Clazh » Programming

Yes WordPress Is Blog Not A CMS Get Over It

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:48:18 +0000

I’ll repeat it WordPress is not a CMS, its a Blog. Its a different issue that it is flexible enough to be used as a CMS. The reason I am using it is because I want a blog not a CMS and I love it because because its the best Blogging software out there. If you want a example of CMS Software then checkout Joomla or Drupal I fail to see what all the brouhaha is about. So we have a small time competing product built on Microsoft technology marketing itself as better than WordPress anything wrong with that? pointing to C-NET, the New York Times, Ford as examples is inaccurate, they use WordPress mostly for their blogs and do you think they are running the default WordPress setup? The codebase might be WordPress but they would have hired a bunch of developers to modify WordPress and extend it. I read through Graffiti’s marketing pitch and I don’t find anything overtly offensive or controversial with regard to WordPress.

Of course Graffiti is built on .NET and truth be told any good developer can make either PHP or ASP.NET code perform. However, we think there are more long-term advantages in Microsoft’s platform and better tools. So for developers familiar with ASP.NET its full power and capability are available to you.

Those are the words from their site. They don’t seem to bashing PHP directly or too much.

I particularly like the comment below by Ian

Hello folks, greetings from “the dark side”!

I have never tried WordPress but at first glance it appears to be fond of MySQL and PHP, both of which make my stomach turn.

Are you suggesting that I should migrate across to an unfamiliar platform in deference to using a solution which runs on my favoured “stack” of Windows, SQL Server, and ASP.NET? Or are you just taking issue with their advertising message? Iâ€™m not being facetious or rhetorical, Iâ€™m genuinely curious.
Personally speaking, I have found this early beta release of Graffiti to be an excellent CMS platform and more than adequate for my requirements of a personal blogging platform on the MS stack.

Best wishes,
Ian

So would anyone like to point out to me how PHP is technically better than ASP.NET. Both Technologies have there advantages and disadvantages. The only reason why ASP.NET seems to be gets bashed is because it made by Microsoft.

Itâ€™s not about what platform you prefer to use (Iâ€™d rather slit my wrists than use IIS, ASP.NET, or SQL Server, for example), but about your approach to how to sell your product. The majority or websites on the â€˜net today run on Linux boxes, usually running PHP and MySQL (or some other database solution and scripting methodology running on a *nix box of some sort), so to dismiss that vast amount of installed user bases and developers so simply and simply to state that one solution is better than another is to miss the whole point entirely.

Otto needs a reality check

Its not a religion people its just technologies. Shame on Matt for linking to a complete non-issue. WordPress is good at what it does but it can’t be everthing, there will always be people marketing themselves as better than WordPress.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Open Source, Programming, Web-Development, Wordpress

Prism and XUL Could Have Been A Silverlight And Adobe AIR Killer

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:46:56 +0000

Rich Internet Application are the future of Web Based Applications and we have seen a number of competing technologies come up in the last year namely Silverlight, Adobe AIR and Prism. In the future we will see a tighter integration between desktop applications and the web. I couldn’t help noticing the similarities between XUL, Silverlight and And Adobe AIR. A few common similarities that I immediately noticed are.

All of them use a some form of Proprietary XML (A super set of HTML) to define the User Interface.
The emphasis on the use of existing Web technologies like DOM, JavaScript and CSS.
Cross Platform. (Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight is under development and Adobe AIR will run on Linux once version 1.0 is out)

Some people like to point out that XAML is a ripoff of XUL. I don’t fully agree with them, but I am sure Microsoft did borrow some ideas from XUL, but that’s technology my friend, ideas are meant to be copied if someone can do it better then they deserve to win.

One thing that differentiates Silverlight and Adobe AIR from XUL is that both of them come with a runtime engine based on their own advanced Proprietary technology and programming languages i.e. .NET and Flash which greatly enhances their capabilities. And this is where both Silverlight and AIR beat Prism /XUL hands down.

