I found out over the weekend that there were problems with the plugin when users put javascript: type links in the code. I think also that named anchors might have had a problem in IE6. I put lots of “if” clauses in and now the javascript only works for http: type links where the host name is not found in the link. I am worried that the javascript is now way too complicated and is subject to even more odd breaks.
I got a “broken” vote on the page and a bad vote in the ratings from someone who did not like this and probably tested with IE6. I used to have a setup where I could test with older versions of IE, but it broke when IE7 came out and I don’t use it anymore. I will do a search to see if there is some way to test with IE6.
I am discouraged by this and if I get any more negative feedback I will remove the plugin from the wordpress repository.
I originally wrote this for Steve in order to display a random book link for his blog. I made it generic so that it will display a random link every time a new Wordpress page is displayed. You can enter a list of ASIN numbers into the widget and it will pick one at random and display the Amazon buy link.
I just entered the plugin submission and I should be able to upload this to Wordpress early next week.
I guess I automatically installed WP 3.0 beta here. I don’t see much difference – yet.
I tried installing the new 2.9 release of Wordpress to one of my blogs hosted at 1and1.com and discovered that the MySQL database version was not compatible with the current release.
This was an old blog that I had created using the 1and1 MySQL available at that time.
The current version of my db is 4.0.27-max-log. To find the version, you log into MySQL Administration and execute the SQL: SELECT version( ) AS v
This will display the current working version of your MySQL DB.
I guess I have to create another database specifying MySQL 5 and then export the old db and import it into the new db.
When I have time I will do this complete with screen captures. In the meantime I rolled back to 2.8.6 version of WordPress, as I don’t have a theme that uses any of the new functionality.
I am 90% done with a widget that displays clickable search engine keywords in a sidebar widget. It is running now on http://www.cthreepo.com.
By the time that Wordpress comes through with the widget page, I will be done testing.
From the readme:
The Keywords Widget collects the query strings from Google, Bing and Yahoo. It lists the last 30 keywords as a sidebar widget so that users might click on them and find information using the WordPress built-in search. In this way a user might find more pages that satisfy his search and other users may be interested in the same things that previous searchers used as queries.
One interesting thing is that seach engines see the search terms, which leads to more people hitting the pages based on the search terms from previous surfers. If one of the terms is a popular search, it leads to more searches. Very quickly the top 30 keywords are sending you traffic for things that may have appeared on the list accidentally at first. There is a positive feedback loop.
It is quite possible that link to the Wordpress built-in search will result in a not found because the WordPress search is not very flexible. I recomend my Looser Search plugin to list posts with partial matches on searches.
I submitted this plugin to wordpress the other day, but it has not been approved.
It is a plugin to replace the built-in wordpress search to one that is more likely to have hits at the cost of displaying false hits.
False hits are a good thing in that they suggest new pages to surfers, even if they are not the ones they are looking for.
Perhaps I should have named it differently. Looser Search is too much like Loser Search.
I had some fun again with distracted programming. The original release had a problem that tprevented it from working right and then a user pointed out the formatting wasn’t right. I fixed both right away, but there is still a line of people outside my office demanding my attention on real work related items, so I hope that this will be the last of these Wordpress issues.
I write wordpress plugins to satisfy my own requirements and then, if they work, I clean them up and release them. Unfortunately, I try to squeeze this fun work in between work that is being done on deadline and the fun stuff suffers. I find that I put more bugs in during the cleanup than at any other time, because I am rushing the coding process to get it published.
I wrote a little widget that captures the search query when users arrive from Google, Bing or Yahoo. It puts it in a sidebar widget so that users can see the most recent search queries and click on them.
I am hoping that users might stick around and search the same things other users found important enough to search on. It has been running for a few days on my wandering blog.
I found a bad bug in the last release of permalinks finder so I fixed it and then rereleased. I had a bad version number so I quickly updated and then found there was a slight mistake in the reporting and rereleased, all within about 10 minutes. No one downloaded the mistakes so I was lucky.
It looks right now. This release of minor versions must not inspire confidence. I hope that I can be forgiven as I am trying to do this at work while juggling much more complicated projects. I am constantly distracted and I don’t get much chance to test. I have 7 blogs now and I test on the testing blog and then on a production blog. I found the errors on a production blog after it had passed on the test blog and I uploaded to all my blogs.
Other changes include using a link for the three urls in the report.
I submitted by “Open in New Window Plugin” to the wrodpress repository today.
The Open in New Window Plugin Plugin uses JavaScript to target external links to a new browser window, leaving your blog page open. Since it uses javascript, it targets more links than using a plugin that filter pages and rewrite the link.
Due to the limitations of javascript it will not be able target links in iframes such as Adsense and some other affiliate links.
I could have just placed the javascript into the footer directly, but this is a very convenient way to manage it.
