Yabfog

This is a follow-up to a previous post about trackback spam.

I've noticed in my server logs that many spammers are still trying furiously to leave trackback spam at the default address. Since that address doesn't exist, they simply get 404 errors and try again. I already was using a custom error page, and now I've implemented a method to ban any IP address that repeatedly calls any script in the htsrv directory that generates a server error (e.g., 404 Not Found).

Here's the script: checkban. I call the function checkBan from my error document. I also intend to call it from other scripts (see BlockUntrustedVisitors) .

You'll also need to add something like the following to your .htaccess file to use this custom error page:

ErrorDocument 400 /blog/error.php?400
ErrorDocument 401 /blog/error.php?401
ErrorDocument 403 /blog/error.php?403
ErrorDocument 404 /blog/error.php?404
ErrorDocument 500 /blog/error.php?500

My forum post: here.

Walter Cruz told me about MySQLicious, which mirrors your del.icio.us bookmarks in a MySQL database. I think it works much better than my previous del.icio.us sidebar solution, which used Magpie to snarf the del.icio.us RSS feed and built the sidebar item from the RSS feed.

Here's the setup as I'm using it:

1. Setup MySQLicious according to its instructions, but ensure that you use the same database that you use for your b2e installation.
2. Copy _mysqlicious.php to your preferred location (I put it in the same directory as my theme files).
3. Modify your _main.php file to call _mysqlicious.php as a sidebar item. Two variables ($deliciousUsername and $MySQLicious_Table) must be set. In addition, you may set a third variable, $MySQLicious_items, which determines how many bookmarks will be displayed.

Note: Ensure that your MySQLicious setup complies with the del.icio.us rules of usage so you don't get banned.

Here's the b2evolution forum thread.

Similar to the change I made to the blosxom categorylist plugin, I modified b2evolution's category list module to only list a category if there are posts in that category. I also inserted a space between the checkbox and the category item.

This change goes in the file: {YOUR_BLOG_ROOT_DIRECTORY}/skins/_categories.php

Here's a running tally of the diffs.

And here's my post on the b2evolution forums about this.

Here's a writeup of my fix for another bug in e107. Basically, the rich textarea editor (which uses TinyMCE) did not work in the forums.

e107 bugtracker

Formally submitted my three-part fix for the error page distribution with e107.

If you (1) setup the e107 error.php file as your ErrorDocument and (2) try to fetch a page NOT in your e107 installation root that causes an error, the display of the resulting error page is mangled because the server doesn't know where to get all the bits of your theme.

Here's the fix - in three parts.
Read more »

Fixed the TrackBack ping function in e107. The plugin doesn't create all the database fields, so manually add the field 'trackback_blogname' as the last field (I made it type VARCHAR(150)) in the 'e107_trackback' table of your database.
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del.icio.us seems like the greatest thing right now. It's a social bookmark manager.

I'm using the following code right now to include a random set of my del.icio.us bookmarks on this page. Discussion here.
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