June 27th, 2008

Iframe-B-Gone 1.1

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Announcing the immediate availability of Iframe-B-Gone 1.1.0. This new version’s interface matches better with WordPress 2.5’s new dashboard. A dashboard widget performs quick scans of the default terms (yes terms, delimited by commas) and counts how many infections have been cleaned. Note that even with multiple search terms possible, only automatic removal of iframe tags is fully supported. That said, the WordPress Exploit Scanner may be a more valuable tool even though it does not automatically protect against iframe injections.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

June 14th, 2008

Breadcrumb NavXT Next

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Maintenance release 3 for the 2.1 series is almost ready, some final fixes and checks are being made. Tom, once again had some significant input on this version. The administrative interface was tweaked a little, plus some fixes were made to the core class. There is a new look for the administrative interface, but its introduction may wait until 2.2 (the code for it will be there, just one line will be commented out to prevent it from running, adventurous users can uncomment that line if they wish). Speaking of which, 2.2 is going to have significant changes, some of which have already been set in motion.

The “API” for Breadcrumb NavXT is changing in 2.2, the existing functions for backward compatibility will not exist in 2.2. Additionally, in 2.2 some redundant options will be removed. This is for better integration into WordPress. Internally, many things will be changing for 2.2 as more of an object oriented approach in implemented. Realistically speaking, this is just a natural evolution of the breadcrumb class, which was set in motion back in 2.0.

In August of this year PHP4 will reach its end of life. Even though WordPress may continue to support PHP4, we will not. Most webhosts have PHP5 available for their customers, if PHP5 is not enabled on your site yet ask your webhost how to enable it. After August 8, 2008 the official solution to any problem experience in a PHP4 environment is to switch to PHP5 and retest. This may sound arrogant, but it is time for PHP4 to go the way of PHP3 and the dodo.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

June 10th, 2008

(A Better) WordPress Shopping Cart

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

The folks over at Instinct Entertainment released WP e-Commerce 3.6.6 today and received not so great feedback from users. Looks like 3.6.6 is a bit buggy. Sadly, this does not surprise me one bit. Take a look at the code, and try to grasp what is going on.

A year ago I muddled around, and hacked an older version of it (was the newest version at the time) apart for a client of mine. At the time the code was a nightmare to navigate. This spring when they wanted to add more features, some of which were in the newer 3.6 branch, I did some research on the changes between versions. Sadly, things have not gotten better (code organization wise).

Right now, WP e-Commerce is not open source. It however, is the only solution for users that want to use Authorize.net. The client that I made the modifications to WP e-Commerce for at one point proposed just making our own plug-in. Since I personally do not have an interest in establishing a e-commerce site, I will not spontaneously produce a e-commerce plug-in.

Should such a competing plug-in be released by me a few things can be guaranteed about it.

Fully commented source, just about every line will have an explanation, functions commented properly, with explanations of their prototypes.
Full (and proper) i18n (internationalization) support in accordance with the WordPress i18n guidelines.
Utilizes the WordPress API when appropriate.
Clean, fast code that is object oriented when appropriate.
Highly modular, easy to remove unwanted/unneeded features. Items included in the HTML head are reduced to only what is needed.
Predictable release time line similar to that of Breadcrumb NavXT and WordPress. Monthly bug fix releases, new features released the same month as a WordPress “major release” (e.g. 2.2, 2.3, 2.5 were major releases), or every three to four months (I try to keep bug fix releases fixed to three or four max).
100% Open Source licensed under the GNU GPL2.

Numbers 1,2,3,6 and 7 would be there from the get-go. The fifth one would be introduced in time, and the fourth would be an ongoing thing. Development would begin as .1 and not follow any particular time line for releases until 1.0 is reached. By 1.0 it would be stable, though by .8 or so it’d be a suitable replacement to WP e-Commerce.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

May 31st, 2008

Mtekk’s Testimonials 1.0.0

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

After over a year sitting idle, Mtekk’s Testimonials is now available for public consumption. This initial public release brings a ton of fixes to the old testimonials plug-in originally written for the Weblogs.us front page (more on that later). Mtekk’s Testimonials is a modern WordPress plug-in, which requires WordPress 2.5 to function. Naturally, it has full i18n support (POT file coming soon). It sports Short Code tags for displaying testimonials on any WordPress post or page. When located on a front page, AJAX support is available (this limitation is changing in 1.1), which automatically changes to the next testimonial in 10 seconds (can be disabled by modifying the testimonials.js file).

User submission of testimonials is possible, and can be disabled. These submissions are never automatically approved for showing up in the testimonial stream. Along with this, the domain and TLD can be restricted for user testimonial submissions as a anti-spam measure (to be honest right now it is compulsory, this is changing in 1.1).

You can see it in action at beta.weblogs.us and download it from it’s project page.

Next up on the update block is Iframe-B-Gone. Iframe-B-Gone is getting a full overhaul for it’s 1.1 release, the ETA for right now is by mid June. Then Breadcrumb NavXT’s June bugfix release, this will include some i18n related fixes as well as better handling of some “unique” category structures. WP Trainer is on hold until MooTools 1.2 is released.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

May 27th, 2008

SEO Misconceptions

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress

Search Engine Optimization, a rather popular, yet misunderstood topic. SEO promises increased page views by appearing as close to the top of a search results page as possible. Naturally, this requires optimizing towards specific keywords related to the content of the site being optimized. There are many common sense things that can be done to increase pagerank, but there is a ton of bad advice going around. After reading several articles on SEO which offered poor advice one can advise against some poor choices.

Multiple (identical) links to the same content are not bad. People tend to confuse, multiple pages containing the same content, and multiple links (on separate pages) to a single page that contains content. Cross linking is beneficial, not only for SEO but also usability. In WordPress (since 2.3), there are three methods of organizing posts, archive by date, category or tag. In most cases using only one of these for organizing data is not wise. Tags and categories and work together, as visible on this blog.

Contrary to popular belief, WordPress only generates one permalink to a particular post. Sure all the different ways to get to a post still work if manually entered. The links WordPress generates, however, result in only one location for a page, independent of taxonomy (it is all in the permalink structure). Need proof? Look at the link to this post. Visit the archives of the tags this post belongs to. Then visit the archives for the category this post is in. Lastly visit the by date archives for the day, month, or year this post was published. Notice how all the links are the same? This is by design, WordPress does this naturally, and it does not adversely affect pagerank.

Do not use nofollows. Simply put, the nofollow attribute produces a contradiction of intent. What is the point of creating an hyperlink if the user (be it human or robot) is not supposed to follow it? Sure, they do have a use for linking to outgoing content in things like user comment. However, in sections where the content is fully controlled (e.g., blog posts) why instruct the user not to follow the provided links. Under no circumstances should an internal link contain the nofollow attribute. If internal content is not trustable, then there are greater problems to worry about than pagerank.

Never substitute usability with SEO. A user may find a your site faster, but if they can not navigate the site they will not stay long. Someone suggested that a usability enhancer (breadcrumbs) should only be used on pages (not categories) as a SEO tip. Sadly, this is completely wrong and is detrimental to usability. Breadcrumbs should be placed in the same location on every page of a site if implemented. The single exception is for the front page, but thats an entirely different story.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]