Bye Bye Trackback

UPDATE: Disabling trackbacks didn’t work for old posts. I just got another 20 or so spambacks since writing this post. Urgh

Well, Akismet has not learnt about the hundreds of near identical trackback spam posts I have had over the past could of days. So I am disabling them all. And yes, I did report every single one of them as spam.

spam.jpg

I’m hoping the options setting in my admin pages sets them to OFF for all previous posts made, and not just for new posts.

I reeeeeally REALLY hate spammers. It really depresses my for some reason. Something to do with the sheer f*cking futility of it all. The complete waste of energy. The annoyance. It server NO purpose, expect for the rest of the idiots out there who actually click on there things (or bots, doing the same)

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

[Just to let you know, I’m swearing very loudly and aggressively in my head]

It has been doing a job job at catching most spam until recently. According to others I read, the same is happening there too. Something’s up, Watson!

Akismet Spam – WAKE UP!!!!

Now, those of us who use the excellent WordPress are lucky to have ‘Akismet’ protecting us from spam through comments and trackback. It usually does a great job.

I don’t know quite how it works and learns how to tell spam from a legitimate post, but recently it’s really been letting me down.

Over the past few weeks I am being hit every day with a trackback from many different (possibly zombie) IP addresses to some Italian site saying:

“I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog )

EVERY time, it has the same text. Surely Akismet should spot that fairly easily. Every day I go through and mark them all as spam to remove them from this blog.

So, please please please, whoever is behind Akismet, could you please tell it to stop this bloody annoying trackback. I’ve had ENOUGH of it!!!

New Embed Options

I see that WordPress.com blogs now have more ‘code’ options to go with the ability to embed YouTube and Google videos. They have added SplashCast and DailyMotion. (I’ve only heard of one of those, and then only recently)

I’m eager to find out what the process is for getting on that list, as I have some podcast widgets on the horizon 😉

Was it financial?

Where my blip.tv option? 🙂

A Question Of Tagging

OK. So I have recently built a new tagging system for podcast.com (which is inches away from a big overhaul) and a few other sites I build, and I wanted to ask you a question:

Which would be the preferable ‘delimeter’ to post multiple tags?

Spaces (with quotes to enclose multiple words)? Eg: cat furry “my pet” “eats mice” – As seen in flickr

or

Commas : Eg: cat, furry, my pet, eats mice  – As seen in WordPress?

I personally think commas is easier, but how about you?

Embedding Flash in WordPress.com Blogs?

Hi. Is there anyone out there who knows if it’s possible at all to embed a flash movie in a WordPress.com blog post? I see that not so long ago they added a ‘way’ to post YouTube flash to a post, but that would have had to been done like a ‘deal’ due to demand, and the plugin arrived. Is there no simple Flash plugin for WP.com users? Or am I missing something? Credits?

[WHOA! As I wrote this, my whole template seems to have borked. Hmmm others too. I wonder if the recent WP version is being rolled in? I didn’t touch nuffin – honest! HMMM: Seems back OK now. What could have caused that? Snap.com’s Javascript?]

I really need a way to post my flash mp3 player and movie player, as I am working on a solution to crosspost audio and video posts to my system via XML-RPC. It seems however, that WordPress does not like to accept the OBJECT/EMBED code required.

I could have done a JavaScript file back on my server to write it – given a ‘slugtype’ url in the post, but alas, no JS either (though possibly for good reason) – but why no Flash?

If any one has any ideas, please let me know – as I’m trying to add value to WordPress blogging from mobiles, as opposed to being forced to use another blog platform vendor – ie: Typepad/Vox

Do I need millions of users before I can make this happen? ;p

I do hope not.

WordPress updates WYSIWYG

I noticed before the weekend that WordPress seemed to hav updated
the WYSIWYG textarea to 'do' the popups in the same window in a 'div',
rather than popup a new window. Nice.

The trouble is, things like linebreaks seem to be going screwy here. Even though I delete them and
don't see them in the source viewer, they still stay there!! Argh!!!
Away, damn tags!!

I'm building a blogging /podcasting system over here for our blogs and podcasts over on podcast.com (yes yes,
coming soon!) and was looking around at WYSIWYG editors. I noticed that
Wordpress uses TinyMCE from MoxiCode, which is the best I have seen so far. Very nice. Also I have been
looking at Flash versions, as I do alot of the rest of the posting procedure using Flash ie: uploading (though I did find a very
interesting Pecl module for progress bars etc) I've started using one
called FlashTextEditor which is nice and also supports image insertion, as well as the usual
styling stuff. but it's still not as nice as TinyMCE.

I think we might get in touch with MoxiCode to see if we can use it
on
podcast.com. Scanning the licence, we should be able to do so. And also
that will fall nicely in line with some of the other stuff which I have
built for the system which I woul like to get out in the open (source) if we make some mods and sods.