Of course, Matt already has posted an article about 2.9, along with the new “code name” of 2.9: “Carmen” (Carmen McRae, jazz vocalist).

Only a day ago, I was reading a quite detailed article about the new features and improvements in WP 2.9 — this article I can recommend to you, too.

I liked two things more than others:

– You can already restore items from the “Trash” — items that you have deleted by accident or on purpose! Everything deleted will be kept in the Trash for 30 days (and you can change the time period for which the items will be saved there).

– Mass upgrade of plugins with one click only!

Of course, there are a lot of fixed bugs and some other improvements (full list).

Although I already feel enthusiastic about 2.9, I might wait for 2.9.1 to be released… sort of a Service Pack 1 for 2.9.x ;-)

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress [version number]" />

This included only the modification of the functions.php file in your theme. But then it occurred to me that there should be now even an easier way — via a plugin. And there is such a plugin, indeed!

Remove-Generator-Meta-Tag WordPress Plugin

It’s very simple (one line of code, actually) and easy to activate & use. Simply upload to your ‘wp-content/plugins/’ directory and activate it via the WP Admin interface.

There are probably other similar plugins, but this one is the simplest I could find!

Enjoy! :-)

This might be useful when your WP-based website is experiencing a hacker attack. Or when you want to know where from is coming the biggest spam comment flood that try to drown your MySQL database in spam.

After using this small code snippet for a while, I discovered a way to improve it a little bit.

The original script didn’t show timestamps of the events recorded. I added this functionality, while leaving the original code almost the same.

If you want to use this updated version, feel free to copy the code:

$posty_ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$the_file = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
$date_sub = date('Y-M-d @ H:i (O)');
if ( $posty_ip != "123.123.123.12" && $posty_ip != "123.123.123.23" ) {
  if ( !empty($_POST) ) {
    $fp = fopen( '/home/path/path-to-log.html', 'a' );
    foreach( $_POST as $key => $value ) {
	fwrite( $fp, $key.' = '.$value." <br />\n" );
	}
    fwrite( $fp, "ip = ".$posty_ip." <br />\n" );
    fwrite( $fp, "date = ".$date_sub." <br />\n" );
    fwrite( $fp, "file = ".$the_file." <br />\n" );
    fwrite( $fp, '================================================'." <br /><br />\n\n" );
    fclose( $fp );
  }
}

I also added HTML line breaks, as for me it was more useful to have an HTML log file.

The instructions where (and how) to place this code can be found in the original place. Still, it’s worth repeating: Be careful where you place the log file on your server!

I would also recommend to use a plugin, which encrypts passwords (you can download it from wordpress.org). This is not obligatory, but it is always wise to send passwords over http encrypted, and this plugin does exactly that (you don’t have to use https to be able to encrypt the passwords being sent).

Enjoy! :-)

Due to specific needs, I needed to remove from the HEAD part of one WordPress blog the following:


<meta name="generator" content="WordPress [version number]" />


The WP theme, in which I was making the changes, was the standard for WP Default Kubrick Theme. The WP version I was using was 2.6.2.

I was searching and searching inside the code of header.php — and did not find anything! Before, in every WP theme, in header.php, usually the following code was present:


<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /><!-- leave this for stats -->


Now, I wasn’t able to find it…

I tried also global search inside all of the files of this theme, and again, with total un-success. Finally, I tried the last possible option — Google Seach…

…And have found it! :-)

In short: if you want to hide from the HTML code "<meta name="generator" content="WordPress ..." />, as well as the exact WP version you are using, all you need to do is (in case that you don’t find the code inside header.php — for example, in WP up to version 2.3.3, the code was usually there):

1) Locate and open with a text code editor the file functions.php inside the theme directory — for example, if you are using the Default Theme, the functions.php will be in wp-content/themes/default/functions.php.
2) Add inside it the following code:
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
3) Save the file functions.php and upload it back to the server.

That’s it! Automagically, the code, which shows that you are using WordPress, as well as the exact version of it, will disappear from the HTML source! :-)

OK, I must take my words back and confirm that WordPress 2.3.3, the last stable release before the new WordPress 2.5 branch was released, is not safe anymore, and you can become a victim of the link injection hack (vulnerability).

What happened?

