I have taken the NWEN website look and feel and adapted it to become a Wordpress theme which applies to the entire NWEN Blog.

The theme is standards compliant and works in Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

NWEN Blog Theme

FuseTop allows a website to display information from multiple sources in a centralized location. FuseTop displays the title, description, most recent articles, and subscription options for each site. On mouseover, each article will display a tooltip with the first part of the article content to allow the user to more easily determine if they want to visit the link.

FuseTop was developed using PHP, SimplePie, XHTML, RSS, and CSS on an Apache server.

It’s been five years, and the tools for combating comment spam have evolved. Instead of relying on a blacklist as in the days of yore, newer anti-spam services use a variety of tests and heuristics to decide what category a comment falls in.

Comments are classified either as “ham” (a valid comment), “spam” (a bad comment), or “unknown” (unsure). Generally, the ham comments are allowed to go straight through, spam comments are blocked, and unknown comments are held for moderation.

Instead of being built into publishing platforms such as Wordpress or Movable Type, most anti-spam solutions are run as web services. The publishing platform will either come with an anti-spam plugin or have some available that will talk to the remote web service to determine the status of a comment.

Here I present three of the best anti-spam tools currently available.

Akismet

Akismet has long been the best anti-spam tool available for use with Wordpress. Akismet is free for personal use, but for commercial use a license is required. Akismet is most commonly used as a Wordpress plugin, but it is available for other platforms including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, Joomla, and more. Libraries have been developed that enable its use in Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, and more.

Mollom

Mollom is new to the anti-spam game and is is currently in public beta. It originated as a module for the Drupal content management system. It combines many of the techniques discussed above, but to ease the process of moderation also incorporates a CAPTCHA on “unsure” comments to test if the comment is coming from a human rather than a spam bot.

A Mollom plugin for Wordpress — WP Mollom — is under development by Matthias Vandermaesen.

Mollom libraries have also been developed for Java, Ruby, Python, .NET, and PHP.

Final pricing for Mollom hasn’t been determined, but according to the pricing page, “The basic Mollom service will be free — yes, as in beer — but it will be limited in volume and features.”

TypePad AntiSpam

TypePad AntiSpam became the newest player in the fight against spam when it was released today (5/29/2008). Six Apart has been doing testing of the service for a few months and today declared it ready for open beta.

Having glowing words from TechCrunch won’t hurt early adoption of the service, and you can’t beat the price. “TypePad AntiSpam beta is free for any type of use, personal and commercial, regardless of how many comments you receive.”

Coming out of the gate, TypePad AntiSpam has plugins for Movable Type 3 & 4 and Wordpress 2.5. Six Apart is encouraging developers to get involved and create libraries for languages and plugins for other platforms.

Coming to Conclusions

Up until now, I have been using Akismet to protect my sites from spam. However, I have decided to try TypePad AntiSpam based on the price, compatibility with the Akismet API, and because it has been released as open source. Thus far, I have had no problems.

If you’re looking for the most established solutions, at this point Akismet has been around longer, isn’t a beta product, and has a reputation for stopping comment spam. As Mollom and TypePad AntiSpam mature, they will garner more attention and usage throughout the web.

Initial Resources

• Download Wordpress
• Install Wordpress: follow the installation instructions available here

Design Resources

• Free Wordpress Themes: some free, basic Wordpress themes
• Template Monster: higher quality themes for purchase
• Using and Creating Wordpress Themes: DIY guide to using, customizing, and creating Wordpress themes

Enhancing Wordpress

• Wordpress Plugin Directory: 2,000+ plugins
• Akismet: the premier anti-spam tool for Wordpress, the most important plugin you can have
• Weblog Tools Collection: a great resource for discovering new plugins/themes and general Wordpress news

If you need any help setting up, installing, or customizing Wordpress for use as a blog or content management system for your own website, please contact me and I can provide you an estimate for the work you need completed.

