plugins Archives - Page 31 of 42

Issues with the Verse-O-Matic

There have been some issues with the Verse-O-Matic that have not been addressed. I’m not sure at this point if it is due to changes in WP that have not been accounted for, deprecated functions in PHP (I know there are some in the script), or if it is with MySQL. Regardless of where the issues lie, I will be releasing a fixed version to address the issues with the plugin.

However, note that this fix will be tested on and compatible with the most current version of WP (currently 2.5.1). It is important to keep up with the changes in WordPress to make sure that your blog is secure and running smoothly. While the fixes may work on earlier versions of WP (it has certainly been fine in the past), I cannot guarantee that it will for certain.

Site Update

By Chad Butler Leave a Comment

Once again, I thank everyone for their patience. I believe that I have finally solved the problems with the site, but there is now much work to be done.

First, the issue I was having does not seem to be isolated. It was a spam injection hijack of my blog, and to be honest, the only reason I noticed it was the content of the AdSense ads that were showing up. It really was a bear to get rid of. I will have a single post later that covers this because the problem appears to be effecting a lot of WP blogs.

That brings me to another important issue. While I was infected via an exploit, some people that have gotten this hijack have actually installed it themselves. They did this by downloading a theme or plugin from a site other than WP or the actual developer. In the case of themes, they downloaded from a gallery where the download had actually been modified and contained javascript to run the hijack. Lesson: only download from the original developer or where from a trusted source (i.e. WP).

In the case of my plugins, I know that there are some sites that have downloaded from here and then helped themselves (w/o permission) to hosting it on their site. I generally don’t waste my time going after these guys because the plugins are opensource and I have too much else to worry about. But if you download from one of these, you could run into problems. Here are some reasons to only download my plugins from “official” locations:

They are always going to be the latest version.
The code will not contain any hijacks. (Bugs maybe, exploits I hope not, but malicious hijacks? NEVER!)
You are supporting the author.

The only “official” location for my plugins are:

This Site
WordPress Plugin Database (http://wp-plugins.net/)
WordPress (soon. They’ve been approved, just haven’t got them up there yet.)

My plan is eventually to have everything as part of the WP site using SVN.

Back to the greater point of my post. From here, I need to get the forum fixed and restore some of my content that was messed up during the recovery from the hijack. Then I will be systematically going through and addressing comments that were questions on support issues. If relevant, these will be moved into the forum (where support questions should be addressed).

If I can make it through all of that maintenance, then maybe we will get back on track with development of the existing plugins and new ones that have been on the back burner. Also, the existing work I have needs to be tested in WP 2.5, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t be compatible at this point.

That’s all for now. Again, thanks for your patience and support.

Maintenance, Updating, Support, and other Stuff

By Chad Butler 5 Comments

Well, I thought I had the theme hacks licked, but of course it was rehacked. I’ve been trying to track that down before I go back and fix the theme (and really the whole blog) again. To be honest, it’s rather depressing because it is a lot of work to keep this thing going. Sometimes I feel like I’m just spinning plates – about the time I get the last plate spinning, I have to go back to respin the first ones because they’ve come to a stop.

On top of the hacks to my theme, there has been a ton of spam comments. Unfortunately, when the theme got hacked it caused some problems with the WP-Members support forum so I’m getting support needs posted in comments because people are having problems with the forum. Since I very much want to help people that need help with the plugin, I’ve been carefully going through the comment moderation process so I don’t accidentally delete a legitimate comment with the spam. I want to come back and get those answered.

During this time, there have been some people that have used the PayPal donation for the plugin and of course, I give priority to their support needs. So if you are still waiting on free support, please understand that I have to give priorty to those folks. Of course, that was one of the purposes of the forum – to develop an area of common support issues so that people would be able to self-serve their needs, but with the hacks to the site, that hasn’t really worked out all that well.

So, to everyone, thanks for your patience! I do intend to work through these issues and get this blog back together. I put too much work into my plugins to just let them die. I just need some time to get this thing put back together.