuration is done in “options” -menu. It may be helpful to read the description and concepts on the Plug-In homepage, before starting configuration.

There are four main configuration tabs:

• Page Settings (shown on image)
• Modules
• Options
• Import

Page Settings

Crucial are Page Settings, that are default settings for different parts of Wordpress like Archives pages, post pages, main page and so on.

In Page Settings dialog it is possibly to configure default tags for all of them, of cause with support of predefined variables. It is possibly that you have to play a little bit around until you get desired effects.

But before you start check your templates header file. Inspect how title is created. It is crucial because some template authors use wireds things for creating titles. You are well advised to use something like this:

<title>

<?php wp_title(‘ ‘); ?> <?php if(wp_title(‘ ‘, false)) { echo ‘ : ‘; } ?><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>

</title>

This, will enable by default right presentation in title, first the title of Post then Blog name separated with “:” like on my blog. Works fine without Headspace2 PlugIn ant with it. By usage with Headspace2 use empty string as separator in the configuration of “page title” in the Modules Dialog.

Modules

Modules has two sections, top and bottom. Top section allows you to define the presentation of meta tag description fields in Post and Pages Editors and also in the Page Settings dialog. And that are so called Page Modules. Here is also “page title” module which is mentioned before.

In the bottom you will find the Site Modules configuration. In the main Site modules could be selfcontaining Plugins. But here they wrapped as modules. Most of them are some Statistic analysers like Google analytics, but what what i found interesting is Google Section Targeting Module. Google targeting allows you to demarcate adsence relevant html>body area of your blog, read more about Google section Targeting (in German).

Warnings

Be careful with the Modules, i have switched something wrong there, and that broke the output of that site, so only admit are worked well. therefore I didn’t notice anything fore more than ten ours. You may be notified strange downtime of my site in the last week?

Conclusion

All in one, Headspace2 seems to be nice Plug-In. use it with care in it will serve you well. Questions are welcome.

… A flaw was found in our XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow any valid user to edit posts of any other user on that blog. …
So e.g. I found some strange code lines in my several posts looking like:

<noscript>Furious franchise is a decision internets download nextel <a( deleted href)> madonna ringtones</a> software and.</noscript>

<noscript>Forse vi piacerebbe il software, o l’interfaccia di una particolare <a( deleted href)>poker</a> room, o forse no.</noscript>

I definitely have not inserted them in to my posts. So how did they get into it? They could be inserted by some Plug-in but they looks so as should be hidden to my eyes, and make few sense for any plug in. Therefore my theory is that they where inserted by bad guys, that used out some of security bugs in wordpress. Presumably they may be used mentioned XML-RPC Bug in the Wordpress version 2.3.2.

Please let me know if you know more about these strange lines.

P.S. In addition i have deleted some unknown users, because my observation point me to some the believe that this could be the violation of security to. So if you wanna subscribe to the comments or Posts, use RSS. Thank you for understanding.

I think that tags are very flexible and also somehow naturally to use, you don’t have to think very carefully which should be taken, and which was used before, you just tag it with firs you get in mind. Tagging or labeling is something natural to humans, think of yourself. Everybody has normally meanings about things in his near environment, we give them names even then when we don’t really understand them. So tags seems to be even replacement for categories, which even leads some bloggers to live entirely without categories.

Categories

However I think to pass on categories is not so good, because tags and categories have different semantic and purpose, we should not do without categories. Let me explain why. There are two main properties of category, that discern them from tags.

1. Wilful classification
2. Hierarchies

What I mean by wilful classification? Usually you think about your category structure at the introduction of the blog. So you take time and divide your further articles wilful in some categories. That helps yourself and others to find only such articles that are from their interest. So your classify all your post in some careful considered categories wilful.

Further categories enable building semantically hierarchies in this classification, because you can build sub-categories, even big category trees (which is not good idea in my eyes). So we notice categories are something different to tags, and effort more consideration (in beginning).

Solution

The solution is of cause a symbios of both concepts. I think categories should not try to copy the flexibility of tags, categories should keep tags in order with small well considered category set. In other words i propose the use of categories as coarse grained classification of blog articles and fine grained flexible classification or labeling of articles with tags.

