Clazh » Plugins

Reduce Comment Spam To Zero Without Akismet

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:32:17 +0000

My blog used to get around 100-300 spam comments/trackbacks a day while Akismet was doing a great job, but as time went by it became very tedious to go through the comment/trackback spam to make sure no legitimate comments were caught. Using a combination of three WordPress plugins and without the help of Akismet I have managed to reduce the comment spam to almost zero. I am also listing a few other plugins.

Plugins for Comment Spam.

Simple Spam Filter for WordPress.

Get Simple Spam Filter from here. Most of the spam caught by Akismet is pretty obvious spam i.e.

Contains 5 or more links to external sites
Contains nothing but links
Contains [url=http://www.example.com]example[/url] style links (my blog does not support bbcode style links)
Contains a word that matches a short list of common spam words (for example, viagra or cialis). See the pluginâ€™s source for the full list.

Simple Spam Filter helps you combat this kind of obvious spam. Its has a setting page where you can tweak it to suit your likings.

WordPress Comment Spam Stopper.

This a very simple Plugin that asks a very simple question that bots are too stupid to answer. I have found it even more effective if you change the default question. Get this plugin from here.

Comment-Policy WordPress Plugin

This is a alternative to Comment Spam Stopper. Instead of asking the users to enter an answer, you ask the user to agree to your comment policy by having a required field CheckBox. Since its JavaScript based most bots won’t see it. Get the plugin from here.

Plugins for Trackback Spam.

Extended Comments Options for WordPress.

While most of the plugins above will take care of comment spam. I found that I was getting tons of Trackback spam, since Trackbacks are not validated by WordPress. Using this plugin you can disable TrackBacks or Comments for your older posts. I have disabled trackbacks for posts older than a month. You can get this plugin here.

Simple Trackback Validation Plugin.

If you don’t like the idea of disabling trackbacks for your older posts you can use this plugin to validate trackbacks.

checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to.
This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.
retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesnâ€™t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.

You can get the plugin from here.

Antispam Collateral Condolences.

The last plugin does not combat spam but notifies a commenter in case his/her comment is caught in the spam queue or moderation. I highly recommend this plugin get it from here. Â

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Wordpress Tags: Download, Free, Plugins, Wordpress

Security alert: WordPress Competition Winning Plugins Vulnerable

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 07:01:00 +0000

Update: My sincere apologies to all the plugin developers. I usually try to keep track of WordPress security. and buyacrop has been very good at finding exploits and providing patches. In my hurry to warn users I forgot to check if patches were available or if the developers were informed. I think its pretty irresponsible on buyacrop part.

The winners of the WordPress Plugin Competition has been announced. congratulation to all the winners. I am really sorry to spoil the party but I am doing this to inform readers, I would really hate it if someone hacked your site. Unfortunately all the Plugins are vulnerable to security flaws. They are listed here in order of danger.

1. WordPress Automatic Upgrade: It allows any non authenticated user to.
* To generate and to unload the archives of WordPress (including wp-config.php with your data of data base).
* To generate and to unload backups of your data base with which this represents.
* To activate and To deactivate all plugins.
* To update the version of WordPress without your authorization.
2. OneClick: Is vulnerable CSRF (Cross-site request forgery) it allows you to unload plugins – or malicious code – from any URL.
3. Who Sees Ads: Is vulnerable to CSRF and XSS (Cross-site scripting).
4. MyDashboard: Is vulnerable to CSRF and XSS.

Please deactivate these plugins immediately till the authors update the plug-in. A mail has been sent to each of these authors so expect them to patch them quickly.

Thank you carrero for tipping me off.

Original source. buayacorp

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Plugins, Programming, Web-Development

Best Plugins From The Wordpress Plugin Competition

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:17:14 +0000

While the SandBox Wordpress theme competition has received a lot of attention. I would like to remind my readers that simultaneously a WordPress Plugin competition has been taking place. I saw a number extremely useful and amazing WordPress Plugins. I would like to highlight some the best Plugins that have been developed by the community.

Who Sees Ads?

An extremely powerful AD Management Plugin for your blog. Its time to ditch you Adsense deluxe and landing page WordPress Plugins. This baby can do it all and more. A super cool drag drop interface, a well thought out interface. A rules engine i.e. you can specify who see ads your regular visitors, search engine visitors etc. Its even compatible with the Adsense Deluxe Plugin. This Plugin has so many features that it would be better if you checked it out yourself, and yeah I am blogging about this the third time.

Download Link Here

WPSysLog

This Plugin is extremely useful if your running a multi-author blog. The default purpose is to track core events, such as users writing posts, changing profiles etc. Sometime back I had wished for such a feature in WordPress after someone deleted a post on a multi-author blog that I was running. If you run a multi-author blog it very hard for to track what the authors or users are doing. I personally feel this Plugin needs to part of the core. The popular Drupal CMS has something similar to this.

