Due to time constraints, these plugins are no longer supported and will not be updated, ever! Unless you know what you’re doing, I strongly discourage using these on a production blog since they have not been tested since WordPress 2.5.

The plugin didn’t work in version 2.0.3 that we are using because the wp_enqueue_script function does not exist in this version  (the codex page does not say when this function was added). Anyway after manually adding the javascript to the theme’s head element the plugin almost worked fine – links didn’t take our folder structure into account.

works:
joeblogs.com</dir specified in post or page>

doesn’t work:
allblogs.com/blogs/joebloggs</dir specified in post of page>

Fix it by replacing line 231 to read:

$files .= ‘<li><a href=”‘.get_bloginfo(’wpurl’).$item['link'].’”>’.$itemName.’</a>’.

The hyperlink created for the item didn’t have the complete blog url in it it assumed the blog was installed in the root of the domain. After this fix the plugin works fine.

• Related Posts should show up to 5 related posts without too many false positives on single article pages. I like how this plugin scores posts on relativity and that I can set it to show nothing when no posts are related, which keeps the interface clutter to a minimum.
• A single easy recognisable block of Google Adsense adverts has been added to single articles. You won’t see it if you have Adblock Plus installed like myself, but it should give helpful suggestions on articles with a single subject and support hosting costs in the process.
• Template tweak: Moved post-meta-information from under the title to the footer (tag/cat info) so that the header is better connected with the body of the post. There’s enough clutter on other sites.
• I’ve visually combined  categories and tags underneath articles. Category are used for url purposes and tags  to facilitate cross linking of subjects. No need for two lists.
• I added a tagcloud to the site so you can browse the site and discover some other articles. I don’t think browsing by time and month is useful to many people so that’s been removed from the site. The only concern I have at the moment is that the cloud would grow to too big a list, so in the future I might just show the top 7 tags used. For now that’s not a problem.
• PHP Speedy. This is the most important reason why the site is so snippy.

There’s more but I’ll save them for another time.

• It didn’t retrieve the blogs categories from my blog and the category I added to this post wasn’t saved.
• The interface is a bit slow on the frontpage when clicking an option it doesn’t turn blue immediately
• There’s currently (18th June 2009) no way to edit the blog’s details after setting up, or ability to remove it that I have found. I changed my user’s password but I cannot change it in WfI! An Edit button on the blog selection screen would definately help in this case. I’ll have to remove the application and redownload it – maybe that helps.

Still it’s a great way to do some writing while not at a desktop and I appreciate the offline mode for iPod Touch users.

Earlier today I received an email notification about the new MoS website. The email also notified me that a new password was issued to use on the website. These are two characteristics of a phishing mail - in this case launching a new website and sending out new passwords, they could easily have been sent from a malicious source wanting me to login to their MoS-lookalike website and take my credit card details. You shouldn’t send out a new password unless someone requests it on your website, because email can be forged. You also sent out my password in plain text email rather than on a secure part of your website. Anyone can read it and login to my account and purchase orders.

Also to my surprise while investigating the source of the mail, several of the links point to a http://www.c-f-1.com/ domain, the name doesn’t help to improve the trust in your email. To my astonishment the link led to a webpage with the html email, again with my password in plain sight. Have a look (link removed), I changed my password already. Let’s wait for Google to index it so that anyone can search for my account information. They already found other newsletters.

Finally, I used mosdownload.com to buy my mp3s online. This site no longer works as an error comes up when it tries to redirect, due to a configuration error. My order history is gone, most of my profile is gone.

I’m very disappointed with your lack of security and care for your customers and unfortunately have come to the conclusion that I won’t be using your service again, and I will recommend my friends and family to do the same, due to these trust issues.

To fix this, follow this part of the instructions:

Add following line at the top of file C:\Program Files\VisualSVN Server\httpd-wrapper.bat:

set PYTHONHOME=%~dp0\Trac\python

Update: Later updates to VisualSvn Server break Trac.

The community has also pointed out that SecuROM does nothing to stop piracy, as Spore was cracked before public release. Instead, they argue, the real target is the pre-owned, trade-in market.

Trying to get this to work isn’t straightforward as it’s not compatible with Trac 0.11. You will come across the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\api.py”, line 339, in
send_error
‘text/html’)
File “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py”, line 684, in
render_template
data = self.populate_data(req, data)
File “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py”, line 592, in
populate_data
d['chrome'].update(req.chrome)
File “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\api.py”, line 168, in
__getattr__
value = self.callbacks[name](self)
File “C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\trac\web\chrome.py”, line 460, in
prepare_request
for category, name, text in contributor.get_navigation_items(req):
File
“c:\Python25\lib\site-packages\tracfogbugzplugin-0.9u-py2.5.egg\fogbugz\fogb
ugz.py”, line 22, in get_navigation_items
yield ‘mainnav’, ‘fogbugz’, Markup(’<a href=”%s”>FogBuz</a>’,
self.baseurl)
LookupError: unknown encoding: >/”>https://<<myurl>>/

To fix this line 22 needs changed, to read:

yield ‘mainnav’, ‘fogbugz’, Markup(’<a href=”%s”>FogBuz</a>’%self.baseurl)

Or download the file below and use it as part of the installation instructions (if this is your first Python Egg you want to read about installing Trac plugins.

Now it is loading but the plugin doesn’t seem to work, haha.

Download: Patched tracfogbugzplugin-09u-py25

I’ve had experience this in an ASP / VbScript environment, and therefore I’m going to use the terminology of page and functions as opposed to files and classes:

1. Rework the code and update all pages. This is obviously a bad idea.
2. To extend inflexible code: Rename the function and create a wrapper in its place to access the function using default parameters that are compatible with your existing codebase.
3. Create functions that are extendable.

To use optional parameters, pass them in an Array or dictionary object. This way you can add additional ones. The benefit that Arrays have over Dictionary objects is that they use less resources. This can be important if you are developing for a popular website.

Another advantage of using Arrays is that you’ll use less code calling the function. Using a dictionary object you’ll have to add each parameter separately, then pass the dictionary object as the parameter of the function.

On the other hand, code will be more legible using dictionary objects. Dictionary objects use  key value pairs to tell you that key A has a value B. You’ll not have to bother about the order of parameters, but you’ll have to know the keys of each function. It results in verbose, legible, resource intensive code.

However that leaves millions of bloggers without a possible revenue stream to support their writing so I am thinking what it can be replaced with. I’ve no idea. Personally I wouldn’t donate to a website because I liked a certain article, donationware works best for ‘tools’. I don’t think I can get paid for putting legitimate search results underneath a post, which would be a benefit to readers, which is a shame. Subscription services go against the nature of the web (hiding content from public). I wouldn’t buy a mug just because i read a website. Maybe that means that it’s just too hard for an individual to recoup their costs?

That said, the majority of people will not have Adsense blocked. And I think the majority of bloggers don’t blog for money, but because they like to discuss.

Credit: Photo by mwagner01