Of course, you’ll want to check your plugins before you upgrade. I had no trouble w/ the ones I use on this site (Akismet, MyTwitter, Contact Form 7, etc.)

One nice feature of the new version of Wordpress is the built-in ability to update plugins automatically. On the new version of the Wordpress Plugins screen, any plugin that needs updated will tell you and also provide a link to “upgrade automatically.” I tested it out for two plugins: I updated to the new MyTwitter 1.6 beta and the newest release of Contact Form 7.

The best change in Wordpress 2.5 is the overhaul of the admin interface. It has a cleaner interface, improved post editor, better support for adding media to posts, improved tagging, and miscellaneous tweaks here and there.

If the enhanced features would improve your life and you’ve got about thirty minutes to spend upgrading it and testing out the new capabilities, I recommend giving Wordpress 2.5 a try.

A short list of things to do before upgrading to Wordpress 2.5:
• Check for plugin compatability w/ the new version — before you upgrade, identify any plugins your site depends on for functionality. The Wordpress Plugin Directory is the central location to look for plugins and compatibility. Currently, even “featured” plugins such as podPress don’t claim to be ready for 2.5.
• Determine your aversion to risk — Wordpress does a good job patching up security issues, but when a new version comes out the software could have new vulnerabilities that have yet to be discovered. 2.5.1 will inevitably follow within the coming weeks or months as new potential issues become known.
• Weigh the benefits — Wordpress 2.5 comes with a number of new features and changes including a redesigned admin Dashboard and Dashboard widgets, customizable admin templates/stylesheets, improved tag management, better password security, a new Shortcode API, and more.

Tips
• If you’ve got a decent webhost, install Wordpress 2.5 in a test directory or domain (beta.example.com), install any plugins you need, and see if they work. It’s better to break a test site than to break your real site.
• Wait a few weeks — other people will run into problems w/ Wordpress 2.5 and blog, comment, and post to forums about the solutions they have. If you wait, you’ll be able to learn from their mistakes and solutions before using valuable time and resources on problems you don’t need to have.

Your Experience
If you have any thoughts or comments regarding your experience w/ Wordpress 2.5, feel free to share.

First, you need to install the Airport Express. This can be a difficult process depending on your level of experience with wireless networking; if you’re having trouble, visit the Apple Support page for the AirPort. To use the device, begin by running the installation software that comes with the device (or download it from Apple) on your computer. You will also need to connect the Airport Express to your stereo; for this, you can either use a 1/8″ to RCA connector or 1/8″ to Optical/Toslink connector and hook it to your stereo receiver or other audio input.

Once you’ve setup your wireless network and connected the Airport to your stereo, you can begin broadcasting music from your computer to your stereo using iTunes. In iTunes, check Edit->Preferences->Advanced to make sure “Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes” is selected. In the bottom right-hand corner of the iTunes screen, a dropdown list will show the speakers iTunes is able to connect to. It will allow you to select “Computer” to play audio through your computer speakers, and the list will also include the names of any identified Airport Express connections. In my case, it shows as “Casa Express” so it’s ready to play. Once I select “Casa Express,” iTunes connects and begins playing audio through the speakers connected to the Airport.

This works well for playing music from iTunes; however, I also want to be able to play other file types besides MP3, AAC, and Apple’s DRMed files; specifically, I want to be able to play FLAC files.

Thanks to another attendee at SaturdayHouse, I discovered Airfoil. Here’s the description:

With Airfoil for Windows [or Mac] you can take audio from any application and send to your AirPort Express units, as well as Apple TVs, and even other PCs and Macs running Airfoil Speakers! Transmit audio from Winamp, RealPlayer, and other media players. Send audio from Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and other music stores. Even web-based applications like Pandora, Last.fm, can now be transmitted wirelessly.

The good news about Airfoil is you can install a fully working demo version (Windows, Mac) in order to try it out before you buy it. I downloaded it, installed both the Airfoil for Windows and Airfoil Speakers applications.

