Tech Pedia » Blogging

Blog Commenting is a Dying Art

Abhinav Kaiser — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:39:07 +0000

In the age of blogs, the feedback mechanism which goes hand in hand with blogging is on the brink. It is a sorry state of affair and reasons are far too many.

For starters, we have over a million blogs and users find a new blog for the unique information they may need. So, the question of loyalty withers, and so does the connection between the blogger and the reader. Even some of the top blogs, including social engines such as Digg is losing commentators fairly regularly. I am an avid reader of Digg and there used to be a time, say 4 years back when comments used to run into several hundreds, and today, the case has completely turned around.

Secondly, spamming has taken the sheen out of blog commenting. A lot of spammers, in order to get backlinks back to their site, comment on blog posts, placing links of their staked websites. This spam has brought in control measures, which avoids spammers, and at the same time some of genuine bloggers, who would like to share their websites through your website.

Google and other search engines recognize the tag no-follow, which basically tells the search engine spiders that these links need not be followed. Wordpress, the world’s most popular blogging engine has enabled no-follow tags for all its comments. So, for spammers, blogs that run on Wordpress don’t benefit much. And, as I said earlier, some genuine commentators who would like to have a reciprocate with a comment to a link onto their website are turned away as well.

To encourage comments on Tech Pedia, I have decided to do away with no-follow tags for all comments. With this, I would like to invite all blog commentators to read the available articles here and leave your feedback, and get a backlink to your website. That being said, there is a certain standard that we maintain here. The comment should compliment or supplement the blog post, and add value. If otherwise, I will not hesitate to dump it.

To remove the no-follow tag on Wordpress, I have leveraged on Dofollow plugin by Denis de Bernardy. It is a nice little plugin which does the job for you. I would recommend other bloggers to follow suit and revive the art of commenting.

Self Hosted Wordpress Blogs Under Attack

Abhinav Kaiser — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:54:30 +0000

Beware! If you are running a self hosted Wordpress blog that is not upgraded to version 2.8.4, chances are that your blog has already been hacked or will be hacked very soon. So, if you haven’t already, buck up and do the necessities.

Lorelle on Wordpress provides this information that the world of Wordpress prior to 2.8.4 will come crashing down if proper care is not taken. Here’s an excerpt:

WordPress NewsOtto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!!

How Do I Know If My Site Has Already Been Attacked?

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked.

There are strange additions to the pretty permalinks, such as example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”

The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize. You will probably be unable to access that account, but Journey Etc. has a possible solution.

WordPress.com blogs are not impacted as they are up-to-date. Only versions prior to WordPress 2.8.4 are impacted.

To Prevent Your WordPress Blog from Attack

To prevent this form of attack, update your WordPress site IMMEDIATELY to the latest version. Change ALL passwords to a strong password immediately, including WordPress blog access for all users, database, FTP, control panels, everything.

See the articles below for more helpful information on how to harden and protect your WordPress blog.

If Your WordPress Blog Has Been Attacked

If your site has already been attacked, it appears that the hack attacks the database, going deep. We’re looking for solutions, but the easiest appears to be to export all your content with the built-in XML WordPress export (pre 2.1 versions, try the WordPress-to-WordPress Import WordPress Plugin) and literally remove your WordPress installation totally (save images and general files). DO NOT EXPORT YOUR DATABASE! Install the latest version of WordPress and add the “clean” backup of your WordPress Theme, then import the XML export. The export will contain your posts, Pages, and comments, and hopefully no other hacked code.

“How To Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation” by Smackdown is a good article on how to reinstall WordPress after being hacked, but take care to keep your export limited to the post content and comments (and Pages), not the entire database as the hack goes into the database.

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Advantages of Open Source Content Management Systems like Wordpress

Om — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:22:46 +0000

More often than not, the latest open source CMS turn out to be your best bets, though some people can’t give up the age old orthodox feeling of superiority of custom built CMS. So let’s take a look at their advantages.

The Open Source CMS like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, RailFrog, CushyCMS and the likes of them provide the following added-advantages -

• RSS Feeds integration

• Number of plug-ins supported

• Ready-to-use

• Extendable

• Quick Assistance from Developer Community, due to presence of number of forums

• Quick Search

• Number of widgets supported

• Easily customizable

• Negligible Cost

• Extensive Documentation

You may further read about the Top 10 Open Source CMS Available in the market here.

More can find more details on web content management systems here

To find code snippets in Java, HTML, PHP, MySQL, PL/SQL and forms of Free Online Programming Tutorials Click Here

Howto : Add Ads After First Post on your Wordpress Homepage

Abhinav Kaiser — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:25:37 +0000

Google limits us to display 3 ad units and 1 link unit on any given page. In Wordpress, if we would like to add adsense on the homepage, we would be limited to header, sidebar and the footer. If we add ads at the end of an article, the loop repeats the ad at least 10 times. You don’t want that to happen, isn’t it? Ideally, it would be perfect to add an ad right after the first post which could pose an unprecedented challenge. Here is a small snippet which could do the trick for you without much sweat.

