Andrea has posted a Theme for WP 1.5 or 2.0. Read all about it.

If you are new to WP, you may wonder what a WP hack is. Well, hacks were what lead to plugins. Basically, a plugin is an extension that you can add to WP (the majority of open source projects support plugins). Prior to the advent of plugins, if a WP user wanted to add or modify functionality, they would write a hack. Some people still do write hacks, although allowing plugins has eliminated most of the situations where one would want to. Generally, it is considered a hack when you modify WP core files.

Having said that, this is a hack. This hack replaces 2 files used by the admin panel. The hack has no effect on the public site. The purpose of the hack is to make the admin panel (I mentioned it last week) look like this:

You can download the hack. Extract the hack onto your computer. It includes a README with instruction on how to use it. If you are not comfortable with backing up and overwriting files, wait for the plugin (if I can create one for it).

There is nothing like a comment spammer telling you something about their age. If you have left a comment here recently, I hope that the note I included regarding comment moderation in the comment template caught your attention. The following is one of the more original comment spam I’ve seen:

Great job on this site. And, thanks again for the info. WordPress rulez.. I like it. Hey, did I tell you about my encounter with and the amazing wonders of vitamins and supplements? I Feel great as never before! Check it out. Any problems? Let nature help.

This puppy arrived today. In fact, it arrived several times. Now you would think that if you were trying to slide a comment by someone as being legitimate you would not submit the same one on 2 entries that were weeks apart within a minute of each other giving a different email address and url on each.

I’ve been watching somewhat amused at the progression of the comment spam. One of the reasons Andrea originally switched to WordPress a year or so ago was because comment spammers were pounding her blog with alot of comment spam. One day a while ago, she asked why her blog and this one seemed to only randomly get hit with a few spam, when they had previously pounded away. I told her from a programmer’s perspective, there’s no point in wasting alot of processing time on something until you have a reasonable chance of the processing succeeding. So, right now, they are trying to find a hole that will allow the comment spam through. In watching the characteristics of the spam change, I can tell that they are at least familiar with some of the comment settings in WordPress.

Do you see the irony of the statement in the comment spam that became the title of the post? One of the reasons WordPress is so popular is that it allows the site owner alot of choices in moderating comments including, if necessary, moderating every comment. Yes, you’re right, WordPress rules (and you’re wasting your time).

Yesterday, I wrote another WordPress Plugin. This one produces a sidebar link list of recent readers. Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the only way I could be sure you are a reader is if you left a comment. This plugin retrieves the author name and link from recent comments in the blog. It defaults to 30 days, but it can be changed to as low as 1 day or as high as you want within reason (eg. 365 but not 36500). By default, it also shows the # comments by the reader within the number of days specified.

Since we have comment moderation turned on, if you haven’t commented here before, you won’t be able to see your name show up as soon as you comment. But, if you have commented here (since we switched to WordPress), included your url with the comment and your name is not currently on the list, your name should be appear on the list after you have commented. The plugin does not list commentors who do not leave a URL.

Because most bloggers love comments, the plugin sorts the links with the person with the most comments at the top and within the same number of comments alphabetically. You can download the plugin here. The plugin includes the recent comments plugin as well.

Yesterday, I modified the recent comments plugin (by Nick Momrik) for WordPress. I had been using it with the default parameters and earlier this week I wrote a couple of entries where I linked internally to a number of entries. The internal pingbacks occupied most of the list.

The new version is backward compatible (i.e. if you replace Nick’s version with this one and make no changes to your template, it will produce the same results as Nick’s). The functionality I have added is the option to exclude pingbacks (and trackbacks) and/or comments you have left in your own blog from the recent comments list. I have included instructions for usage in the comments at the top of the plugin.

You can download the plugin here.

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