Its interesting to see that Mozilla is pushing Prism as an answer to Silverlight and Adobe AIR. I frankly feel its a rather poor attempt since I don’t see much difference between FireFox and Prism, i.e, Prism is just a stripped down version of FireFox.

XUL had a very good chance at taking a shot at Silverlight and AIR long before they had even come out. XUL, Canvas and SVG could have made a really powerful combination.

Some of the key reasons why XUL fails to compete

Lack of proper documentation Examples.
No marketing.
No advanced programming capabilities.
Inability to package as a Offline desktop Application.
A Good IDE. (You can’t expect Web Developers to waste time programming in Notepad)

Out of the three I feel Adobe AIR holds a lot of promise, Silverlight is too tied in to Microsoft own platform and they don’t seem committed to making it work on Linux (if they were they would have developed it they selves instead of giving off the work to Miguel de Icaza and the Mono developers) also it is not possible to native develop desktop applications. Prism/XUL is too raw and unfocused to be considered a worthy competitor.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Internet, Open Source, Technology Tags: Programming, Silverlight, Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

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

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

Windows Live Suite All Live Products in One?

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 29 May 2007 11:26:47 +0000

Shufflestorm has found a interesting thing in the latest version of Window live messenger 8.5 beta if you look at the properties for the build (Right click the Exe file and Select Properties then select the version tab), it has been named as WLSuite.exe. Another interesting fact is all the three products i.e. Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Writer have been listed together for beta testing at Connect.

As shuffelstorm correctly infers that

All three programs are communication tools (IM, Blogs, e-Mail)
All three programs are being revamped to a new look (see Messenger 8.5)
All three programs are listed as one beta on Microsoft connect.

This should be interesting, I find Windows Live Writer to a be excellent product. Microsoft has caused a lot of confusion while rebranding and debranding (if there is such a word) various products and services under the Windows Live banner, this seems to be a attempt to bring some of the core Live products under a single banner. Though I wonder how large the file size will be and if they will allow users to download individual packages or will it be a web based installer which will allow the users to select the packages of their choice to download.

The new look and feel that the Live Developers are giving to the Live products are pretty stunning. I have applied as a beta tester and hopefully will get to play with the beta versions soon.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Internet, Microsoft, Technology Tags: Programming, Windows

Wordpress 2.2 Security Alert SQL Injection Exploit

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:29:53 +0000

Update: Note that this SQL Inject “Exploit” can only work if the attacker has obtained a valid username and password for your blog. Otherwise the login check which is run before the $max_results var is used will stop the attack.

Thanks to westi for the Info

Looks like a SQL injection exploit in the XML-RPC has been found for wordpress 2.2. Currently no patch or release is available. You can see the proof of concept here. This has been fixed in the trac you can see it here. It requires you to change only one line of code in your XML-RPC.php file. (This file is located in the root directory where wordpress is installed.) XML-RPC file is used by external blog editors to interface with Wordpress. To fix this issue your self you can follow the given steps outlined.

Open your XML-RPC.php file with notepad I prefer Notepad ++.
find the following lines of code on line 573


$password               = $args[2];
$category               = $args[3];
$max_results            = $args[4];

if(!$this->login_pass_ok($username, $password)) {

Change the following line of code to


$max_results            = (int) $args[4];

Source anieto2k.com

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Programming

Microsoft and Facebook Announce Partnership

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 26 May 2007 02:25:04 +0000

Microsoft and Facebook have announced a partnership deal. This comes right after Facebook opened up its API to third party developers. The Facebook platform is already available in the new mashup tool Popfly that Microsoft announced a week back. Microsoft has also released some walkthrough videos and a Developer Toolkit for Facebook on its site. Dan Fernandez and Sean Alexander have a rundown on what has been announced so far.

