While I was catching some much needed rest after WordCamp MSP, Joost de Valk did something cleaver. He setup a BlogPress SEO plugin on WordPress.org. The initial release consists of just a readme.txt and a php file with only the plugin comment header, no actual code. Since he set this release as 2.0, all users of the malicious 1.1 and 1.2 versions will receive “Plugin update is available” notices.
Tag Archives: Plugins
BlogPress SEO is Malware
As with most scamming attempts, it all started with an email—which I ignored when I received it on Wednesday. It made claims of terrific SEO improvements using backlinks—yeah right. I do not use SEO enhancement plugins (other than Google XML sitemaps), and never plan on doing so. Anyways, the sender’s name as Saurabh, and his message was as follows:
Continue readingHello, My name is Saurabh, and I am here to offer you a unique wordpress plugin which will get you 100’s of backlinks like crazy. The plugin is 100% free and I can also offer installation help. http://BlogPressSEO.com Why backlinks are important for getting traffic. http://BlogPressSEO.com/#1 This is how the plugin works http://BlogPressSEO.com/#2 Thanks
EOL Announcement
As of July 1st, 2010, Mtekk’s Testimonials and Iframe-B-Gone will reach EOL. The last time either of these plugins were updated was back in 2008. Since that time, much has changed and equivalent plugins have been released by other authors.
In the case of Iframe-B-Gone, the WordPress Exploit Scanner by Donncha O Caoimh is a all around better solution. It has more features, and does just about everything Iframe-B-Gone does, minus attempting to autofix issues—a stupidly dangerous thing to do, by the way.
As for Mtekk’s Testimonials, it needs a substantial overhaul with the advent of custom posts. There is also the problem that it uses mootools while just about everything else in WordPress uses jQuery. At the moment I am not interested in rewriting this plugin. In the future, if the need arises, this plugin may get rewritten, but I doubt it will be this year.
Both of these plugins will remain available into the foreseeable future. However, I will no longer support them after July 1st, 2010. All of the plugins about to be EOLed have been moved to the “Historical” subpage of “Code”, and will have their comments closed on their EOL date.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
A New Year
With the changing of years, months, and the forthcoming changing of seasons a change in design and accompanying style is immanent. Originally, these changes were to take affect last summer. Yet, somehow they were delayed, as have other projects. This comes from a desire to separate more professional content and personal content (well, it would allow the posting of more personal content as of late little has been posted). While being the self proclaimed “Enemy of the Spammers”, one has not made proper use of this tagline. So there are two options, earn the title, or relinquish it. One’s choice will be apparent in the coming weeks.
Now to talk about a neglected project. WP Trainer, still hasn’t seen the light of day, even though its code base size is equivalent to that of Breadcrumb NavXT. Lack of direction is really the reason for the delay. There is almost too much to do with it, after a concise scope is defined work will resume. The other hold up is that some portions rely on things that are possible in WordPress but are quite hackish to implement (many of these problems went away in WP 2.8, and more went away in 2.9). Currently, WP 3.0 is the target platform. Finally, some work being done at the moment on Breadcrumb NavXT will benefit this project.
Breadcrumb NavXT will probably have 3 feature adding releases in 2010 (3.5, 3.6, and 3.7). The current version in development, 3.5, will add support for custom post types and will contain many “under the hood” improvements which will be detailed at a later date. The release time frame for this around mid to late Q1. Version 3.6 will add extended support for WPMU/WP 3.0, essentially covering the one thing that makes WPMU a different animal. This release will correspond to the WP 3.0 release (probably in late H1).
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Vista-Like Breadcrumbs for WordPress
Update: This was modified on February 10, 2015 to reflect changes in suggested calling code for Breadcrumb NavXT. Note that the Breadcrumb NavXT Multidimension Extensions plugin handles the PHP side of things covered in the guide below.
Update: This was modified on January 11, 2011 to reflect changes in the code base of Breadcrumb NavXT. Note that this should now work for all newer versions of Breadcrumb NavXT (3.6.0 up to 4.0). It will not work for the proposed Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0.
Previously, one revealed how to apply Janko’s Apple.com-like breadcrumb trail tutorial to WordPress using Breadcrumb NavXT. After several requests for a breadcrumb trail a la the one found in Explorer since Windows Vista, this guide was created. While this guide will not provide a method to exactly recreate the Vista breadcrumbs, it will be in the same spirit. The Apple.com breadcrumb trail style will be extended; a simple replacement of images and minor CSS tweaking will result something behaving very similar to the vista breadcrumb trail.