Comments Reopened On All Posts
I’ve reopened comments on all posts, regardless of post date.
Two years ago, I closed comments on posts older than 60 days because generally speaking, they only attract spam.
That’s still true, for the most part. But between WordPress Hashcash (an anti-spam plugin I can’t flog hard enough; seriously, get it) and Akismet, there’s no real additional work load; it’s not half the hassle of dealing with the script kiddies trying to log in to the admin section.
(BTW, I deal with hack attempts via Bluetrait Event Viewer, which lets me know about (among many other things) failed logins; and WordPress SEO by Yoast, which lets me easily edit my .htaccess file and put the banhammer down on offending IP addresses.)
My most popular posts are well over 60 days old, and the majority of questions I get are about those posts. Also, I have a number of very old (3+ years) that need cleaning up; so it would be helpful to enable comments on them, for people to tell me when things are broken / don’t look right on the screen. Thus, it makes sense to open comments back up on all posts.
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Making A Simple WordPress Shortcode Plugin
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve noticed my penchant for asides — brief digressions in which I explain a term, offer advice, or explain why I’m doing something a certain way.
Until yesterday, I was doing that via raw HTML, by adding a div tag and assigning it to the CSS class “aside,” which is defined in my theme’s style.css file:
<div class="aside">This content will appear as an aside.</div>
And that makes the text above look like this:
Well, I’m just as lazy as the next guy, and just as careless, too. So sometimes I was forgetting to close that div, or was misspelling it, or otherwise making a general mess by typing a simple div tag.
Which got me to thinking: Why not make a WordPress shortcode plugin, to abbreviate and simplify this repetitive task?
Making your own shortcode is an excellent way to learn the basics of writing WordPress plugins. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll find WordPress plugin authoring isn’t all that hard to do, yet will make you infinitely more marketable as a Web developer.
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What’s Happening This Week On dougv.com
An update on what’s coming to this blog the week of March 11-17, 2012:
Part 3 of using the authorize.net Server Integration Method with PHP. This post will cover the process of checking form inputs for range and proper values; storing the order’s details locally, for fulfillment; and submitting the order for payment.
Later, I’ll post on using Relay Response to finalize orders; as well as a simple system for seeing order details / cleaning up incomplete or abandoned orders.
Part 2 of displaying YouTube thumbnails on an ASP.NET Web Forms page. Specifically, I’ll describe the process of searching for a term via the YouTube Data API, getting the XML result returned by Google, and displaying that information on your page.
Also this week, I am going through old blog entries, cleaning up their appearance, checking code and fixing the taxonomies (categories / tags) in which they belong.
The old syntax highlighting plugin I was using has left some code blocks unreadable, and some of the older code I have written is either superseded by a later post or isn’t really the best way to go about doing things. I’ll be noting that where it’s the case.
That process is proving slow; I am though about 50 posts so far, with about another 200 to go. So bear with me, and thanks!
Subscribe To Seth Godin’s Blog. Do It Now.
If you aren’t reading Seth Godin’s blog, you ought to be. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur, independent contractor, in sales or a client-facing role, or are otherwise responsible for leadership or the bottom line.
Since that describes pretty much every developer, probably you should be checking out Seth’s Blog.
He posts once a day, usually in the morning. Which is actually a trick he recently blogged about: Rather than looking at Twitter or Facebook or whatever first thing, and thus following, make a point of doing something — anything — productive, first thing, so that you’re leading. Then you can check out your social media channels.
I’m trying to learn that habit; it’s difficult, but it does make a huge difference in terms of productivity.
Detractors and naysayers consider Godin’s posts tripe and self-promotion. Sure, some of it can come off as a bit pandering, important or simplistic. Don’t confuse the words for the message. And it’s always good to be reminded of the basics.
I subscribe to Godin’s RSS feed via Google Reader. He notes blog posts on Twitter at @ThisIsSethsBlog and on his Facebook page.
However you get Godin’s thoughts, get them. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.
All links in this post on delicious: http://delicious.com/dougvdotcom/subscribe-to-seth-godins-blog-do-it-now
Tumblr Mangles Developer Relations
Last week I logged on to Tumblr and was confronted with this abomination:
Missing e notice from tumblr. Way to encourage API development, guys.
Needless to say, this is pretty disturbing, and I wonder what Tumblr is thinking by posting this.
