I HATE spammers! Or… do I?
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I run a social group that has about 100 members. The site averages about 20 hits a day and every few days a couple of people pop in and write a post or 2. It is active but it can go for a few days with no action.
Well, the other day I got spammed! Someone joined, put up a seductive avatar and then about 20 hours later added comments for everyone on their profile page. Something about viagra, I am sure. I actually forgot what the message was.
So of course, I am annoyed and log in and delete the member and go about the business of cleaning up after my spammer. But what happened next was interesting.
100 members were left messages on their profile page and half of those checked in to see what was going on.
Thats a 100 to 200 % increase over the normal daily traffic.
What an opportunity!
Now, I am not saying to intentionally spam your members, but the next time “Nora Saunders” visits my site, I am going to be prepared and maybe use that as a time to engage members that might not have stopped by for awhile.
That’s turning spam lemons into lemonade.
Main Buddypress environment object
I was looking for the cleanest way to reorganize some menu items and I happened across the core buddypress environment object: $bp.
To access this you will have to make it a global first.
This echos ‘admin’;
There are lots of good tidbits in there so if you are going to be doing some major altering of buddypress, you will probably want to become familiar with this guy.
Check it out.
Fun with the windows host file
Does apple.com use apache? It does on my PC.
If you want to use a domain on your PC instead of localhost, your windows host file is the key.
On XP or Vista, go to c:windows\system32\drivers\etc and open the host file. This file has no extension so don’t let that trick you. With vista you will have to edit this file with admin privileges.
At the bottom of this file, it should look like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
On the next line, simply add:
127.0.0.1 apple.com
Now any url on your local xampp or apache install can be accessed by your new url.
Since it starts with 127.0.0.1 your environment does not try and find the real apple.com.
This is great for screencasts where you want to emulate running in a live environment.
Pass this tip onto a friend!
“More Fun Than A Sharp Stick In The Eye”
We just got finished with the video for my companies new Lanwndart game. Its pretty fun.
Wish I could tell you where the game is but we don’t have those mechanisms in place for some reason.
I am trying to change that.
WPMU Manually Approve New Members on Local Install
We had the conversation yesterday about local installs of WPMU and the problem with activating new users since email can be difficult (impossible?) to send out from your local pc.
First, the 2 reasons for wanting a local install are:
- For local development of a site that will eventually made live
- For a company intranet. Stuff that you would not want people outside your local network to see
Will had the good idea to manually approve people, but it did take some digging thru phpmyadmin to find the right tables.
This plugin solves that by displaying all pending approvals so to manually activate an account, just click on the “approve ” link.
This is a pretty quick plugin so not too many features. Please note: once a member is approved, the thank you page shows with the user name and password the person needs to login. This will have to be manually sent to them.
The plugin shows up in your tools section under “Manual Approve”
Please let me know if you think this plugin is useful.
Plugin Download: manual-member-approve-wpmu
Install WPMU on localhost with Xampp
I recently wanted to install WPMU (thats WordPress Multi User) locally and had a tough time in the process.
I finally got it worked out and like most things, it is actually quite easy if you leave out all the stuff that gets you in trouble.
I use Xampp to run apache locally, but I assume this will work with any out-of-the-box localhost server installation.
Here we go…
1) If you are a veteran wordpress installer, what is the first thing you do when installing a fresh version? Mess with config.php, right? Well, turns out, for WPMU this will cause you all sorts of headaches. DO NOT edit the config file. Let the installer do it for you. So step one is “do nothing”.
2) WPMU can’t be run on localhost. It needs to run on something like localhost.localdomain. To make this happen, go to windows/system32/drivers/etc/ and open a file called host. This file has no extension so don’t let that fool you.
3) At the end of the host file add the line: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain and hit save.
Thats it. no apache reboot or anything. Now go to your wpmu install folder and the config window should open. Plug in your db values, select the “new blogs as sub folders” option and hit submit.
I have only installed this on a few pcs, never a mac so I can’t tell you how to add localhost.localdomain
Thats about it. Pretty easy, right?
Let me know if this is helpful for you.
Helpful Twitter searches
I have recently discovered some useful twitter search parameters.
Search within a date
To find all searches from some date until now, go to twitter.search.com and type in:
@mattkern since:2009-01-19
The “since” syntax gives you a nice date parameter in the yyyy/mm/dd format. You can also add “until” to get a particular time frame.
@mattkern since:2009-01-19 until:2009-01-26
This returns everyone that has referenced in that time span. A good way to measure if you are getting the responses you want from tweeples.
Measure your RT’s
Next type in:
RT from:mattkern since:2009-01-19
These are all the RT’s you have initiated. Now you can see if you have been a diligent RT’er or not.
If you enter:
RT @mattkern
This returns all the people that have seen fit to re-tweet something that you wrote. Now that is a true measure of twitter effectiveness.
What are some other helpful twitter searches?
Is there ever a case for “Regular”?
Would you call your brand regular? I hope not, but apparently Philadelphia Cream Cheese doesn’t mind.
A few nights ago we discovered we were out of cream cheese and since a run to Whole Foods was not in our immediate future, my wife had me go to the local grocery store and pick some up.
After I brought it home, I discovered that even though the label said regular, it was actually an oniony, chivey flavor that no one could eat except me.
I found issue with this on a few levels.
1) On a design level, why hide the flavor and pretty onion pictures on the side of the label?
2) What is regular? Apparently not the flavor. I guess it refers to the low-fat versus non low-fat version? If that is the case, I am pretty sure when Philadelphia started making cream cheese, there was no low-fat version. This means at some point they changed “regular” to refer to calorie content and not flavor.
3) On a bigger level, why would anyone want to make something that is regular? If it is the version that has been around the longest and that is what people know you for, how about “original” instead?
I don’t think I would ever make something and call it regular.
Word Camp Chicago 09
Calling all wordpress fans - Word Camp Chicago has opened up registration. They have some great speakers lined up already and I am looking forward to it.
Are you thinking of going? If so, look me up and say hi.
Don’t Hide The Magic
On weekends we often end up at one of the local childrens museum since the kids love it. As it should be, these places focus on engaging and teaching while keeping the fun intact.
This particular exhibit is a steering mechanism that turns the pole (and everything attached to the pole) whenever the wheel is turned. How does it work? If you are an adult you say “gears”.
If you are a child, you might say “magic”.
On the side of the table there is a plexiglass window that shows how the gears work to turn the pole.
Education: 1
Magic: 0
Are there things we do everyday that appear to be happen magically to our public?
Maybe we should share the magic.
