libertus

Which is better; http://www.libertini.net/libertus/ or http://libertini.net/libertus/ ?

Both are URLs that refer to precisely the same resource: this blog. Given that both are perfectly valid, which one should I use as the address of my WordPress blog? The WordPress documentation for the General Options is vague but on reading it I would conclude that I should enter http://libertini.net/libertus, my latter choice.

The WordPress documentation is out-of-date. The correct answer is: neither.

(more…)

I’m a sensitive soul with computers. Whilst I appreciate the incredible power and capacity that modern computers provide, I cannot help but remember those hazy days during my youth when I learned how to program. My first computer was modest by today’s standards - a Sinclair ZX81 with 8Kb of ROM (including a built-in BASIC interpreter) and 1Kb of RAM. That was enough for some but I didn’t really get started until I had 16Kb of RAM. That was enough for me and my skills at the time. I proceeded to write computer games.

WordPress is a personal publishing system designed to work on modern servers. Servers are enormous. The server that hosts this blog has 125,000 times more RAM than my first computer. My blog may use only 8MB, a limit enforced by the programming language that the blog uses; PHP.

So how does WordPress fill this tiny pocket of the big machine? Today I’m looking at the memory footprint of WordPress 2.0.2. How efficiently does WordPress use its most precious resource?

(more…)

Paying attention to printed page appearance.

A new plugin is running here which offers in-line post editing. It will offer a lot more soon. See also: blogramthing, blog-ram-thing, The Blog RAM Thing? posted 14^th March 2006.

(more…)

They’re new and they’re all the rage! Widgets for WordPress are here and they have something to do with the sidebar of your blog. Well, what exactly?
(more…)

By far the most important component of WordPress, as for any CMS, is The Loop or engine. The purpose of the Loop is to select from the available content that which the reader has requested then deliver that content, item by item, through the rest of the processing system. In short, the Loop decides what posts can be seen.

The WordPress loop is to most blog owners, I suspect, a few lines of barely-comprehensible code in some of their theme files. This is a good thing. Most blog owners, like most car owners, prudently avoid disaster by going nowhere near the engine. Other blog owners however, like some car owners, are intolerably curious as to how things work and don’t mind breaking things for fun.

I won’t go anywhere near a real engine, but a software engine poses no threat to my fingers, so in I go.
(more…)

The conjuring discussion regarding security checking on the WordPress wp-hackers mailing list and my subsequent testing have revealed a serious security flaw in Liberated WordPress 1.5.2, the software that runs this blog.

The flaw allows anyone I trust to post drafts, to make a draft post containing images with appropriately forged source hrefs, to subsequently destroy the entire contents of the blog when an administrator views the draft, with no interaction required.

In other words, an automatic nuclear bomb.

Fortunately, the only person entrusted to write posts on this blog is me, so unless I decide to nuke myself, I’m pretty safe. On the other hand, knowing my blog could vapourise at any time gives me the willies. I can’t wait for someone else to issue a repair.

I’m going to have to fix this one all by myself.

(more…)

In the conjuring discussion, I offer an analysis of the security-related changes in the as-yet-unreleased WordPress 1.5.3.

This is my work and my report.

(more…)

How about the full text of many recent posts on several of the WordPress developer’s blogs? Without your knowledge or permission? Does that sound like a valuable option?

You will need: SQL knowledge or interest, geekiness, a cup of coffee.
You should have: A WordPress blog, PHPMyAdmin, half an hour.
My intent: poke fun at WordPress developers, for poor customer service, again.
Your reward: entertainment, enlightenment, knowledge.

(more…)

I did something quite cool today. I turned one of my blog posts into a program, using no more than fragment identifiers and a simple Outreach tag to GET user <input> from <form>s.

See also: Introducing The BlogRAMthing posted 19^th May 2006.

(more…)