Wordpress
13 Jan 2008
How unsexy are WordPress security updates? I have the horrible habit of doing everything else first before attempting one (which, of course, is absolutely the worst thing you can do, as the recent spam hack on the SWX blog demonstrated so well). I used to dread doing the updates mainly because I just knew something would break. At least that's how I used to feel.
When I last upgraded WordPress, a little over a week ago to version 2.3.1, I made a slightly delayed New Year's resolution that I wouldn't hack the blog. Instead, I decided to do everything using plugins and widgets (which are plugins that display on your sidebar). And -- wonder of wonders -- I actually stuck to it! That being the case, upgrading is no longer a nightmare.
The content in my blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution UK license. So that means that you can basically take the content and do what you like with it as long as you give me credit. So, as long as scrapers give me proper credit, I really can't say anything to what they're doing. I don't approve of what they're doing, but, as long as I'm using the Attribution license, I can't object to it.
I don't know if this is an inherent failing of the Attribution license or not. Should it include an ethical clause, for example, that specifically disallows scraping of content and other abuses?
Saturdays are Update-Your-Blog Day at Casa Balkan and I've just enabled WP-Cache for the blog after thinking about doing it for, oh, several years now.
Please let me know if you notice any weirdness.
I use Bad Behavior and Akismet on this blog to control spam and, while the solution works splendidly, it isn't without the occasional hiccup.
Yesterday, Corban Baxter alerted me that he couldn't digg my startling exposé of Apple's upcoming flying MacBook Pros (thanks, Corban!). Googling around this morning, I found that the problem was being caused by Bad Behavior, not WordPress. Or, more specifically, according to the author of Bad Behavior, it is a problem with Digg's crawler.