What makes you happy ?

I was using dr Dave’s excellent Spam Karma 2 before I used Akismet and for varying reasons I have activated and deactivated it.
Today it passed a milestone for this blog:

Akismet has done pretty well too.

(except the 2 million bit. I added that in the db. Because it was there really….)

I’ve had a test blog in my WP help pages that has been open for probably 18 months or more. I started it because the number of people saying they had pingback / trackback problems was high in the wp.org forums. Being able to say “Try there” meant anyone checking could see the incoming and outgoing action. It also served to show people how to do those things. And it also worked. Useful. It’s done a few thousand tests, being reinstalled because I accidentally deleted the db once (that is SO easy in cpanel) and it’s been through a few themes.
But to publish people need an account – which is obviously openly displayed. I think it’s Author role. In the runup to version 2 I made the role Admin and even posted that so people could poke around and see the upcoming changes. And everything went really well and it lasted much longer than I thought – lasted being until someone changed the password. Which anyone could do any time they wanted. Sometime on the 9th someone did just that – I found out when I asked a wp.com user to go test there. It’s fixed now of course and I expect it to happen again but I’m pleasantly surprised that it did take so long before someone did that. (I’ll be making it so it can’t happen again though now).

It’s running bleeding-edge code updated a couple of times a week and it does work so if you need to test, hit it.

If you haven’t seen already, if you are running WP 2.1.1 you must upgrade to 2.1.2
So do :)

May 1-3 (Tue/Wed/Thu) there’s this Internet World 2007 event at Earl’s Court in London. Free to get in, just need to register. Seems like a good way to spend a day. Anyone else planning on being there? I’ll probably go on the Wednesday though I’ve not really looked at what’s on.

If by any chance you suddenly decide to upgrade your trusty b2 site, you can’t do so in php5. Took me ages yesterday on a silent fail on the 1.0.2 to realise that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t a faulty zip but php5. I was using MAMP and couldn’t find an easy way to switch it down to php4 (there probably is a way I’m sure but it was after midnight) so Xampp I used as it has a handy .bat file just for that purpose. And the upgrade worked – something in php5 stopped the postmeta table form being created. But all was now good. Just thought this may be useful :)

http://atthe404.wordpress.com

He’s be gone a while eh?

WordPress 2.0.6 is out and upgrading is a must.
So if you have your own blog you need to do the usual. And if you are with Freshlypressed you say “Oi, upgrade me!” and I do :)

Earlier this year I linked to and commented on the ridiculous linking policy of Evrsoft. I think I just found it’s equal.
I happened across Gizmodo. It’s a blog/site/whatever that I do not read and from there I found myself on vnunet.com. Now I would link to that but I absolutely do not agree with their pathetic and frankly stupid linking policy. Selected highlights:

(a) You must act in accordance with the terms and conditions of use of VNU’s Website (“Terms and conditions of use”) which will continue to apply to You.

So by linking I have to still agree to their T&C’s for their site? So it’s a very large link policy then isn’t it?

(b) If You do not accept these Linking Terms and Conditions You must not Link to VNU’s Website.

So if I do link and I disagree, you do what exactly?

(c) You may only use the names VNU or VNUNet and any VNU logo on Your Website in conjunction with the Link to VNU’s Website.

So saying VNUNET is wrong, as is vnunet…..

(g) You must include an acknowledgement on Your Website that the Link is to VNU’s Website.

So I make a link and then I say “This is a link to….”? How many times do you want your name on someone’s site?

(l) VNU reserves the right to review Your use of the names VNU or VNUNet, the Link or any VNU logo on Your Site and You agree to provide VNU with access to Your Site to enable VNU to review Your use of such names, the Link or any VNU logo.

Well I’m using it, so what other access do you want? ftp? ssh? cpanel? login here?

(m) VNU may, at any time, at its sole discretion, require You to discontinue Your use of the names VNU or VNUNet, the Link or any VNU logo on Your Site.

So I say no and you do what? How much grief is a href worth to you?

(n) You agree that Your Website shall not be operated in violation of any applicable law, rule or regulation.

Good grief…..

(q) VNU reserves the right in its sole discretion to amend these Linking Terms and Conditions by providing you with prior written notice thereof.

You need my address then?

(u) These Linking Terms and Conditions shall be governed by the laws of England and the parties hereby submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Hey, I live in England too. But what if I didn’t. These would be even more useless wouldn’t they?

Imagine every blogger said this. Imagine every blogger and website saying that they too had and operated a restrictive link policy. Where did vnunet lose sight of the inter part of the WWW ? Why have they decided to be so damn precious and yet lost their grip on web reality? Since when do they think anyone would allow ANY access to a site for them to check? If I had a password protected site I wouldn’t let you in – what would you get? A warrant?
Why do these people insist on link policies in the first place? These vnunet people cannot be alone….

I was asked to find a 3-col theme for someone today so off I went to the WP forums to find one.
Some clicking later and I find a potential candidate:

It is released under GPL. [1]

I go to the website and see:

License
Anaconda comes with GPL (GNU Public License). Both Mollio & K2 are released under GPL. The only thing we require is that you keep the attributions and linkbacks in the footer without any change.

Now I know the person who wants this theme does not want any backlinks but it’s no sweat to edit the footer.
I download the theme, and open the footer. There is no credit in the footer. So I go looking and find that the theme includes a ‘functions.php’ file – and at the bottom of that file are a few lines that hook into the ‘wp_footer’. It’s GPL – I can rip that out and be perfectly within my right to do so.
I check the CSS:

License: Released Under the “GNU Creative Commons License”,

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/

Yep, there it is again. GPL. So why make it so damn difficult to remove a footer link – after all, most users won’t go near code like that. I go back to the site and find a post titled ‘How to remove attribution link / link back from anaconda theme for wordpress’ and in that the author says:

Anaconda Theme requires an attribution link at the bottom of each page.

You can’t do that. It’s GPL.

However you may not want to have this attribution link / link back in every page of your blog for some reason. Here is what you can do to remove the linkback / attribution legitimately and feeling good about it.

To remove the linkback / attribution from the theme we require that you purchase your attribution free copy of Anaconda for 30$ (per blog),

Pretending you are being generous with the GPL just to then con people out of $30 is way off line.

Needless to say. the add_action line at the bottom of the functions.php file will be deleted ;)

I wrote a post earlier that quite literally disappeared. I clicked Publish and moved to another tab. I saw the little icon rolling around and then lost attention on that tab. Happened to click through to my blog later – and no post. It is nowhere. I even checked the db. I checked other blogs too. Gone. First time that’s happened as far as I know. Must be just me.. no-one on the lists has reported missing posts. Odd – and slightly amusing if it is an svn issue. I still want to run ‘svn up’ and for my blog to blow up – because then I can say “I don’t think you meant to do that” :)