Alert: WP-Spamfree plugin breaks WordPress 3.1

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 March 2011 10:20 Written by Theresa Thursday, 24 March 2011 10:20

ATTENTION ALL BLOG CLIENTS:
Please check your plugins list for the WP-Spamfree plugin. I installed this plugin for MANY of you. If you have it activated, please deactivate it. The plugin is no longer supported by the developers or WordPress. I’ve found that on some hosts, it actually breaks WordPress. A good alternative for an anti-spam plugin is the SI Captcha Anti-Spam plugin. Just go to Plugings–>Add New and search for that name and activate it. You won’t need to do anything after that.
Thanks!

Broken Inline Comment Forms with WordPress 3.1

Last Updated on Friday, 4 March 2011 11:12 Written by Theresa Friday, 4 March 2011 08:51

I discovered this week that with all blogs (including this one) set up with inline commenting using the Ajax WordPress 2.8 plugin, the comment form will return an error message “ERROR RECEIVED:” in red when someone tries to submit a comment.  This only happens with the current upgrade of WordPress, which is now at 3.1.  BUT, the comment does still go through and is received by the blog owner, although the person leaving the comment doesn’t know that it has gone through because of the error message.  I’ve been researching on the problem and haven’t found any documentation on it and the plugin developer has yet to respond to my message regarding the issue.

I’m currently trying to figure out an easy fix, but seeing as the plugin has cornered the market on the inline comments and comment forms functionalities, I have yet to find an alternative.  For now, my only suggestion is that you DON’T upgrade to WordPress 3.1 if you haven’t already, at least until the plugin developer comes back with a fix, which hopefully will be soon.  He announced nearly 9 months ago that an upgrade was imminent so I’m crossing my fingers and toes that it will be very soon.  Maybe my message to him about the plugin being broken will prompt him to release it sooner.

Again, inline comment forms (typically on the front page of blogs, not individual posts) are returning error messages with the current WordPress 3.1 upgrade.  Comments are still coming through though, but at least you know to inform your blog visitors that their comments are still being received.

PSA: Security Alert for Bludomain customers

Last Updated on Sunday, 8 November 2009 09:05 Written by Theresa Sunday, 8 November 2009 12:31

Argh, really if you haven’t found out by now, there are blog hackers out there really screwing things up.  I’ve had quite a few old and new clients coming to me for help because their blogs are suddenly “missing”.  Luckily I’ve gotten them all back and running.  Oddly though, they’ve all been Bludomain customers.  Hmmm…wonder why?  Well, (among other things) Bludomain is notorious for recycling passwords for their hosting customers.  I have no idea if they instruct their customers to change the passwords for the cpanels and ftp sites, but apparently a lot of people don’t bother changing them.  If you host with Bludomain and are just hearing about this for the first time, please please PLEASE CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS.  You’ll thank me for it later (although obviously not paying me to fix your hacked-into blog…hmph).  Maybe you’ll remember that I was kind enough to post this little PSA and will hire me to do a little work on your blog in the future (wink wink nudge nudge).

While I’m on this mission to save-everyone’s-blog-from-biting-the-dust, I wanted to remind ALL of you (yes, I mean you, not just Bludomain customers) to have a database backup plugin running on your blog on at least a weekly basis.  ALSO, it’s a good idea to do a FULL BACKUP of your site’s content.  Depending on your hosting company, this can be done through your control panel and/or your ftp site.  Why a full backup of the content?  Well, because a database backup only saves the blog’s content in code, but not all the zillions of  image files, videos, etc… that you undoubtedly have attached to your blog and you may very well lose in case of a server failure, which your host should take care of with their own backups, but it’s good to be safe.

M’kay, my job is DONE.