1. Open your FTP application and browse to the theme files. Locate either index.php or home.php depending on the theme and open them.
2. Find this code in the file : or one of its variants such as .
3. Just before the endwhile code, insert this code:

YOUR ADSENSE/AD GOES HERE

4. Save the file and upload.
5. That’s it!

Piece of cake isn’t it. If you have any further clarifications, let me know…

Migrating from Wordpress to Joomla

Abhinav Kaiser — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:40:46 +0000

The title of this post could be misleading. Tech Pedia is not moving to Joomla. However, I am pondering upon moving another blog of mine from Wordpress to Joomla. The main deterrent is the database tables and the syncing of structures. I checked the web and there is no easy one click script to get the job done.

After an exhausted search through several forums, I ran into one on the Joomla forum and the poster claimed to have successfully transferred posts but not comments. Here’s a brief of the operation:

I tried various way to import Wordpress through Joomblog, but kept getting the message “no installation of Wordpress could be found.” But once I installed JD-Wordpress, imported a backup of my Wordpress database, and categorized each post, Joomlblog imported correctly!

Here are the steps:

1. Backup everything in your Wordpress site (Manage -> Backup) and save it on your computer. (If you haven’t backed anything up before, you may need to activate the plugin in Wordpress.)
2. Install Joomblog in Joomla! (1 com, 1 bot, and 2 mods)
*** If you’ve been using JD-Wordpress in Joomla!, then skip to step 6. ***
3. Install JD-Wordpress in Joomla!
4. In phpMyAdmin, import the Wordpress backup (from step 1) into the database that Joomla! is using.
5. Under Components -> JD-Wordpress, go to Manage -> Categories, and make sure they’re in a category. If it says “Uncategorized” but is not linked to a category called Uncategorized, then it’s not categorized. If this is the case, Manage -> Categories and make sure you have categories created. Then, Edit each post, select a category, and Save. There’s probably a script that could be written for phpMyadmin, but I’m not that savvy.
6. Under Components -> Joomblog, select Import, and click on Import Wordpress. *
7. Once this is complete, look in Content By Section -> Wordpress_Joomblog and you should find your articles.
8. Now is the fun time of placing the imported content in the right Joomla category and editing each one to clean up any mess the switch left behind.

* Joomblog won’t duplicate your posts if you try this process more than once.

I plan on performing these activities on a blog of mine this weekend. I will post updates and hopefully, will try to find a way to import comments as well.

If you have a better approach, do share it with us.

Howto : Decrypt Wordpress Footer

Abhinav Kaiser — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:28:08 +0000

If you are a regular reader on this website, you probably know that my articles originate from absolute necessities. Recently I was looking around for a wordpress theme for one of my blogs and found one that I really liked. Unfortunately, it had an encrypted footer with ads embedded on it. I respect the template’s creator but not gonna put up ads on my website that don’t fetch revenue (to me ofcourse). The template was perfect to my liking except for the ad, so I decided to get rid of it.

I Googled and found some websites that offered help through a decrypt.php file which was capable of decrypting the footer. I tried decrypting my footer but the process failed. I lack patience to post messages on forum and wait for an answer. I need instant results so I tried using a footer.php file from a different unencrypted template. The result was not bad but not how it originally looked. I lived with it for a while before I thoughtfully screamed Eureka. I had found a simple way to do it and the decrypter was with me all along.

The decrypter is none other than your browser itself. Your browser decrypts the footer when it displays the webpage, so solution is readily available to use. I use Firefox and I would recommend you use the same as well. Reasons for doing so have been provided in my earlier articles and will provide some more later on when the time is ripe.

Here are the steps in bullets to decrypt an encrypted footer:
- Install the encrypted template on your blog and open your blog home page in Firefox
- Click on View and then Page Source; alternatively you can just hit Ctrl+U
- A new window opens up with a bunch of html code in it
- Scroll down to the end of the code page and your sidebar code is easily recognizable. You can easily identify some text that resides on your sidebar.
- Copy the code starting from when your sidebar ends until which is the latest line of your source code.
- Replace the contents in your footer.php file with the copied code and check the output
- If the copied version doesn’t resemble the original, go back to your footer.php and remove the top most line. Check if it brings your blog back to original shape. Follow this process until you find a favorable result by deleting the top most line.
- Result is guaranteed but it may take some time for you to tweak by trial and error method.

Reading through my article, it feels like there’s more history to it than the actual stuff. Sorry to bore you with my experience but it’s necessary to get the context before the actual meat.

If you face issues in decrypting the footer of your template, leave me a message along with the url.

*** UPDATE ***

Codex has a better and sophisticated process than mine. Here’s their method:

How to get rid of encoding in a theme’s footer?

