Basic Instructions: I love this cartoonish site. Really funny and often smart at once. Me digs mucho. (0) «

Plugin of the Month : Better Comments

In: , On: 2007 / 05 / 15 Short URL: http://ozh.in/ek

Edit: this plugin had several bugs that made me write my own take on this. Absolute Comments is in my opinion far better, go try it :)

I guess every WordPress user in the world have dreamt about it : the ability to reply to a comment from within the admin area, and without visiting the post page itself first. Your wait is over : Better Comment Manager is here.

Better Comments

This plugin adds two links underneath each comment : "Reply" to this comment, and "View all" comments for this post. Needless to say, this plugin instantly makes it into my short list of 4 or 5 must-have plugins in any WordPress install. Great ! (via)

1,783,977,871 pages on Yahoo (and their various subdomains). Couldn’t find anything bigger :) (0) «

Checking a few WordPress Feeds

In: , , , , , , On: 2007 / 05 / 12 Short URL: http://ozh.in/ei

Today I felt like tidying a bit Planet WordPress, an unofficial aggregation of feeds about WordPress I've been maintaining for about 2 years now. The thing was fetching about 80 feeds, of which about a half were… dead, missing in action, or just inactive.

It quickly appeared to me than manually reviewing 80 feeds would be tedious. And it quickly appeared to me that it could be fun doing something that would make the task easier. One recycling of an Ajax Header Checker I wrote some month ago to learn a bit of Ajax, and two hours later I was happy with my brand new and shiny Ajax Multi Feed Checker! The thing is really a must-have for anyone aggregating more than a couple dozens of feeds.

About Planet WordPress: the little planet has been gaining readership since it went up, and I really like the fact of tracking unofficial blogs about WordPress that deserve it.

If you have a blog and write about WordPress from time to time (code, plugin, themes, thoughts, anything really), feel free to apply for the planet (there are a few easy rules but I've never turned anyone down yet). I think it's a really efficient way to gain exposure for the lesser-and-should-be known blogs (currently the planet has about 550 readers).

And if you haven't already, add it to your feed reader. Enjoy every day reading and discovering smart stuff and clever thoughts about your favorite blogging software.

Music Plus. I’M IN YER SERVERZ, STEALIN YER MP3! Too cool. Thanks Polo :) (4) «
Half of the planet is addicted to DesktopTD, are you one of us ? If so, have a look at this “cheat sheet” which will help you fine-tune your maze strategies. (3) «

How-to: PHP Script for Honey Pot’s http:BL

In: , , , , On: 2007 / 05 / 03 Short URL: http://ozh.in/ef

A few days ago, Project Honey Pot introduced a new service : http:BL, a blacklist of all the suspicious IPs they are gathering through all the honey pots, and an API allowing anyone to use this blacklist.

Their API is very easy to use, and I believe a number of projects (hint) should use it any time soon. For the less experienced PHP coders willing to give it a try, I wrote a small guide explaining how to use this API in PHP : Honey Pot & http:BL Simple PHP Script.

Shoruyken! Those “lolcats” generally make me smile, but I really loved this one :) (1) «

Some Fun with Script Kiddies

In: , , , , , , , On: 2007 / 05 / 01 Short URL: http://ozh.in/ed

One of the things you have to pay attention to when you move your website to another host is correct redirection to pages, and ensuring you're not giving 404 errors to legitimate requests. This morning I was checking my error logs and noticed a lot of pathetic attempts from script kiddies looking for an easy security hole to exploit :

< View plain text >
code

  1. [client 212.67.208.152] File does not exist: /home/ozh/planetozh.com//admin/plugins/NP_UserSharing.php
  2. (...)
  3. [client 216.193.194.224] File does not exist: /home/ozh/planetozh.com/admin/doeditconfig.php
  4. (...)
  5. [client 203.187.132.50] File does not exist: /home/ozh/planetozh.com/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll
  6. [client 203.187.132.50] File does not exist: /home/ozh/planetozh.com/MSOffice/cltreq.asp

The most popular attempt seems to be the doeditconfig.php one, with roughly a request every 5 minutes.
I honestly don't give a sh*t about those things, but why not try to have some fun with them in return ?

First, I looked for the biggest file I could find on the internet. A 4.4 Gb Debian DVD image seemed to be big enough.

Then, time for a little mod_rewrite prank, in the .htaccess file sitting in my root I added the following lines :

< View plain text >
code

  1. RewriteEngine  on
  2. RewriteBase /
  3. RewriteRule ^admin/doeditconfig.php$ /exit/bigfile [L]
  4. RewriteRule ^MSOffice/cltreq.asp$ /exit/bigfile [L]
  5. RewriteRule ^/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll$ /exit/bigfile [L]
  6. RewriteRule ^/admin/plugins/NP_UserSharing.php$ /exit/bigfile [L]
  7. RewriteRule ^/phorum/plugin/replace/plugin.php$ /exit/bigfile [L]

File /exit/bigfile is just a log-then-redirect-to-big-DVD-iso PHP script.

I'm not sure how effective this will be : maybe script kiddie tools don't follow redirections, or look for particular header responses. But hopefully I will waste a few megabytes of some morons' bandwidth :)

Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny

In: , , , On: 2007 / 04 / 30 Short URL: http://ozh.in/ec

My latest musical craze is a damn funny metallish band named Bloodhound Gang. Their music really fits my taste, with a lot of heavy and fat guitars, but once you pay attention to lyrics, you cannot help but smile, then laugh, then play it again :)

The band really gives the impression they're doing all this for fun, their music, their website and their silly contests on it, nothing looks serious and done before having a few good beers. You can even listen to their music right from their site. For a quicker tour, check a few samples on Last.fm (where I discovered about them)

By the way, just wondering… Since you can listen to their music for free on their site, how illegal would it be to bitdownloadtorrent every mp3 you could find ? Especially considering that they're selling everything (hats, posters, panties) but music…

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