Sun Oct 25
At a party last night a friend of mine told me about a new spoof email he’d seen. I wasn’t aware of it (I don’t keep my ear very close to that particular ground) but here’s an example just forwarded to me:
> Subject: Attention - Important Notification
> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:14:44 -0600
> From: tech-admin <tech-admin@myjournal.com>
> To: info@myjournal.com
>
> Attention!
>
> On October 22, 2009 server upgrade will take place. Due to this the
> system may be offline for approximately half an hour.
> The changes will concern security, reliability and performance of mail
> service and the system as a whole.
> For compatibility of your browsers and mail clients with upgraded server
> software you should run SSl certificates update procedure.
> This procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is just to click the
> link provided, to save the patch file and then to run it from your
> computer location. That's all.
>
> http://updates.myjournal.com.secure.digi1adm.org/ssl/id=7335328053-info@myjournal.com-patch30892.exe
>
> Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and sorry for
> possible inconveniences.
>
> System Administrator
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
> signature database 4520 (20091018) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com
Scarily real, huh? The “http://updates.myjournal.com” subdomain makes it look very official. So, be careful out there.
Thu Oct 8
I just spent the best part of an hour bashing my head against a keyboard because Internet Explorer wasn’t doing my JavaScript right, but Firefox and Chrome were. Turns out it was a simple solution. I had code like this:
element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';
var clone = element.cloneNode(true);
targetElement.appendChild(clone);
But for some reason, despite the true parameter being passed to cloneNode() so it would clone children, no children would appear. Even stranger, this:
element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';
alert(element.innerHTML);
var clone = element.cloneNode(true);
targetElement.appendChild(clone);
Alerted the element.innerHTML without its children. Turns out this line:
element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';
Messes everything up, even in Internet Explorer 8. All I wanted to do was make the modified HTML source a little nicer, but it screwed up in the web developers nemesis.
Hopefully this helps someone else.
Tue Sep 22
There’s a meme on Twitter at the moment entitled Share your Stats where web guys are sharing statistics about the browsers viting websites. I’m not sure who started this meme, but I guess they are trying to get a feel for how prevalent Internet Explorer is, particularly version 6. You know most web developers don’t like Internet Explorer 6, right?
Anyway, I have a few sites I can share the statistics for. Here they are:
Share Your Stats meme results
| Website |
Browsers |
Operating systems |
|
Firefox |
Internet Explorer |
Safari |
Chrome |
Opera |
Windows |
Mac |
Linux |
| stillbreathing.co.uk |
51.47% |
29.11% |
9.55% |
5.04% |
1.79% |
75.88% |
16.87% |
6.55% |
| wibsite.com |
69.68% |
18.28% |
4.81% |
4.15% |
1.10% |
77.50% |
15.62% |
6.28% |
| myjournal.com |
34.58% |
51.40% |
8.41% |
2.80% |
n/a |
86.92% |
8.41% |
0.93% |
| performerjs.org |
65.73% |
11.32% |
8.45% |
9.77% |
2.88% |
73.52% |
16.72% |
9.11% |
| beatsbase.com |
45.40% |
33.97% |
12.06% |
5.71% |
2.86% |
80.95% |
17.14% |
1.27% |
| comp-unlimited.co.uk |
16.91% |
75.21% |
3.83% |
2.23% |
0.46% |
93.45% |
4.73% |
1.14% |
| Large business website |
7.52% |
81.22% |
9.01% |
1.63% |
0.35% |
90.28% |
8.71% |
0.26% |
That’s pretty much what I expected, with a very large proportion of visitors to the more commercial sites weighted towards Internet Explorer and Windows. For the other sites, particularly those with a heavy web development slant, the statistics show a wider spread of browsers. It’s good to see Chrome making inroads, but these kind of results must be somewhat disheartening for Opera.
Mon Sep 7
Update 9th September 2009: I’m too good to you, I really am. The screenshots are now out of date as I’ve just committed a new version (0.4) which contains even more reports, a cleaned up interface and a few bug fixes. Please download and try it out.
I finally got the page about Wibstats updated with some screenshots. If you’re looking for the best (in my opinion, anyway!) stats plugin for Wordpress MU – and it works with BuddyPress – head over here.
If you just can’t wait, here are some screenshots:
There you have it. A top-notch plugin for Wordpress MU and Buddypress that gives every blog in your system their own powerful statistics.
Sun Aug 23
A little while ago a guy called Jim contacted me to ask for a small addition to my Personal Welcomes for Wordpress MU plugin. It was a good suggestion and easy to do, so I did it. Then I realised I’d seen something on TV about this guy, so I asked him to write something about what they ar doing, and how they are using my plugin. Here’s what he put:
After being featured on PBS for taking our canine cancer survivor Jerry on
the road trip of a lifetime, viewers flocked to tripawds.com to find out
more. As blog and discussion forum traffic grew, we migrated the website to
WordPress MU so we can now offer free Tripawds Blogs for others to share
their own three legged dog stories.
We use Chris Taylor’s Personal Welcomes plugin to send each new member a
personalized message, welcoming them to the Tripawds Community, and
providing them with helpful links to make the most of their blog.
This handy plugin allows us to create different templates with specific
messages for those who signed up without creating a blog, or those who
created a blog but haven’t yet posted anything. The admin panel for Personal
Welcomes now provides convenient links to new blogs so we can easily edit
each welcome message we send with relative comments, thus creating a truly
personal welcome for each new user.
Many thanks to Chris for his helpful plugin, and quick attention to our blog
links feature request!
http://tripawds.com
It’s great to hear of someone using one of my plugins, especially for a site making a difference to people … or in this case, dogs! Good luck for the future Jim.
del.cio.us,
Digg,
Yahoo!,
Google
Welcome, one and all
