WordPress

Google Analytics for WordPress plugin is incompatible with AddThis plugin

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Google Analytics for WordPress plugin adds an onclick attribute to links when “Track outbound clicks & downloads” is enabled irrespective of whether there is already an onclick attribute. AddThis plugin adds a link with onclick attribute to the post when enabled. This combination causes WordPress to generate invalid mark up. Same would happen if the post contains any links with onclick attribute (very unlikely scenario).

I have created a patch (with Git) that adds the content of $coolBit to the existing onclick attribute (without onclick=””) else a new onclick attribute is added with the $coolBit. You can download the patch. I have also reported the issue to Joost (plugin developer).

Hope this will be useful for someone in a similar situation until the fix makes it into the plugin.

WordPress plugin Smart Throttle 1.0.0 released

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WordPress plugin Smart Throttle 1.0.0 released. With this release Smart Throttle is hosted on WordPress plugin repository allowing users to easily install and upgrade.

In this release I have added the ability to configure throttling parameters. You can download the latest release from either here, here or from your WordPress blog under Plugins -> Add New in wp-admin.

Please do not forget to rate the Smart Throttle plugin and give your ideas to improve it. 🙂

My fight against comment spam on WordPress blogs – Smart Throttle

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My blog was hit with a comment spam flood which almost brought down the server under load. There were aproximately 30 bots continuously posting spam comments, geez don’t they realize that none of the comments get published. With all the writes to the database, my servers came to a crawling stop. I disabled comments for a while, until I figure out a means to prevent the spam messages from being posted. First option was CAPTCHA, I installed re-CAPTCHA WordPress plugin. This did reduce the spam but in an ugly way. I was thinking of a means to stop the nuisance spam without even writing to the database. Then I came accross this, and gave me the idea for Smart Throttle WordPress plugin. It’s very simple, depending on the rate of comments in the last hour by the user the comment flood time out will be automatically adjusted. Check out the plugin home page for details how it’s done. The plugin is released under GPLv3. I have now disabled re-CAPTCHA plugin and so far things are looking good, most of the spam bots are lost in the you are posting too fast message 😉 . Give your blog a break with Smart Throttle.

Bye, bye Blogger. Howdy WordPress

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Finally moved my blog to WordPress from Blogger. I also moved it to a different URL as well. Move was as smooth as it could get. I wasn’t sure whether I should make the move. I didn’t want any Google juice to be lost or give my readers 404s. In my old setup I was using Feedburner to serve my feeds and Blogger to serve my blog. Now WordPress serves the blog and Feedburner still serves the feeds. Here you have the steps.

  1. Install WordPress (I used 2.6.3)
  2. Import the blog posts and comments from Blogger. Go to Manage -> Import in WordPress and follow the instructions there.
  3. Set the authors properly.
  4. Download and install the WordPress plugin wp-maintain-blogger-permalinks-1.0.zip. (Do not forget to enable the plugin as well)
  5. Under Manage > Maintain Blogger Permalinks click the button that says Maintain Blogger Permalinks.
  6. You can disable (or even delete) the wp-maintain-blogger-permalinks plugin.
  7. Go to Options > Permalinks, select Custom, and enter the following: 
    /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

…and you are done 🙂 .
Hope this helps someone who wants to move to WordPress form blogger.