Michael Dolan Dot Com » WordPress

The FTC decides to regulate blogging (sponsored blogging)

md — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:54:38 +0000

Interesting news out of the FTC. They’re going to start regulating blogs as they would an advertisement – though it doesn’t seem 1:1 in terms of advertising claims regulations and blogs. I do think this is a good move (perhaps overdue). Some bloggers like those at Redmonk have been disclosing their possible (even remote) conflicts of interest with clients for a long time (as financial analysts would be required). IBM bloggers all have disclaimers on their websites. It looks like blogs are “growing up”.

How long will it take for WordPress users to create a “sponsored by” plugin ;-)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/05/technology/AP-US-TEC-Bloggers-FTC.html

The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. The guides are not binding law, but rather interpretations of law that hope to help advertisers comply with regulations. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could result in various sanctions including a lawsuit.

WordPress Spam on the Rise?

md — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:24:13 +0000

Are others seeing a sudden drastic rise in WordPress spam comments and users in recent days? Luckily Akismet is catching most of the comments, but SABRE is not so effective at reducing spam user registrations.

WordPress for iPhone is here

md — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:49:10 +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!

WordPress 2.6 is here and rumors of an iPhone interface coming?

md — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:42:10 +0000

I still need to update to v2.6, but it’s officially here. There are a host of cool new features including Gears-based acceleration.

I also noticed this link indicating an upcoming iPhone application for easier use of WordPress.

Good news on all WordPress fronts.

Spamalot?

md — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:41:18 +0000

What’s with the sudden surge in WordPress comment spam this week? If I didn’t have Akismet, I’d probably turn commenting/trackbacks/etc completely off.

WordPress 2.5.1 is out – note the new step to increase security

md — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:49:31 +0000

There are some important security updates in WordPress 2.5.1 so update when you can. I also noticed an added security measure they’ve included with a secret key for hashing cookies via the config file. (Check out the last paragraph)

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/

Secret lives of blogs

Since 2.5 your wp-config.php file allows a new constant called SECRET_KEY which basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.

Many thanks to Steven Murdoch for responsibly reporting the security issue (CVE-2008-1930) and Alex Concha for reporting an XSS issue.

Many comments, and a missing comments feed…

md — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:56:49 +0000

I recently noticed that my comments feed was not viewable on my blog. During a template update it appears I had commented out the comments feed. I “fixed the glitch” and you should notice a link on my menu sidebar now to access the feed for comments.

If you’re really lazy, or can’t see it, the feed is here.

Any comments ;-) ?

Notice regarding comments on my blog here

md — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:41:32 +0000

I just noticed that Jim Grisanzio had tried to post a comment to this post and his comment was queued into my spam comments by Akismet. I didn’t find out until a friend pointed me to a blog post where he mentioned the comment didn’t show up. After pouring through pages of spam caught by Akismet, I found Jim’s comment. For some reason the comment was not even put into the “Moderate” queue so I’m not sure what happened… Despite my disagreement with his view, I would not block or prevent his comment from showing. Please try to understand that I get well over 1,000 spam comments a day so I have to rely on Akismet to handle my spam monitoring. If Jim or anyone else posts a comment and for whatever reason it doesn’t show up, please send me an email and let me know something is awry. I apologize if any of you have had a comment lost at any time – a great part of my blog is spurring discussion on topics and obviously open comments are an important part of having beneficial discussion.

Automattic nets nearly $30M in financing

md — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:21:57 +0000

Wow! This is great news for Matt and the team behind WordPress. It’s always nice when one of your customers loves your product so much they invest in you! Matt Mullenwig covers his own news here.

Automattic, the commercial arm of the popular WordPress publishing platform for blogs, has received $29.5 million in financing from four companies, including a small portion from The New York Times Company.

Ted Ts’o moved his blog to WordPress

md — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:02:43 +0000

Another great win for WordPress as Ted Ts’o has migrated to the platform. He has a very interesting theme in use too – I have not seen that one before (I must be behind on themes).

http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2007/09/12/moving-to-wordpress/

Because I’ve been getting a little frustrated with the lack of trackback support, prohibition against Javascript, etc. I’ve decided to set up a WordPress installation on my private machine.

WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” is officially here

md — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:10:31 +0000

I haven’t updated just yet, but I will likely in the next 24 hrs.

http://wordpress.org/development/2007/09/wordpress-23/

WordPress.com captures amazing Year over Year growth

md — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:08:48 +0000

Congratulations to Matt and the rest of the WordPress.com folks – I just saw his post on their growth according to Nielson and was amazed. The growth is well deserved and I’d have to say I’ve noticed more and more people switching over to WP.

Webware just publish some Nielson numbers that show WordPress.com as the #4 blog site in July, after Blogger, TMZ, and Typepad. Number four isn’t that hot, but the year over year growth was 398% which is 7-10x more than those above us.

IBM’s Savio Rodrigues is Writing for InfoWorld

md — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:34:33 +0000

Not sure how this worked out, but I discovered today that Savio Rodriguez has taken his personal blog to the mass media via InfoWorld.

Sony PlayStation.Blog – guess what it runs on??

md — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:43:14 +0000

You may have guessed WordPress (and you’d be correct). Another impressive feat for the open source blogging platform. The extensibility, ease of customization and “pluggability” have created an ecosystem around the platform that is unmatched as far as I can see.

Sony seems to be in the “initial” stages as you’ll see the recent announcements section failed to escape out the html … oops. :)

Anyway, check it out: http://blog.us.playstation.com/

WordPress InstantUpdate 1.0alpha1 available for testing

md — Thu, 31 May 2007 01:33:06 +0000

So you’ve “bought into” WordPress and you love it, but it can be annoying to update your WordPress installation with deleting directories, turning off plugins, etc… well, enter the InstantUpgrade plugin – a plugin to update your WordPress. It’s in alpha1 so use it on non-production sites, but the developers are interested in your feedback. URL to get it is in the notice below:

—————————————–

Hi all,

some of you know the InstantUpgrade plugin and apprechiate its simple
and clean upgrading. Now there is a new version in development, which
doesn't need the blog owner to mess with file permissions -- it does the
file transfers via FTP.

However, this feature needs plenty of testing before we can release it
to the general public, so I'd ask you very kindly, please visit
http://zirona.com/blog/software/instantupgrade-10-alpha1-testers-needed
download a copy and test the plugin. And please spread the word about
this dev release.

If we get this thing stable, this could be a revolution in maintaining
WordPress installations.

Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards,
Alex

--
Alex Günsche, Zirona OpenSource-Consulting
http://www.zirona.com/ | Hilfe für das HQ AC: http://www.prohq.de
PubKey for this address: http://www.zirona.com/misc/ag.ml2007.asc

Upgraded to WordPress 2.2 “Getz”

md — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:50:38 +0000

Seems to have gone well (again). Let me know if you see any issues…

There are a slew of new features I have yet to try out.

NASA Ames Research Center using WordPress

md — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:07:14 +0000

Just noticed this news in the WP Dashboard (great comms vehicle btw):

http://center.arc.nasa.gov/

It’s running on WordPress – cool.

BTW, I upgraded to WordPress 2.1.3 … and noticed something…

md — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:40:24 +0000

I’ve never noticed that IE renders my theme/CSS in horrible ways. I did a rare thing and check with my website stats and only about 20-30% of the readers here are using Windows… I guess that tells me why no one complained. And even fewer users are using IE. So do I go through the headache of checking what hacks I need for IE for the 20% of you… or do I just say users must use a standards based browser or go away??? Hmmm….

Oh, btw, the WordPress 2.1.3 update went without a hitch.

I should also mention, when I did find out, I had to reboot into Windows. After 20 mins of downloading patches, I had to reboot… then it installed another round of patches… reboot… I think it’s been over 30 days since I’ve used Windows anywhere… I’m really not that excited to fix this issue.

WordPress Comment License Plug-In 1.0

md — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:25:32 +0000

http://alexking.org/blog/2007/03/26/comment-license-10

I had to smirk when I saw this… a plug-in for including your comments license below the comments form ;-)

If anything, it shows how rounded and mature WordPress has become!

Akismet approaching 1 BILLION spams blocked

md — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:27:05 +0000

Matt is wondering when Akismet will hit 1 billion block spam comments… seems it will be very soon. I’m sure this is yet another indicator of the success of WordPress which is probably driving much of the users plugging into Akismet.