My other new plugins! Inbetween, QuickPHP, and Redirect

Quick update: if you downloaded QuickPHP 0.7, and found that it didn’t work, it’s not your fault! In my lack-of-sleep-induced haze, I changed the core ‘hook’ logic, so it basically never actually does any processing. version 0.8 is now up, and I double-tested it (I think I was testing an older version of the script under a secondary installation of WP… grrr.).

Please, try it again now! ??

-d

Latest bug-find and fix is in CG-Inbetween. I don’t have a new release up yet, but if you look for:
$aTween->font = $tw_echo;
(should be approximately line 310)
the word ‘font’ was supposed to be ‘echo’, i.e.:
$aTween->echo = $tw_echo;

That kept Inbetween from saving the Echo block out to a file. With that fix, all features should be saving fine (note that if you tried the sample inbetweens, the echoing itself worked fine, just the saving of something you changed didn’t…).

I’ll try and get a new version up in the next day or so, assuming no other issues.

Also, if you haven’t tried the new 1.1 release of CG-FlashyTitles, it fixes a bunch of backward-compatability issues with WP < 1.5.1.1 or so (1.5.1 and 1.5 both had different levels of problems with the menu interface…). Should work MUCH better now. And the available sIFR font libraries continue to grow.

-d

I tried several of your CG plugins. Even after fixing the font/echo error, InBetween refused to display new inbetweens or even edits of existing inbetweens. I tried inserting Adsense code, but nothing happened. It only displayed the default in betweens.

After trying AntiSpam I spent just under an hour restoring all 413 comments on my blog instantly marked as spam and hidden by the plugin. I’m grateful for two things: First, I test installed it on a blog only 4 months old, and, second, that I knew about CJD Spam Nuke and its ability to restore (one at a time) comments that ill-behaving scripts like CG AntiSpam hide.

You might want to warn people that if CG AntiSpam wipes clean every single one of their comments, they can restore them with a significant time investment and CJD Spam Nuke.

These are the only two plugins I’ve tried of yours–I downloaded several to test, but I’m very leery about even activating them, to be honest.

Hmmm. Not sure what the problem is you are seeing with Inbetween. Once I found that font/echo typo, all the rest seemed to be working. If you clear everything, and add just one simple echo, does it work as expected?

I’d love to see your 413 comments as an exported .sql file at some point — AntiSpam shouldn’t be false-tagging everything in the world, and if it really is then I need to pull it and get sample data for what’s causing the problem. Please contact me offline a cgcode at chait dot net if you’re willing to help.

Also, AntiSpam doesn’t ‘wipe clean’ anything — it changes one, and only one, field in each comment record to mark it as ‘spam’ instead of ‘not approved’ or ‘approved’. Yes, there’s a bunch of other plugins which can change the field back (and AntiSpam will as well in a future release).

Unfortunately, AntiSpam hasn’t gotten the testing and feedback needed to help me work out glitches. I thank you for posting your issues, as it helps me to improve things. And none of my plugins should do negative things upon activation — that’d be a bad bug!

The only plugins that affect users or moderation are CG-Referrer and CG-AntiSpam. CG-Referrer now defaults to just tracking and requires the user to enable ‘checking and bouncing’. AntiSpam sounds like it has some bugs I’ve never found in my own testing.

But pretty much all my other plugins are ‘enhancements’, and shouldn’t affect any existing data or interactions. If you have things you are interested in, and want to know exactly what they do when activated, just ask away! I’m more than happy to quell any ‘fears’ you might have.

-d

I got this error on the admin under InBetween when I click populate and when I try to add new inbetween

Unable to open file (/wp-content/cg-inbetween.dat).

and this on my blog:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in wp-content/plugins/cg-inbetween.php on line 85

Hmm. I thought I had fixed all the foreach-type error cases in the latest version. Is it possible you have something older? (Like from the competition site, which has an early release…)

The first error usually means that your wp-content folder isn’t properly writeable by the server. I know some people have 755, I usually use 666, 766, or 777 depending on the server. You should check your permissions on that folder, and notch up the writability permissions one notch until it works (i.e., owner should already be set, try user, then group — or whatever the three are in order!).

-d

David, I finally got around to installing your latest version of the PowerPack on my “test” site and “turned on” CG-AntiSpam on July 4th. I paid close attention to the “tagging” so that I would not lose valid comments – fortunately for me as quite a few were set to be “purged” due to the fact they had no “comment_agent” info.

Might be nice to be able to “deselect” valid comments rather than have to go into the database. In this case I just went in and gave dummy agents to all the comments and changed them from “spam” back to “1” and thus saved them this time and for all subsequent “tags”.