Example Restructuring of my blog

I begun to write in this blog before tags became standard in Wordpress, so i tried to categorise my articles only, this led to such categories:

• Database Systems
• Distributed systems
• eCommerce
• General
• Hardware
• Humour
• IT Architekture
• Java
• Software
  • IDEs
  • Scripts
  • Servers
• Web Development
  • Ajax
  • Css
  • JavaScript
  • PHP
  • Semantic Web
  • XML (XHTML)
• Web2.0
• Wordpres
  • Plug-Ins

That is defenetly to much, some of them can be easy be cowered throug tags. So i deside to build only such categories:

• Internet
  • CMS
  • Web development
  • SEO
  • Blogging
    • Wordpress
• IT Architekture
  • Software Engineering
    • Java
• Business Informatics
• Software
• Hardware
• Humour
• Personal
• Off Topic

Fine granularity will be managed with tags. Thank you for reading. I begin with restructuring now.

P.S. You may be also interested in discussion about categories tags an Technorati issues.

Be aware of using that “great” shortcuts Plug-in. Oh what a silly shortcuts support it was, only useful stuff like “Search for Wordpress on Yahoo”-Pop-Ups. But that’s OK. But not such destructive action in addition.

I use the first version (0.962) of Yahoo ShortCuts Plug-in with the WordPress Version 2.3.2. and that happened 2 times on one day on one nearly complete article, the big one article. I hope you do not trust this awful plug-in.

Disclaimer: I don’t wanna say That whole “Yahoo!” is like this Plug-In, i believe this is not the case.

The Plug-In homepage has an installation instruction, fread it befor begin with installtions. Actual you need to copy polyglot to your Wordpress installtion and then put something like this

<?php if(function_exists(‘polyglot_other_langs’)) {
//display existing language versions of the post
polyglot_other_langs(‘ ‘,’<ul>’, ‘</ul>’, ‘<li>’, ‘</li>’);
}?>

in to your template for enabling the flags. Also look in the PHP file of the plug-in, there is a lot of configuration options, wich allows you fine tun of Plug-in.

All in one such kind of Plug-in setup is not a problem for one singular blog, but can get you tired when you have to administrate several Wordpress installations. May be a will write some upgrade to Polyglot in the future that covers such issues.

I also added javascript code for context link to Amazon Books, but it does not work Don’t know why.

O yes it works brilliant, but i notice in just now. It works, i already saw two links to Amazon, but i don’t realize at the moment how this exactly works, i mean the algorithm behing the link generation.

Top 10 Plug-Ins

1. Askimet
2. DoFollow
3. GoogleAnalytics
4. GoogleXMLSitemaps
5. Instant Upgrade
6. Simple Database Bakup
7. Simple Trackback Validation
8. Similar Posts
9. 404-Notifier
10. Share-This-Classic or similar Social book-marker.

Description

• Askimet should be nothing new for every blogger.
• Else DoFollow. I see often that bloggers are to lazy with “nofollow” problem. Read why “nofollow” attributes should be used wisely.
• GoogleAnalytics provides easy way to add your google analytics script for your blog. It’s in any case better to use this Plug-ing and not to hack the blog template, cause templates can be switched and therefore need to be updated one every change. With that Plug-In you just forget such issues.

• GoogleXMLSitemaps is more that just adding a script. It generates a sitemap.xml file for your blog or even whole site. Meanwhile it is highly configurable and mighty Plug-in, that provides the needed flexibility. It is suitable for blogs with just few articles but also for blogs with many of them. And of cause it automatically ping Google Webmaster Tools site.
  
• Instant Upgrade and Simple Database Backup were already explained in previous post.
• Simple Trackback Validation helps to protect your form Spamer Trackbacks.
• My Similar Posts Plug-In is not so long in use like the other in the list, but i like it already. It provides widget that contains list of similar post to the current, that allows users to find quickly more interesting stuff they look for on your page. The default configuration may be not very suitable configured for concrete needs of your blog, so i would say, every body has to play around and define what similarity criteria are important for him. E.g. one can say that similar Posts has to have not only similar words, but also be in the same category.
• 404 Notifier, notifies you every time when something was not found on your blog. OK, it can be to much sometimes, when every time favicon.ico is not found, cause you don’t provide it. But you don’t have to send mails. You can configure such 404 to a feed. And reed it with the feed reader.
• Share-this-Classic Plug-In enables this green Button on the bottom of every post , which contains short links to well known social communities. Normally it works like pop-up layer, but with my new template it opens new page. I have to figure out why.
  