Download Link Here

WPVault

Another Powerful Plugin to manage your file uploads and downloads and to organize them. File organization is a mess in WordPress. Another Plugin that needs to part of the core WordPress.

You can upload and store any type of files (not just image files). You can use the installation of WordPress as a file storage, so you have access to files anywhere, as long as you have the Internet access.
Browse files in Ajax-powered interface.
Attach image gallery to any posts or pages using stored files, without additional coding. It works without fiddling with any WordPress or theme files. There is absolutely no coding needed. No copy-and-pasting a piece of code. Not even inserting tags into your post entries.
Make image or non-image files available for download.
Organize files by tagging them.
Built-in protection on published files to discourage hot linking.

Download Link Here

MyDashboard

This is how the WordPress default dashboard needs to look like. All netvibes, pageflakes and iGoogle Fans or users are sure to love this Plugin. And for people complaining about not being able to customize your WordPress dashboard this must be god sent. What you can do with this Plugin.

Drag and drop to reorder the gadgets location to your liking.
Add or remove gadgets at will.
Fully extend-able – easily add your own gadgets to the dashboard using the very simple API.
Skinable – The look of the dashboard can be changed simply by selecting a different skin (CSS style sheet).
Standard gadgets – I have provided a number of standard gadgets.

Download Link Here

WP Plugins Tracker

Another Plugin that needs to part of the WordPress core. This Plugin helps webmasters to track the new releases of the Plugins they are using in their website from admin panel. But I guess the WordPress guys are working on something similar to this for both Plugins and themes.

Download Link Here

OneClick

It just what the title says with a single click it helps you install Plugins and Themes, how cool is that. It allows uploading of a Plugin or theme without the need of manually uploading by FTP, allowing the upload from the Admin panel. All you have to do is browse for the zip file and click “upload” and the Plugin does the rest.

Download Link here

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin

A Plugin that update your WordPress blog automatically. While upgrading WordPress is pretty easy most end users find it a big hassle.

Download Link Here

CRM WP Plugin

Customer Relationship Management WP Plugin. Er. I don’t have to tell what this is do I. It looks like a really powerful Plugin I don’t see end users using it but for large sites or sites that use WordPress as a CMS this Plugin would be very useful.

Download Link Here

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Software, Wordpress Tags: Plugins, Wordpress

WordPress Plugins To Combat Sploggers

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:14:48 +0000

Recently my friend Kanak’s website content was posted on a splog. Its really sad when people steal your content, which you took so much time and effort to sit and write down. I Introduced him to blogging a few months back and have been helping him out. I tried searching for some WordPress Plugins that would help combat these Sploggers. So far I found Three if you know of any other useful Wordpress Plugins let me know.

WP©Feed

The Plugin adds content to a feed. It is possible to configure the copyright message. You can use html. You can add the IP of a feed reader and digital fingerprint for an explicit key. There can also be a domain name for a whitelist and this domains became not the message. The plugin search for this key at content theft. It is furthermore possible to add comments and related posts to the feed. For the related post feature it uses a database-search for the content. You can use the plugin “Simple Tagging” for related posts in a feed. The copyright notice can be added even when using entry excerpts.

Download Link Here

Better Feed

Your feed, on steroids : add a custom footer to RSS items with, for example, a copyright notice, a “Read More (400 words)” links, an “Add to del.icio.us” link, a list of related entries. Improve connectivity between your feed and your site.

Download Link Here

Feed Footer WordPress Plugin.

Feed Footer is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add footers under all your blog posts in your RSS feed. With this nifty plugin, you can:

Copyright Your Feed! Add copyright notices under all your Blog Posts in the RSS feed
HTML Enabled Footers. Any HTML code can be shown in your footers! You can snazzy up your footers with banners and images! You can make your text bold or italics or underlined.
No Word or Line Limit. Your footer ads and notices could be 200 lines long if you so desire!

Download link here

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Internet, Wordpress Tags: Plugins, Wordpress

Who Sees Ads 1.0 Wordpress Plugin Released

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:27:37 +0000

I had blogged before about a excellent Wordpress Plugin with which you can control the behaviour of how and to whom the ads are being show. This Plugin has been released as part of the Wordpress Plugin competition. I will most probably ditch my Google Adsense Deluxe Plugin in favour of this Plugin soon, the Google Adsense Deluxe has a vulnerability that has not been patched and author doesn’t seem interested in keeping the Plugin up to date. OZh has a number of other cool Wordpress Plugins Which I never noticed before especially the better feed Plugin.