Since July 4th I have had 732 spam messages all caught by either WP (about 50) and the rest by CG-Antispam. Can’t say it is a total success, however, because I haven’t had a valid comment posted yet ?? so don’t know if it will get “through”, but no spam has.

… Now it is 738 and counting (man, I really wish there was a way to fight back). I noticed that “flushing” doesn’t flush the WP caught spam, might be nice if it did, too.

Hey Beel!

Yes, I’ve planned on enhancements to AntiSpam — but have had so little feedback (and so little time), and if other plugins have really taken the lion’s share of users I’m not sure how to take AntiSpam to a next level usefully.

The ability to add some whitelisting and un-tagging within the AntiSpam interface is probably toward the top of the potential future improvements. It’s something that comes up a lot.

Flush >should< flush anything tagged as spam — I actually wanted different tags where I could differentiate things that AntiSpam marked versus WP, but the WP1.5 spam marking is a single-tag only. I’m considering having a second table with meta-data on the spammed comments, which would also enable more complex anti-spam and whitelisting (as well as gray/blacklisting too…).

Some of this might occur naturally as I continue ahead with CG-Referrer improvements — since AntiSpam utilizes the same blacklist, and over time the two may re-merge some of their spam-detection mechanisms (they used to be the same function, but now I think AntiSpam is a bit behind…).

Thanks for all the feedback — and ‘taking the risk’ trying out AntiSpam. I’ll definitely take all the comments to heart as I look at next revisions!

-d

Man, David, your plugins keep getting better! Thanks for everything!

hmmm, the deluge of spam has subsided but when I hit “show” I would see all the cg and wp marked spam, hitting “flush” would get rid of all those marked by cg but leave the wp ones (used phpmyadmin to “flush” those)

Since the focus is on CG-Referrer, it would be nice if there was a “flush” there, too. I know once tagged they don’t show up in my “Recent Referrers” sidebar list, but it doesn’t take long for the table to get clogged with useless poker crap and the backup for my test blog goes from 500k to 9meg! – And as I recall “CGRef Recent” shows the most recent 25 entries – which may all be tagged spam hits.

I need to figure a way to automagically run “tag” since, unlike Antispam, it doesn’t catch them coming in.

I am playing around with the others, too, so I will keep you posted. I have been running RunPHP on my church site, but I think your QuickPHP will be a better fit. As always, great job!

I’ll have to look into why WP spam isn’t being flushed. I didn’t think I was identifying things any different, but maybe I am.

CG-Referrer has a Flush-equiv, but it’s hidden under the covers at the moment. I’ll have to find a good way to expose it. “Purge” was sort of a similar concept, but flushes all data of some age-range, rather than just blocked stuff (which my other flush does…).

I also explicitly exclude CG-Referrer’s table from both my custom backup script and from a DB-Backup plugin I’ve used (easy enough to add the table to the backup plugins as an exclusion case…). My Referrer table is something like 40MB typically for about a 90-day window.

‘Tag’ is run auto-magically on stuff as it comes in. But if they aren’t identified (CG-Ref and AntiSpam use slightly different detection methods…), running ‘Tag’ won’t do anything. However, if you say updated your local cg-blacklist with new terms to catch things, click Tag and it’ll go re-tag the database (well, at least until the php process times out!). I go reverse-chron when tagging, assuming the latest entries are the ones you are trying to re-tag…

Thanks for the feedback!

-d

I am not getting slammed right now, but though I was aware ‘tag’ worked on spam comments coming in, I did not experience that with CG-Ref. I would check my “Recent Referrers” periodically in the sidebar, see poker crap, and then run ‘Tag’ to get rid of it. Perhaps I do not have it set up correctly and will play around with it when the next round of blacklisted items comes through.

The newest CG-Referrer has a bunch of variables that now don’t tag or block by default (due to some user requests — many folks just wanted it for referrer tracking, not spam-blocking…). Those options will also keep Tag from actually tagging things, but will show you how many things WOULD be tagged if the spam tracking was enabled.

Also, I just added a bunch of new CG-Referrer enhancements, like fixing Feed tracking, new feed count and pageviews on the CG-Referrer home panel, new Feeds page to see latest readers, and a new Flush Blocked item to clean out spam-referrer items. Anyone wanting to test it out before I get around to a CG-PP 1.5.4 release, ping me at cgcode at chait dot net.

-d

I’ll play around with it anytime. While you are around – small xhtml issue in tracktunes:
echo ‘<table><tr class=”rhead”><th width=”120″>Date</th> <th>Song</th><th>Artist</th><th>Album</th>’.”\n”;

needs a </tr> at the end

If you hit my site now and click on the “Recent Referrers” you will see why I would prefer not to have to do it manually ?? I guess I could just remove that feature, but I kinda like it.

fixed, thanks!

I’ll email you the referrer files in a bit.

-d