In one of the blogs, which I support (luckily, not my personal blog, which I have upgraded to 2.5/2.5.1 long ago), I have found ‘hidden’ links (code: <u style="display: none">[ bunch of spam links inserted here ]</u>) in one of the regular posts there.

I checked the whole blog after that, all of the archives, and the hidden links were found only in two blog posts — but this doesn’t mean that at a later point, the hacker won’t try to insert some 50 or even 500 more of these…

Now I am performing an upgrade to WP 2.5.1, the latest stable available for download.

After that, I’ll ask all of the authors in this blog to change their passwords, and after that, we’ll see…

Actually, I am sure that after that we’ll have to upgrade to 2.5.2, then to 2.6, etc., etc., but I guess, there’s nothing else to be done.

Last, but not least, I recommend to all WordPress users to upgrade carefully, and often. The danger of discovering one day, that your blog became a victim of some stupid spammer, trying to ‘sell’ his black hat SEO links, using your hacked WP, is quite real, and the only measure against this is: upgrade! :-)

//Sideline: I still do not like the new WP 2.5 admin interface (and not only I;-), and I just hope, that in 2.6 things will look better (and more usable) — or at least, the Write section will be improved…

First, about the good things in WP 2.5:

1. Editing tags is now built-in feature, which is great;
2. A better visual editor (Rich Text Editor) — I don’t use it, but they claim it’s better;
3. Fixed an old bug, which didn’t allow you to specify a directory for uploading files, which is one or more levels higher than the current WP directory (I just had to dig in deep, just to find that you have to fill correctly both fields in Settings → Misc ["Store uploads in this folder..." & "Full URL path to files (optional)..."], or this won’t work);
4. A better Image Uploader;
5. Possibility to automatically update plugins, with just one click (nice!).

There a lot of others, but these I noticed at first glance.

And now some rant from my part:

I have very mixed feelings about the new Admin Interface, developed by The Happy Cog. Some things in it I like, others — no. I think, it’s a step forward and a step backward, at the same time.

There are a lot of improvements, but some other things are not so well thought.

Why, for example, the sidebar in the “Write” section is almost empty, in spite of the fact that computer screens become more and more wide? Instead of that, most of the settings — post slug, category, comments/pings, and others, are moved under the main post text field? And the buttons ‘Save’ & ‘Publish’ are moved to the right (?).

The change requires un-needed scrolling up and down, if, for example, I want to edit the post’s category. Before it was much easier — the title and the text of the post were located top left, just below them were the ‘Save’ & ‘Publish’ buttons, and to the right I could re-arrange all of the most important for me boxes, containing the post slug, date, category, etc. — and I was able to open and close them (setting was remembered), and also change their places in the way which best worked for me — re-arranging was simple drag & drop.

Now, re-arranging is no longer possible. Improvements? Nah… Who decided, that it’s better to move everything under the text field, and to remove the possibility for re-arrangement, and also to free the sidebar… so there’s empty space in it?

Other remarks:

To click ‘Save’, and then check in another tab, how looks my post in ‘Preview’ mode, I could, while writing, hit TAB once or twice, then ENTER. This moved the focus from the text field to the ‘Save’ button or ‘Save & Continue Editing’ button — very useful!

Now, instead, I have to reach for the mouse, so I can click on ‘Save’, because instead of one pressing of TAB, I would need at least 7 or 8, to reach it. Accessibility improvements? Nah… For people, who like to use the keyboard more than the mouse, these “improvements” are not welcome at all…

The design of the Admin is also quite changed visually. I didn’t like the new light shades of blue, so I used the option “hidden” in Users → Your Profile → Admin Color Scheme → (use 'Classic').

I also noticed more embedded scripts, AJAX, and even Flash, which make the interface load a bit slower. When uploading a photo, using the option ‘Add media: Add an Image’, the window, which shows the upload progress, uses Flash. It could be done maybe more elegantly (The WP-DB-Plugin, for example, uses a simple DIV, colored using CSS), instead Flash, but these are just details…

So now, after the upgrade, I am looking for a good WordPress Admin Interface hacker, who could guide me in the right direction of how I could create a plugin, which will restore for me at least parts of the useful functionality, which was available for me in the Admin Panel of WordPress 2.3.3:

1) Categories, Tags, Comments & Pings (in ‘Write’ page) to go in the sidebar (I wonder, if it is possible?).
2) Save & Publish buttons to go back under the text field; or, at least, when I press TAB once, the focus from the text field to shift to the ‘Save’ button.

