I am testing a simplified plugin to validate spammers against the Stop Forum Spam database. It uses a different technique then the Stop Spammer Registrations plugin.

It checks against the spam db every time someone tries to login, register, comment, or ping. Rather than just refusing to leave the comment or register it crashes WordPress with a DIE command. This is a little more dramatic.

You can download the zip of the testing plugin at:

http://www.blogseye.com/stop-spammer-login.zip

I am still cleaning up some typos and adding a few features, but this is stable and I am using it here and at a few other of my sites.

CashMusic.org is an open source system that does many of the things that I’ve been trying to do. I wanted to create a generic system for musicians to sell their music on a simple website, but there is no need for me to get back to that project.

I wrote a plugin which will appear, I hope, on the WordPress.org plugin directory any minute now. I will set up the documentation here as soon as that is done.

The Plugin allows anyone with a WordPress installation to also install Cash Music and then include the elements in a WordPress page or post via a shortcode.

I added the Simple-Rich-Text-Widget this week. It allows users to edit content in the sidebar using a simple GUI rich text area. It is based on wishywig.js, a javascript library that I wrote for my own use many years ago. TinyMCE did not work correctly in widget space.

I updated Kindle-This-Widget because it looks like Amazon has changed the rules for converting documents and delivering them to the Kindle.

I update Open-In-New-Window plugin because I discovered a bug in the last update that needed to be corrected. I am concerned that nobody noticed it.

As far as I can tell, 1and1.com decided to disable some of the features of PHP so that WordPress no longer works.

I have noticed that the new version of my spam stopper has quit, leaving me with hundreds of spam messages.

I have a fix in mind, but the current plugin is in disarray and I don’t want to release it as it stands. I need time to work on it and I am very busy on paying projects.

I will try to make a workaround as soon as I can.

I received the YouTube monetize invite which means that I can put ads on my YouTube videos. I have about 30 and most of them qualify for ads. The vids don’t get much in the way of hits, but, hey, you never know.

The videos are short and they have ads overlaying the videos, which I don’t like. I am considering removing the ads because they obscure the images and are a pain in the ass in general. I will investigate if there are alternatives.

It appears that the DNS fix is broken. I can no longer see the site, even with the Google public DNS.

What I did:

I have XP so I right clicked My Network Places and clicked properties.

I then right clicked my Local Area Connection and clicked properties.

I then clicked Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then clicked properties.

I clicked the radio button to use the following DNS server address.

I typed in 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and clicked OK.

To refresh it I went back and right clicked my Local Area Connection and did a repair.

Worked like a charm.

I got a spike last night from people hitting this site. I was getting a huge amount of traffic from Google because a site name Cuevana started showing 403 errors. For some reason I came up on the searches. I even got questions as to how to bring Cuevana back.

Well, Cuevana is a pirate site for Videos from Argentina. It is like Hulu.com, except in Spanish and, as I understand it, it does not pay for the content it streams.

I don’t understand why Google listed me in Cuevana searches. I have discussed 403 errors, but I had never heard of Cuevana before.

I am wondering if Cuevana is hosted on 1and1.com and their 403 errors were related to mine.

I thought it was me, but when I came in this morning, all my sites on 1and1.com were timing out. Now they are back, with that quickness which means that the server might have been rebooted, or even swapped out with the next generation.

Anyway, we’re back.

I made a change to the htaccess file last night to block 30 or so bad IP addresses and I thought that I had blocked myself. Since it was just this site that was down last night, that was probably not the case. It might have been a bad nightly load that “healed”. I don’t even know if this is possible.

Inspecting the log, I have noticed that my “blogthis” script is generating 403 errors from various sites. Well, there is no warranty, expressed or implied in the script. I should make it available for download so that the technically challenged can install it on their own sites. I don’t need the traffic that the script generates.

This site started getting 403 forbidden messages for no good reason. I am not sure what is going on.

I am using the bleeding edge nightlies beta versions of  WordPress here, so I think they broke something last night at wordpress.org.

I wrote a short article on using the iPad as a writing tool on the cheap. I have since bought a compact keyboard for less than $10 for this and I have made a velcro strap to attach the iPad to the back of the seat in front of me so I can work. It is very nice when I feel like taking notes on the bus.

iPad for (cheap) Authors

I’ve decided that that no theme is better than a dark hard to read theme.

You are looking at a simple fluid design without any typography.

I am keeping the side bar, but the header is just the name of the blog.