Conclusion

Some cool Plug-ins are presented in that list, but not all I use, cause there are some I’m unsure whether they are really useful or I have used them not much. I’ll write about these Plug-Ins in my future posts, i promise.

Of cause you are welcome to comment and please give me a hint on other cool and useful plug-Ins you have not found in presented top 10.

But updating of Wordpress means download, backup, copy files per FTP and maybe backuping old files. And it get’s terrible, when you have to manage several sites.

But the lazy way exists too! And you need just two plug-ins, which can make you life really easier and secure, cause you don’t need to adjourn such important tasks.

Here are needed Plug-Ins:

• The DB back up Plug-in.
• The Instant Upgrade Plug-In

After installing these two you can start with the upgrading of your blog.

Backup

First use backup Plug-in to secure your DB cause ever update can brake your Wordpress for several reasons. Presented Backup Plug-In is really handy. Yo can select where to save the backup file, or whether it should be send per mail.

Of cause the configuration of scheduler is possible. Furthermore the is possibility to back up all other db tables in the same Database scheme just by selectem them.

Update

Updating with instant update Plug-In is easy too. It can be really done with one click, how promissed in the caption and in the Plug-In description. There is one option to choose wheter to upgrade to latest version, or some other version of your wish. And if everything went fine, you will see something like this:

“Everything went smooth. Have fun with your new WordPress version!”

Don’t forget to check your Wordpress carefully after upgrading. In case of my blogs the instant upgrade with these blogs has produced no errors. I have done upgrades form 2.2 and 2.2 version to 2.3.1 no troubles so far.

In the next time I’ll tell you about other Cool Wordpress Plug-Ins.

But unfortunately This Plug-in found no badges for word Yahoo! So you can see the badges example on: Hewlett-Packard.

Yes we all know about that, but you published this on 2005, now it became very famous, moreover it very difficult to handle , all keys are very different so new people couldn’t work properly, its takes too much of time to take download, xp speed is better than vista in pc but in mac vista is best it works nice and speed too, every operation will done easily. Now lots of people are using, its try to hard learning this os but after knowing all its easy only, good nice information i studied in wikipedia, thanks for your blog.

on my deleted post About Windows Vista form Year 2005

But if you look at this post more precisely you notify that the is no point in this post. Is that possibly any question in this comment? Or maybe it gives us new information? Probably it is just emotional expression about my wonderful post about Windows Vista!?

Of cause NOT! My old short post from 2005 about future features of Vista deserves no attention in a year 2007. It is only refraining of sentences used in original post.

And there were at least five of such comments. I have even already approved some of them days earlier, because they looked like they were written by humans. But having five in one night, made me suspicious. I started my investigation!
I found and marked as spam them all on my blog!

I filtered all comment that just refrained my sentences. In a manner if i e.g. say “Java is cool” in one sentence, the comment was containing corresponding sentence like “I found java is cool too, thank you for you great post!”.

Also the were always Link in a name of Commenting person, here are some of them:

• www.externallights.com
• www.icongalore.com
• www.designmyvilla.com

Look! Even design-template of the first an last is the same! And second looks as spammers site as it is.

Please buy nothing from that domains an don’t give them any traffic! Don’t give the evil spammers any chance!

Nevertheless, spammer seems to use very advanced tools! Look, I don’t think they wrote all of that comments using own hands. That to much work for spammer (Spamer don’t like much work, otherwise they would do something more useful). Also the result of the comment could be much better in poor human made case. And that comments have had the same structure.

Cause Englisher language has not really difficult grammar in case of sentence building, i thing that is fully automated generated spam. Also possible is that, that spam was made by humans used an very cool tool that generates much of the work!

It seems for me, we entering new Loop of anti-spam war! I wish you good day and successful battle!

P.S. Does anybody know how we can effective protect our blogs? My first intuitive solution is to restrict comments only to registered users. But it’s only the first one.