updates

Woopra To Close Beta Registrations

A post published by John P. over on the Woopra blog is stating that Woopra will be shutting down beta registrations once they reach 50,000 monitored websites. As of October 8th, Woopra was monitoring 45,000 websites. Once registration is closed, there is a possibility that the media will blow in response but John gives a series of explanations as to the reasoning behind the move.

  • A 50,000 site “beta” is certainly a big enough sample to work through bugs and take suggestions.
  • We have a number of projects underway that we need to turn our attentions to temporarily and this will allow us to focus on core improvements as opposed to continual expansion.
  • We continue to hear from the community that you’d like more personalized attention, and pausing the site additions will ensure against further dilution of our current limited resources.

Once the Woopra team gets their ducks in a row, they will replace their site approval system with a personal invitation system in which current Woopra users will be able to send invitations to friends and family. Woopra was unofficially announced back at WordCamp Dallas about six months ago and since then, the sky has been the limit for the amount of success and growth that Woopra has experienced. Keep it up John!

Safe And Sound

Hello! I’m blogging from within my room inside of my home! After what seemed like an eternity, I have finally arrived home safe and sound from my trip to Dallas. I’ll have to tell you why it was a hellacious return trip some other day but for now, I have so much to do in regards to WordCamp Dallas follow ups that my mind is racing. I have photos to upload to Flickr, videos to YouTube, articles to write based on the event and so much more. It doesn’t help that when I opened my email in box, I was greeted with 120 messages. Thank goodness they are mostly email notifications letting me know people are following me on twitter or from various blogs letting me know of follow up comments.

At any rate, please keep an eye on this blog as you are sure to see a flurry of posts within the next few weeks. WordCamp Dallas was awesome and I’m so glad I went.

Revver Updates WP Plugin

Revver WordPress Logo

Revver has updated their WordPress plugin today. The plugin mostly consists of more customization and greater support to users.

The plugin has always required that your host allow cURL access. Unfortunately for some users, certain hosting providers such as GoDaddy required additional configuration settings that would have required updating the plugin code. To remedy this, we added a field in the “Revver Configuration” tab where you can add a proxy server that does support cURL (sounds a little mumbo jumbo-y, but all you need to do is copy and paste a URL and you’re good).

Instructions for installing for the first time or upgrading an existing install can be found on the quickstart guide page.

Series Of Updates

No Shortage Of Birthdays

The Birthday Boy

I’d like to start off this post by saying thank you to each and every one of you who stopped by to wish me a happy 24th birthday. I truly do appreciate it. As you can see from the image above, there was no shortage of birthday wishes to go around. What’s funny though is that, I receive happy birthday emails all year around. I only configure the correct birth date on forums or websites that I take seriously or that I know I will be able to be apart of. So during the year, each website or forum that I signed up to for one reason or another generates a happy birthday message on some of the most unusual days of the year. How many of you guys are reminded by your inbox that it’s your birthday?

New PC Build

Speaking of birthdays, I happen to receive two gifts that will make there presence known in the new computer I will be building for myself. So far, here are my thoughts as to what I’ll be building:

On my birthday, my girlfriend purchased me a Creative X-FI Audigy Gamer card from BestBuy for about 100$. Then, I picked up a 700 Watt, RocketFish power supply via the giftcards I received. Now that those two items are out of the way, here is what I need.

Case – Thinking about getting the CM Stacker case. This thing is big, roomy, not meant for LAN parties and also has a bit of style. 2 Huge 120mm fans for cooling and plenty of bays for expansion.

Ram – I’ve made the choice to purchase DDR2 ram instead of DDR3. Apparently, DDR 3 gives you high clock speeds but with higher latency. DDR3 is also pretty expensive.

SATA Hard Drive – This one won’t be too hard to find. A low storage SATA drive on New Egg. Don’t care who makes it.

Video Card – Still undecided on this one. But it will be an Nvidia based GFX card and I will most likely not be going in the direction of SLI.

Motherboard and CPU – Not sure on this one either except that I’ll be going Intel instead of AMD. Going the AMD route would be like throwing money in the garbage.

If you have any suggestions as to which route I should take as far as single graphics card solutions, motherboards, Ram, and Intel CPUs, I’d be willing to hear them.

