Author Archives: Donncha

WPMU Asides

After quite a bit of debugging and hacking I have “asides” working in WPMU now. Hopefully I can publish a new release early next week , so send your patches to me at donncha @ linux.ie if you want them included.
I also noticed a spelling typo – edit your post.html and change {the_category seperator=", "} to {the_category separator=", "} – otherwise your category separator will be ignored!

Update – I created a Smarty plugin that checks the category array for “Asides”. This means you can have an asides-format post that’s also in your humour category. Wait for the new release of WPMU for the plugin!

If you want to update your install so you can post asides do the following:

Create a category called “Asides”.

Edit wp-inst/index.php and look for the following line:
$content .= $wpsmarty->fetch( 'post.html' );
Insert two lines before that one:

$category = get_the_category();
$wpsmarty->assign( “category”, $category[0]->cat_name );

Edit your post.html so it looks like this:

{the_date d=” before='<p class=”date”>’ after='</p>’}
{if $category != ‘Asides’}
{is_aside}
{if $is_aside == false}
…..
…..
most of the body of the comments template goes here.
…..
…..
{else}
<div class=”storyContent”><p>{get_the_content} {comments_popup_link zero='(0)’ one='(1)’ more='(%)’}</p></div>
{/if}
{link_pages before='<br />Pages: ‘ after='<br />’ next_or_number=’number’}

The code I added is in italics. Note that asides won’t be filtered by the automatic filters. Is there a way of getting the post content without “echo”ing it out? I need to replace the last </p> of the content because it pushes the comments link down way too much! That means returning it and feeding it into a Smarty modifier. (ie. {the_content|regex_replace:”/^<\/p>$/”:””} doesn’t work because nothing is returned.)
(If WordPress mangles the code above, take a look at my post.html for a clearer explanation.
(If you’re wondering, I’m using the “KDE About” star as an icon for aside entries.)

Bye bye Referer Spammers!

Take a quick look at your logfiles any time and you’re likely to see referer spam in there somewhere. Not only do those requests pollute your log files and stats pages, but they also consume resources on your server when you serve them pages that aren’t even going to be viewed by anyone. Here’s one way of stopping the spammers eating into your server resources:

  • Look through your logfiles and examine the referers. Here’s a quick bit of code to do that. (Remove the backslashes (“\”) from before double quotes. WP is putting them in on me!) :
    awk '{print $11}' < /var/log/apache2/access_log| sort|uniq -c|sort -r|grep -v "mydomain.com"|less
  • Copy and paste any likely looking referer spam sites somewhere else for safe keeping. The ones that use most of your resources will be at the top of the list.
  • Add this code to some page that every page on your site loads, it should be included before main execution of the page occurs. Fill in the array of referer sites with the list your assembled from your log file. I’ve added a few from this morning’s log file. 
    if( isset( $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]  ) )
{
    $referers_to_avoid = array(
            "ttp://texas-holdem.andrewsaluk.com",
            "ttp://www.highprofitclub.com/",
            "ttp://www.sex4singles.com/",
            "ttp://www.parishillton.com/",
            "ttp://www.moneylinebet.com/",
            "ttp://www.free-hentai-anime-sex.com",
            "ttp://www.bondage-bdsm.us",
            "ttp://www.handjob-movies.us",
            "ttp://www.zoothumbnails.com",
            "ttp://www.bestiality-animal-sex-stories.com",
            "ttp://www.gay-men-sex-movies.com",
            "ttp://russ-darrow-kia.gq.nu/",
            "ttp://nissan-xterra.sbn.bz/",
            "ttp://nissan-thermos.gq.nu/",
            "ttp://folding-chair.wol.bz/",
            "ttp://www.xcites-0-cost-interracial-cum-teen-sex-movie.com"
    );
    while( list( $key, $val ) = each( $referers_to_avoid ) )
    {
        if( strpos( $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], $val ) )
        {
            die();
        }

    }
}
  • Add an error_log() to the “if” condition to spot when a spammer visits.
  • Add this to index.php of a WordPress installation to protect your blog and make your legitimate requests go that much faster!

I Am Bored – Sites for when you're bored.

Lots of good stuff on i-am-bored.com including this great snowball fight game (lots more games for download) and the Counterfit Mini site!

If you’re bored of playing games on your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, then head on over to Xeer2000, Evil Dave’s, or Dvotee for gaming tips and chat. Or check out the excellent Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 videos sasbenjr produces.

OK, if you’re really bored, here’s a few things to pass the time:

Don’t forget, there’s a lovely tit on In Photos.org. Any idea what kind it is?

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.