At this point, I discovered my used AirPort Express had an outdated firmware version that I needed to update. No problem — I downloaded and ran the AirPort Express 6.3 firmware updater (Windows, Mac). (Note: The Windows version didn’t work on Vista for me, but I had no trouble running the update from a Windows XP installation connected to the same wireless network.)

Now that I had Airfoil installed, I ran both the Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers applications. I then booted up Winamp (features include FLAC support) to try the wireless broadcast using a FLAC-rip of Motion City Soundtrack’s album “Evin If It Kills Me.”

In Airfoil, I selected Winamp from the application list at the bottom of the screen. Then I clicked the volume icon next to the name for my Airport Express (Casa Express) and adjusted the volume. Airfoil informed me it needed to restart Winamp so I let it. Once Winamp loaded back up, I pressed play again and then my stereo (which was already turned on and set to the channel the Airport Express is hooked to) began to play the Motion City Soundtrack album.

In the demo version, it starts to make noise on the sound after 10 minutes. With the product fully working, I decided to give them my $25 so I can enjoy the benefits of the Airport Express with any application on my computer and not just iTunes.

Seattle Saturday House is a weekly gathering of several people who meet and do … whatever they want! People work on projects, people talk about ideas, people conspire and hatch plans, and people play games with each other.

Last Saturday, people held a session about “hacks that make life simpler.” I took notes, and I’ve cleaned them up here for your viewing. If you’ve got any additional ideas to share or if you were one of the presenters and want to correct something I’ve posted here, please let me know by leaving a comment or emailing me (cal /at/ calvinfreitas \dot\ com).

#1: Using Subversion to Manage Your Home Directory (/home/username/) — Patrick
Patrick suggests using Subversion as a way to manage and synchronize your home directory between multiple machines. The benefits of such as strategy is it allows for version control of your documents and the ability to keep them all in order no matter what computer you’re using so long as you’ve got internet access in order to grab your latest repository copy.

The actual functioning of Subversion was outside the scope of this discussion, but if you’re looking for information go to the Subversion website.

Patrick mentioned that if he could restart his method from the beginning, he would actually set up a few separate repositories. For example, separate ones for:

• /home/patrick/etc
• /home/patrick/bin
• /home/patrick/lib

The benefit of having separate ones being less customization to do because if you have only one there’s going to be a number of files/directories you’ll want to exclude for various reasons.

Patrick has also created a custom Makefile — allows him to run specific custom commands in his home dir (e.g. make test). In the makefile he has a “test” function that runs some basic commands to display the following.

your home is /home/patrick
your uname is linux
date is 20080225174525

Patrick uses the Makefile for scripts he’s written over his lifetime that does something he wants. When necessary, he can add new basic commands to the script to give him new functionality from the command line. Recently, he’s had people bugging him to start using Twitter so he added a new “tweet” function to his makefile.

Because he has his Makefile and all his other scripts in Subversion, he can use them wherever he wants. Desktop w/ linux? Checks out his latest code from Subversion. After creating and editing new files, synchronize to a web host to make sure the newest files will be available from his other machines. Then when the laptop needs to get the latest files, he does a checkout from the web host and now he’s up to date again.

Suggestions from others: Jdugan recommends using Mercurial — fewer dependencies than Subversion. Someone else suggested creating a /home/user/tricks folder that includes any scripts acquired w/ useful functionality and checking it into a repository to take your scripts anywhere with you.

Patrick’s Makefile:
Download It Here — Please note that the bottom portion of the text file should actually be put into a separate file in /home/username/etc/Makefile.linux

Hosting: If you don’t have a web host where you can host your subversion repository, its usefulness will be slightly more limited. Personally, I recommend Dreamhost — easy host to deal w/ and Subversion is a quick install (to svn.example.com) — but there are plenty of other good hosts as well, feel free to recommend some in the comments.