Ongoing Forum Discussions

Not to be forgotten, we do have a forum attached to this blog for discussions YOU want to begin. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a few of the discussions that are currently ongoing:

What happens…? – Mark Lima, a brand new user to Forum2pt0 has brought up the question, “What Happens When Jeffro2pt0 Goes 2.1?

Got Some New Toys – This thread is for my PC Building project. Again, suggestions wanted.

True Life MMO Messes up family – I posted a link to a YouTube video where you can hear a child being scolded at by his parents for being obsessed with his computer. It was funny to me, but you have to wonder how many families are actually struggling with this issue of their children being obsessed with MMORPGS.

My Apologies

I have to take this time to apologize for leaving the blog go post less for a number of days. Apparently I, like so many others, have succumb to the holiday season. I’ve been busy spending time with family members as well as reading books and generally, just doing things other than blogging. I plan to get back on track before the new year. I’m also hoping that I can prepare a new years gift that I really look forward to hearing your feedback on.

Also, I’ve written two posts so far on WeblogToolsCollection which have bother garnered a good amount of positive feedback. I do have a few more posts in mind for WeblogToolsCollection that I hope produces the same amount of feedback, but we’ll have to see.

Conclusion

I’m reading, writing, and coming up with ideas behind the scenes. With the beginning of 2008 around the corner, I am trying to develop a timeline or series of goals that I would like to accomplish in the blogging world for the new year. I started this blog back in May and I can’t believe that at the end of 2007, I have the opportunity to write for one of the biggest blogs pertaining to WordPress.

I wanted to take this time to thank YOU, the people who have subscribed to the blog, the people who visit this site on a daily basis, those who contribute, either by sending me a link via my contact form or by leaving a message in the shoutbox, all the way to those who post messages on the forum. I really appreciate the sense of community you guys and gals provide at this particular blog. I love being around like minded individuals who contribute to conversations. Differences of opinion are welcomed here as well.

I hope each and every one of you had a happy holiday season. I hope you’ll be here with me as we progress through the year of 2008. What will happen to Jeffro2pt0 during 2008? I don’t know, but it sure will be interesting to find out.

I Need Your Feedback

Jeffro2pt0 Dark Banner

Its that time again where I have to ask you, the readers, what is it you would like me to write about on this blog? So far, it looks like the majority of you enjoy posts that highlight new icon packs. Even the posts that deal with vector based graphics or logos appear to be a hit. I’ve also noticed that you folks seem to enjoy WordPress related material as well.

What would you like me to write about? Do you want more WordPress news? How about more WordPress plugin or theme reviews? Do you think I should not change anything and keep writing about the stuff I already cover? Should I continue to review web 2.0 sites and services, or should I review other things such as actual software? Do you enjoy the short articles, or the in depth longer ones? If I started a WordPress based podcast, would you tune in and listen? Do you enjoy the interviews I have posted and would like to continue to see me publish interviews?

These are just some of the questions that are on the top of my mind right now. I know this is a blog about stuff, but I’d really like to know what you 150 or so RSS subscribers and regular visitors would like to see more of on this blog. As the year comes to a close, I’d like to start off the new year with at least a little more of a focus on what I should be blogging about. Of course, I’ll still blog about personal experiences, the jokes, comics, and what have you, but I’m interested in what sort of content you’re interested in.

Your feedback is incredibly valuable to me.

WordPress Plugin Updates

Digging into my Plugin area today, I noticed a few plugins that required updating and figured I’d let you know about them in case you have update notification turned off.

First up is Google XML Sitemaps which is now up to version 3.0.2.1 The changes for this release are:

  • Fixed wrong XML Schema Location (Thanks to Emanuele Tessore)
  • Added Russian Language files by Sergey http://ryvkin.ru

Next up is WP AJAX Edit Comments WP Ajax Edit Comments is now up to version 1.1.2.1

  • Added Italian Language file. Thanks Piplos
  • Added Russian Language file. Thanks Sergey.

Simple Pie has also released update and is now up to version 2.1.2 SimplePie Plugin for WordPress

  • 2.1: Added support for feed post-processing, better error handling, and fixed issues with installing in the wrong location.