How this Plugin came to be. “I wish I could display a lot of ads to those coming once never returning readers, but not bother my regular fans“. Enter Who Sees Ads, the ultimate ad management plugin.

What the Who sees Ads Wordpress Plugin does.

Easy ad management: inline or in PHP templates, inserting your ads is now a handy one-liner.
Advanced display rules: chose what conditions will trigger the ad displaying. Search engine visitor? On home page only? Just for American readers? You name it.
Visual interface: a very intuitive and visual interface allows for easily creating ads and selecting display rules.
Ad wizard: a wizard will create example rules as examples, allowing for quick grasping of how things works
Adsense & YPN compliancy: per Terms Of Use, Adsense and Yahoo Publisher impose restrictions (maximum number of ads of a particular type, no ads on error pages, etc). Who Sees Ads fully complies to these restrictions.
Admin Click Safety: Adsense and Yahoo ads can be replaced by placeholders when viewed by the blog admin, to prevent accidental clicks on their own ads.

To get the Plugin and to see a more detailed explanation get it from Ozh’s Blog.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Software, Wordpress Tags: Adsense, Blogging, Plugins

Make A Custom FeedBurner Chicklet

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:24:26 +0000

One of the reasons why I don’t have a FeedBurner Chicklet on my blog even though I have over 200+ RSS readers is that I never like the way its been designed and it looks a bit awkward when I put it on my sidebar. I been trying to find a way to make a customized FeedBurner Chicklet using the FeedBurner Awareness API. The FeedBurner API is a way by which FeedBurner enables Third Party Applications to access the RSS stats from FeedBurner. Fortunately I came across the Feed Count Wordpress Plugin which makes the job really easy. I am still in the process of coming up with a custom Chicklet badge. But if you tired of the default FeedBurner Chicklet then give this Plugin a shot. Head over to northxeast for detailed instructions on how to use and install this Wordpress Plugin.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Design, Wordpress Tags: Plugins, Web-Development

Who Sees Ads An Interesting Wordpress Plugin

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:07:33 +0000

The Wordpress Plugin Competition is in full swing. I found an interesting Plugin by OZ called Who Sees Ads.

The Plugin Aims to do the following things.

don’t serve ads to your fans (returning readers)
serve ads to people coming for the first time
serve ads to people coming from a search engine result page
serve ads on old posts, turn them off in fresh content

While I think its great that people can make money from blogs as a web designer I feel a bit uncomfortable about putting ads on my blog since it interferes with the design and layout. If you have noticed I have not but any ads on the homepage except for textlinkads. I believe this Plugin has great potential and I am really looking forward to it being released. This plugin is a great way to reward your regular readers with an ad free blog content.
The admin interface is very intuitive, it has a drag and drop interface to manage the various settings and rules.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Download, Plugins, Programming, Web-Development

Wordpress Plugin Better Comments Manager Update

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:51:48 +0000

A while back I had Reviewed the Better Comments Manager Wordpress Plugin. I was impressed with it and had always felt that replying to comments on Wordpress was very cumbersome. I sincerely believe that this plugin should be in the Wordpress core by default. I had suggested to Keith the author of the Plugin to make use of Ajax when replying to comments in the comment manager dashboard. He took my suggestion and updated the Plugin. I immediately installed the Plugin and gave it a test run. The Plugin is really useful if you get a lot of comments and wish to reply back quickly. I have bookmarked the Plugin admin page so that I can quickly reply back to the comments that I get.

You can get the latest version of the Plugin here.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Download, Plugins

Copy Feed Wordpress Plugin Translated To English

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 25 May 2007 02:23:29 +0000

The Copy Feed Wordpress Plugin has been Translated to English. Copy Feed is a powerful Wordpress plugin to protect your content from sploggers. Previously it was available only in German.

How The Copy Feed Wordpress Plugin Works :

Source plagiarismtoday

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Blogging, Plugins, Web-Development, Wordpress

Better Comments Manager Wordpress Plugin

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:34:22 +0000

Sometime back lorelle had requested for a plugin to manage and reply to here comments within wordpress Itself. Well looks like here wish came true. keith at Techie-Buzz has released a wordpress plugin to do just that.

What is Better Comments Manager?
Better Comments Manager is an extension of the default Wordpress comments manager. I have added two new features to the default Wordpress Comments Manager.

Reply to comment from within Wordpress Admin Panel.
View All Comments based by posts.

Overall I think its a great plugin but it would really be helpful if it were possible to ajaxfy it so that it doest go do a separate page when I need to reply to a comment. Also the ability to Edit the Timestamp would be nice.

Source. DoshDosh

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Blogging, Plugins, Web-Development, Wordpress