Popfly Facebook Block: Available immediately,
we’ve added the Facebook block which prodices access to Facebook data
including the User Profile, Friends, Photos, Photo Albums, and Events.
Leverage Existing Blocks:
You can build Facebook applications using Popfly blocks like Flickr,
Digg, Soapbox, Twitter, Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Virtual Earth.
Silverlight Support:
Another big win here is Facebook has native support for Easily build
next generation applications using Silverlight. With 24 million users
and 40 billion page views a month, this is a huge, huge win for getting
native Silverlight support on Facebook
Visual Studio Support: The Facebook Developer Toolkit enables developers to build applications for Windows, Web, or Microsoft Office.
Distribution of the Facebook Developer Toolkit.
The FDT was developed by Microsoft to wrap the Facebook API into a
managed component. Through this component, developers now will be able
to drag ‘n drop a Facebook component onto the component tray in Visual
C# Express , Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer (for both
Whidbey and Orcas). Users will be provided all the source code, sample
applications including a WPF app and detail documentation.

Co-branded Landing Page
on the Facebook developer website. At this site, visitors will be able
to see Microsoft Visual Studio Express and Microsoft Popfly links.
Additionally, a series of new pages were developed called Showcase on the Visual Studio Express site.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: General, Microsoft, Technology Tags: API, General, Mashup, Microsoft, Programming

Awesome Moo Tool 1.1 Released With Demos Docs and More

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:14:07 +0000

The super light JavaScript framework Moo Tools 1.1 has been released, apart from the complete revamp of the site the documentations and demos page has been updated. This time they went with a darker shade for their website redesign. One of my frequent complaints was the lack of demos, with Moo Tools 1.1 they have released an page with demos exclusively showcasing the power of moo tool 1.1 you might want to head over there to check it out.

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework designed to make writing extensible and compatible code easier and faster. MooTools lets you get the job done efficiently and effectively.

So Whats New in Moo Tools 1.1

Insane Speed, Compatibility and All-Around Optimization
Fun With Events
More Element Functions
Perfecting Ajax
Introducing Hash.Cookie and Group
Utilities Goodies
Advanced Garbage Collection
Various Enhancements
API Changes

You can read a more detailed Change log here

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Catergories: Web-Design Tags: Javascript, Programming

How to Write a WordPress Plugin Series

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 08 May 2007 02:16:08 +0000

Devlounge has started an excellent series of articles on how to write Wordpress plugins. If you are a web developer with sufficient knowledge of PHP and have been using WordPress then head over there to read it.

For any WordPress user, plugins are essential. WordPress Plugins
allow those with little to no programming skills to extend the
functionality of their blog. Plugins come in all shapes and sizes, and
there is a plugin that does just about anything for WordPress.

As good as WordPress is as a standalone application, there are still
things that WordPress lacks. Users are requesting more and more
features for WordPress that would be very feasible to write as a
plugin. There are many untapped ideas out there, and new ones created
every day.

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Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: Plugins, Programming, Web-Development, Wordpress

The SilverLight Poster and more on Silverlight and Microsoft

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:58:25 +0000

SilverLight has launched its community site with a list of blogs and a Forum. Dare found a really cool Silverlight Poster which shows how and what the silverlight framework is built of. It shows the list of class libraries from the .Net Framework which make up silverlight. Click the picture below to see the full poster.

There have been changes to commercial API as Steve Clayton points out.

For basic usage, the API will always be free
Usage up to one million unique users is free, except for:
Windows Live Search is free up to 750,000 searches per months
Virtual Earth (Live Maps) is free up to 3 million map tiles per month
Silverlight video streaming is free up to 4 gig, with free unlimited streaming, and no limits on users
Above one million unique users, sites will have to pay 25 cents per user per year
For Search and Virtual Earth, sites will need to negotiate a commercial agreement with Microsoft
No beta services will charge for usage of the API. You will only have to pay after it leaves beta
Users will be averaged out per quarter, so if you have a big spike one month, you won’t have to pay for it

Source Inside Microsoft

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Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Technology Tags: .NET, Microsoft, Programming, Silverlight