Live Comment Preview is now at version 1.8.2

  • The 1.8.1 release fixes a bug in 1.8 that affects those who have WordPress files setup in a different directory than their site url. If you have any problems with this release, please post a reply with a description of the problem and any error messages you are receiving.

Last but note least, QuickPost, the Tumblr like plugin for WordPress has been updated to version 0.6

  • 0.6 – Finished Safari Support; Added stripslashes for titles that have apostrophes; Minor Change to Blockquote formatting

AskApache And Google XML Updates

I finally got the chance to upgrade the AskApache Google 404 Ajax Search plugin along with the Google XML Sitemap plugin. I’m still trying to determine what is new in the Ajax plugin which I’m sure AskApache will probably stop by and let us know. As for the Google XML Sitemap plugin, here is a short list of changes that occurred.

  • Changed HTTP client for ping requests to Snoopy
  • Added “safemode” for SQL which doesn’t use unbuffered results
  • Added option to run the building process in background using wp-cron
  • Added links to test the ping if it failed

Make sure you head to AskApache Google 404 and Google XML Sitemaps to download the updated plugins and install them on your blog if you’re using them.

One special note for those who use the AskApache plugin. I noticed the directory that houses the plugin files had it’s name changed. When you upload this plugin, make sure to delete the old AskApache directory so they don’t conflict.

Jeffro2pt0 Forum Update

Jeffro2pt0 Forum Logo

I’ve spent the last 5-6 hours putting what I hope will be the finishing touches on the forum. Special thanks to Foomandoonian, Simply-Basic, Mike and SierraK for signing up to the forum and helping me iron out some issues that were discovered.

I’ve tidied up the design so it looks the same in both FireFox and IE 7. I’ve added an entirely new icon set to help distinguish between new posts, sticky posts, ect. I also modified some link colors as well as some background colors. As per Sierra’s suggestion, I have turned the forum header/logo image into a link which will take you to the blog homepage when clicked on.

About syndication. Unfortunately, PHPBB RC7 does not come with any syndication out of the box and will not be shipping with any in the final version. Instead, I will have to rely on a mod author to create a syndication mod once PHPBB has been finalized which should be any month now. Until then, I suggest making sure that the check box to be notified upon a reply to a thread or topic you have posted on is checked. This should send you an email anytime someone replies to a thread you have posted in.

We already have some conversations ongoing within the forum so don’t be shy. Register an account and get in on the action. Click here to view the forums.

On the topic of updates, I wanted to let you know that I have finally fixed the “text highlight” bug which was apparent in FireFox. It had something to do with using a white image as a background. When a user viewing this blog in FireFox would drag their cursor over some text to perform a copy and paste, the highlight would blend in with the background causing confusion as to whether the text you wanted selected was their or not. This issue has been fixed.

I also tried to replicate the Internet Explorer Stack Overflow errors as I wanted to fix those as well. However, no matter how many times I refreshed the site, I could not get those errors to appear. Mike, if they happen again, the first thing I would advise you to do is to install IE7. If that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll continue to investigate.

Now that most of the hard work concerning the forum has been taken cared of, expect to see some content added to the blog this week.

FeedSmith Plugin Security Update

Feedburner.com LogoThe FeedBurner Feedsmith plugin for WordPress which consolidates all of your WordPress RSS Feeds into one, has undergone a small security update. According to Feedburner, older versions of FeedSmith, can be vulnerable to what is called a “cross-site request forgery.” This permits someone to change WordPress plugin settings on your system without you noticing during the time you are signed into your WordPress control panel.

Feedburner recommends downloading the latest version of the plugin, FeedSmith V2.3 as this version ensures that the only person who can change FeedSmith settings is the administrative account that is signed into your WordPress account.

Here are the directions to update your plugin.

  1. Download version 2.3 of the plugin.
  2. Sign in to your WordPress admin control panel.
  3. Under Plugins, locate the current FeedSmith plugin, and click “Deactivate.”
  4. Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/
  5. Reactivate the plugin by logging in to your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the “FeedBurner FeedSmith” row.

At the end of this process, v2.3 will be active and will use your existing feed redirection settings; there is no need to re-enter them. You will also be protected against any potential request forgery attack.