In an effort to reduce spam posts we have installed the vBulletin module “Spambuster” on the Pligg forum. The plugin automatically detects spam based on a point system that checks keywords from users who haven’t posted much. Any posts that it thinks might be spam are automatically turned invisible and a thread is created for moderators to review the post and deal with it appropriately.
In the past we have been getting cell phone advertisements almost daily, but it looks like the new spam detection program will prevent that from ever happening again. In case you are a relatively new forum user and you find that your posts aren’t showing up after submitting them, please take into consideration that this may be because it used words that our spam protection program might have flagged. If you find yourself in this situation please give a few hours for one of the Pligg forum moderators to check and approve your post.
I spent some time this evening going over what was causing problems with donors not being credited automatically like they did months ago. After looking into the problem I quickly realized that I had made a big mistake that had gone unnoticed for months. At some point I had installed two separate Paypal donation plugins for vBulletin and somehow never noticed. I didn’t realize until tonight that the plugins were separate and thus the features of the two are not combined, so I had to choose one plugin over the other. I chose to go with the more simple plugin, which is visually less attractive and has fewer features than the other.
The donation process will now operate correctly and add your username to the list of donors and automatically move you into the ad-free usergroup for the forum. Sorry to previous donors who will not be credited on the donor list, there is no easy way of importing the data into this plugin. Previous donors will however still be moved into the ad-free usergroup, but this will have to be done manually by me. If you have donated $10 or more in the past, please send a private message to Yankidank and I will take care of moving you into the correct usergroup ASAP.
There have been some issues with the Pligg donation page automatically crediting donors, so until I figure out a solution I will have to manually add donors to the list so that they no longer see ads. If you have donated using the same email address that you used to register for the Pligg forum you should be credited by the end of the day. If you used another email address, please send Yankidank a PM on the forum with the email you used to donate. Hopefully this issue can be resolved sometime in the next week, but I don’t have an easy way to test the donor status at this moment without actually donating.
Pligg Beta 9.8 released today (9/8/2007) with several bug fixes and a more compatible and optimized template. We noticed today that it has been a really long time since the last major release, but if you compare us to Mac OS X we are moving pretty fast with incremental updates. Pretty soon we will be releasing our stable 1.0 version, which should be the most stable and efficient version of Pligg yet.
Below is a list of the most recent changes for Pligg Beta 9.8.
- Fix for various ‘undefined index’ errors.
- Various code improvements.
- Added various module hooks.
- Updates to make yget Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
- Various bugfixes.
- MySQL strict mode fixes.
- Optimized CSS.
- Updates to make CSS 2.1 Valid.
- Fixed tabindex on register and login pages.
- Fixed www / no www voting problem.
- ezSQL cache of some of the tables.
- Upgraded RSS Importer to ver 0.5.
- Added ability to use Google site search.
- Added ability to log ez_sql queries to a file.
- Added ability to disable ‘Last 5 people to view this profile’ as it is causing DB problems for some users.
- Hide ‘god’ users from the ‘who voted’ section.
- Fix for MySQL usernames and passwords with “$” in it.
You can download Pligg Beta 9.8 here.
A reminder to all you Pliggers living out west. Pligg module developer Jesse Stay will be speaking at the Utah Open Source Conference this week. Jesse will be doing a presentation on developing Pligg modules and has created some great stuff for Pligg. I’m sure this will be a very informative presentation.
Here are the details from his site.
I’ve been asked to present on developing Pligg modules at the Utah Open Source Conference, September 6-8, 2007. So if you’re in the area and would like to learn how to write one, please be sure to attend! I’m thinking of going through a 15 minute or so walk through of creating a simple module to show how easy it is. This also means I’ve got to get my Email_Latest plugin fully functional and maybe make the Digg plugin a little better. Also, expect a Facebook module here shortly that will allow you to tie Pligg into Facebook Applications. What would you like to see in the presentation?
Thanks Jesse, and best of luck from all of us here at Pligg!
Last week we shut down the old Pligg Wiki because of a large amount of spam that the moderators were not able to keep up with. To make up for the short Wiki downtime we are announcing the brand new Pligg Wiki 2.0. The new wiki system integrates with vBulletin, allowing registered forum members to edit wiki articles and even post comments. The new wiki operates much like a normal forum, so it is easy to create new Wiki pages and browse and edit the existing pages. I have already added several pages from our old forum to the new wiki and some of those articles appear with a “Reserved for future use” message at the top. I plan to include video tutorials in this area for many of the articles.
One of the great features of the new wiki is that you are able to create a “book”. This lets you link wiki articles together like chapters in a book, allowing wiki readers to read articles in order. This is great when several wiki articles share the same category and should be read in a linear fashion.
Now that we have a brand new wiki, please do me a favor and help us out by contributing. All you need is a Pligg Forum account.
Even after spending a considerable amount of time yesterday cleaning up spam links and even adding some additional content to the Pligg Wiki I have decided to pull the plug on it. Today I signed on and saw that there was a significant amount of spam added since my visit a day earlier. We have been looking for software to replace the wiki for a while now, but there doesn’t seem to be a nice package offered for vBulletin users. The MediaWiki platform has not only a horrible interface, few customizable options, and a generic template thats difficult to change, but it has basically no spam protection. The wiki’s contents will be copied prior to taking it down so that we could post it elsewhere when we find a better system. It looks that it might be a while before we find a better method for posting this type of content, but I’m too frustrated with removing huge amounts of spam daily to allow this to continue. The wiki will probably be taken down in about a week, so this post is just a heads up and a place for you to voice your opinion if you are against this decision.
If you know of an alternative to MediaWiki that preferably integrates with vBulletin and offers a decent administrative panel please let me know in the comments section of this article.
*UPDATE* Please see the article “Pligg Wiki 2.0” to learn about the new Pligg Wiki.