As for the re-arranging of the panels, which were moved from the sidebar to the bottom of page, I’ve heard rumours that one of the next WP versions will “re-invent the wheel” and this functionality will be back. I can wait a little:)

I understand that Autommatic (to some extent) are following the latest trends in Web design, when they worked with Happy Cog on the new WP interface, but this is not an argument to change something well working, although simpler, to something more complicated (and not so convenient).

And about the ‘Write’ page, the move from the sidebar of all of the panels (which causes un-needed scrolling up and down), and the inability to re-arrange them, was noticed and not liked by a lot of other WP users, too. I wonder, what was that special survey, to which Happy Cog are referring, when supporting their design decision…

Of course, there are a lot of enthusiasts, which like the new WP Admin interface and the new WP version, including Mike Davidson. I am one of those ‘moderate’ enthusiasts. I love WordPress, I use it for more than a year now, but truth is, that I don’t like everything in 2.5, so I will just search for a way to get used with the changes, or to write myself a small plugin, which will change some things to be more “WP 2.3 Style”, which for me means ”ease of use”:)

Btw, in Mike’s post, which I cited, at one point bursts a very interesting discussion on the topic “WordPress vs. Movable Type”, and “Static display of content vs. Dynamic display of content”. The comments of Mike, Paul and Matt become a few miles long (literally!). If you didn’t drop recently on a good flame war discussions, especially dedicated to the topic “Which blog platform is the best?”, that’s your chance! A must-read! :-)

PS I expressed some of my thought on the new WP 2.5 Admin GUI in the wp-forum, too:)

I’ll test it one of these days…

UPDATE: With WordPress 2.2.1: plugin works!:-) With WP 2.3 I still don’t know, I’ll know soon, after I upgrade my current WordPress version…

One of these things is how we can prevent Google (and other search engines) from indexing (searching) the WordPress RSS feeds.

The next few lines will be dedicated to this problem (and how we can solve it).

Where to start?

I remember that some time ago I was checking which pages of optimiced.com are indexed in Google.

I was puzzled by the fact that, beside the blog posts, I have found a lot of RSS feeds, which were also indexed.

Why you do not need Google to index/spider the RSS feeds?

First of all, the indexed (searched) content is duplicated – the last 10 posts or the last comments, available via RSS, can be read on the blog itself. Second point, RSS is meant to be used with an RSS reader, not to be read in the browser window (text and images won’t be formatted, for example). Last, but not least, who would like after a performed internet search to land on a un-formatted RSS page with comments, for example, instead of on the blog post itself, to which the comments are related? And this happened to me, and more than once…

(Example: you can use this link to subscribe to the RSS feed of my blog, or just to check the ten last blog posts from optimiced in RSS format.)

Can we prevent this from happening?

I searched the Internet for some time, until finally I dropped on the WordPress Support forum, where the solution was found, and the thread itself, titled “Prevent indexing of feed pages”, was marked as ‘resolved’.

Here’s the way to do it – you must use a robots.txt file.

What is robots.txt?

As the name itself suggests, robots.txt* is a text file in the standard text format (.TXT), intended to use by robots:-)

But not all robots, of course (for example, Roomba doesn’t count;-), but only by the search machines (spiders), like Google, Live Search (until recently MSN Search), Yahoo!, Alta Vista and all other search (ro)bots.

To that purpose, you must create a new blank file and save it as a simple text file with the name of robots and the extension .txt (the file must be placed in the main directory of the website/blog – for example, for optimiced this is http://www.optimiced.com/robots.txt).

After you have created the text file, you must copy & paste inside the following two lines:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: */feed/

The first line with the asterisk means that the rule on the next line will be applied to all search engines; and the second one, Disallow: */feed/, means, that all URLs, ending with /feed/, should not be indexed (searched).