Some theme authors embed links in an encoded footer making it difficult to understand what is happening in the footer. Note: this type of encoded content could be malicious as well as just a copyright banner! Here’s a method to decode (figure out) and correct the footer so there is no encoding.

In your index.php find the line that says . Above and below it add marker text like this:

Now visit your blog, view source (e.g. View->Page Source in Firefox), and copy the HTML between those two markers. Rename your footer.php and make a new copy of footer.php with that HTML code. Then change it to your hearts content. Remember to insert the before tag.

Tweeting Your Business on Twitter by Micro-Blogging

David Wetzel — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:11:34 +0000

Twitter allows you to use networks of people you know and even invite people you do not know to join your network. You can send messages in your networks and say pretty much anything you want to in 140 characters or less.

Twitter, like other micro-blogging services, is providing a free service companies to find a new way to improve their brand. Tweeting on twitter provides access to over 1700 groups or you can start your own group.

Even NASA is into viral marketing by using Twitter to spread their word about their missions and mission updates.

Barack Obama is using Twitter as part of his campaign for the presidency. He has over 50,000 followers on his twitter site. This allows the opportunity to connect with people in whole new way, also letting people know he is savvy to the latest technologies.

Businesses can use Twitter for advertising in such methods as:
- Keeping Brand Awareness
- Sending links to landing pages
- Announcing new products, through enticing snippets
- Viral Marketing
- Gorilla Marketing
- Micro-Blog Marketing
- Digital Marketing
- Sending links to Marketing Videos
- Vertical Marketing

The opportunities are endless for Tweeting on Twitter.

Twitter is a very popular service with millions of registered users and has become an excellent tool for connecting with millions of potential customers.

As the saying goes – it is never too late to Tweet your Twitter (well I morphed it to some degree).

Akismet Does Not Learn; Sadly

Abhinav Kaiser — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:30:30 +0000

Akismet is probably the leading Wordpress plugin for filtering spam comments. There is no doubt with the ability of the plugin to capture most of the spam comments that gets posted onto our blogs. But, there is a weakness that can go against all the goods done by the plugin; Akismet plugin does not learn. It is static.

When you mark a comment as “spam” in the plugin or submit it using the submit-spam API call, the mistake is noted by Akismet and it learns from your submission. – Akismet FAQs section

Akismet claims to learn from our submissions, but sadly enough, it’s not happening.

Well, I have been receiving tons of spam since I started blogging. But, there are certain spammy comments that pass through Akismet. One such cluster of comment is from sub domains originating from freehostia.com. I have marked them as spam for I-can’t-remember-how-long.

I(We) expect Akismet to automatically filter these comments based on my earlier actions, but it ain’t happening.

Like most of us, I use Gmail. If I mark a particular mail as spam either once or twice, the subsequent mails originating from that address automatically goes into my spam box. This is an ideal situation. If Gmail can do it, why can’t Akismet incorporate the same?

This is not a blasting-Akismet post. I would like to recommend the Gmail learning curve for Akismet to incorporate and make it a robust plugin.

WordPress for iPhone is here

Abhinav Kaiser — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:38:53 +0000

WordPress for iPhone is here. I just tested it and there appears to be some bugs still. When I setup my blog on the iPhone app, it auto inserted a couple of blank posts that did not have anything in them. Hopefully we’ll see an update soon ;-)

One bigger issue is that the iPhone still does not have copy/paste support.

Introducing the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds. Download it now!

Do Not Upgrade to WP 2.6 Unless You Have Tons of Time to Fix It

Abhinav Kaiser — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:42:08 +0000

An upgrade to the latest Wordpress 2.6 almost put Tech Pedia out of action. To my utmost shock, all the categories residing on my site went missing after the upgrade.

A message kept flashing on my WP dashboard asking me to upgrade for the past few days. The installer package was downloaded from the website and all instruction followed to the point. Upgrade went smoothly and as I started to work on the theme, I observed that the categories section was showing blank. Upon investigation, it was clear to me that all the category names have been deleted.

A search conducted on WP forum revealed that the missing categories problem is a known issue and yet, the buggy WP installer is made available for download; with no mention of such a problem. This action by WP is extremely callous and the damage done by them is irreparable.

David Cumps has been an angel to many like me who have suffered through WP’s callousness. He has devised a method of naming and placing the categories. The process is arduous but a lifeline.

It took me close to 2 hours to add all the 30 odd category names after matching the posts. Although I am tired and ready for some rest, I want to caution other bloggers not to fall into the trap just as I did.

Suggestions to Wordpress

1. WP should recall the latest upgrade and the last known stable version should be made available for download.

2. WP should thoroughly check new versions on new installations and upgrades before opening it for the public.

3. New versions are being released quite frequently. This takes a toll on bloggers to have it updated on a regular basis. My advice/request is to have fewer versions incorporating several upgrades in each release.

4. A plugin needs to be released to help bloggers like me add categories in a quicker way.