Because in my case I use WordPress permalinks (permanent links) of the type Date & Name based:
http://www.optimiced.com/bg/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
…the RSS feeds for my blog are as follow:

http://www.optimiced.com/en/feed/

http://www.optimiced.com/en/2007/09/16/title-of-post/feed/

(the last one is an RSS feed example for comments for a specific blog post).

If your blog uses a different structure for the URLs – for example, the ‘short’ version (http://www.optimiced.com/en/?p=1234), the RSS feeds for the blog will be in this URL format:

http://www.optimiced.com/en/?feed=rss2

http://www.optimiced.com/en/?feed=rss2&p=1234.

In this case, I guess, you should change the rule in the robots.txt file to:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: *?feed*

(Note: This scenario was not tested by me!)

After you make the required changes and place the robots.txt file on the server, you’ll have to wait a couple of days to see the intended effect.

That’s it:)

The described method is very simple and works well. Because I use Google Webmaster Tools, I can check the list of all indexed URLs for optimiced.com. Soon after I’ve added the two lines of code to the robots.txt, in the list “URLs restricted by robots.txt” appeared all of my RSS feeds, exactly as expected:) I guess, the other search engines obey to the same rules, so you should be quite safe using robots.txt to ‘filter’ the RSS feeds from search.

Other uses of robots.txt

Of course, the use of robots.txt is not limited to the restriction of indexing RSS feeds — you can restrict, for example, the search within a certain category in your blog, and in this case this category (or categories) will become ‘invisible’ for the search engines. You can restrict other sections of your website (it not necessarily has to be a blog), just by listing them in the robots.txt file, and adding more rules to the file.

Robots.txt finds a lot more uses in practice, but in this case I wanted just to write on the subject how to make your WordPress blog a bit closer to perfection:)

Final remarks

While making my small research on the subject, I thought about another way for achieving the same effect – you can place the attribute rel="nofollow" in the RSS feeds links. But this would require to edit the code of your WordPress theme, and in more than one place.

So definitely, the robots.txt way is much easier:)

____________
Notes:
(*) More on the robots.txt subject you can learn from the official Robots.txt FAQ and from Wikipedia.
(**) More on the use of the asterisk (*, or wildcard) for robots.txt, Googlebot and other search engines, you can learn from Google itself;-)

That Mike Davidson has recently switched from MT to WP.

I see more and more bloggers switching over to WordPress.

A few years ago Movable Type didn’t have rivals. Now things are changing.

Movable Type was free. Then it became paid, unless you wanted to use a free (partially limited in its use) copy.

Then WordPress appeared on the horizon, it was open source, it was free and it became one of the fastest developing blog platforms on the market.

Now and then, I see people switching over from Movable Type, from Blogger/Blogspot and from other blog engines to WordPress.

Now Movable Type released a brand new free version (4.0), open source, too… will this be enough to keep it on par with growing WordPress?

To be frank, I doubt it…

It’s interesting to see how things change so fast on the Internet. And for now, I am a (still) happy user of WordPress… actually, I use it since the creation of my blog optimiced in January this year:-)

Finally (but don’t take this seriously, please, this is just a joke, and an excuse for me to master a bit more Adobe Fireworks;-), here’s a graphical representation of what happens to Movable Type currently:

All plugins are OK – the few I use include LightBox 0.6.4beta, Google Sitemap 3.0b6, WP-Shortstat 1.12a.

WordPress powers optimiced.com from January 1st, 2007. I like a lot WP from the moment I started to use it.

The first version I’ve installed was 2.0.5, and then WP 2.0.6 was out, then 2.0.7, 2.0.9, 2.1 “Ella”, 2.1.1… and only then I decided that it’s time to upgrade. I did.

But on the next day, after I have successfully made backup of the database and of the files and upgraded to 2.1.1, a serious possible security problem was discovered in 2.1.1 and news was spread we should upgrade as soon as possible to 2.1.2.

Well, I got lazy.

I used 2.1.1 for a few weeks and only tonight have decided that the right moment has come, and after a new series of backups and strict adherence to the instructions, I am already with 2.1.2 up and running :-) Same applies to the Bulgarian version, of course.

After my brilliant upgrades I celebrated with a cup of healthy tea and one beer from the fridge:)

After that I read some blogs (designers’ & developers’ blogs mostly)…

…and now I am sleepy as hell, so good night! More to come soon;-)