Note: This plugin is NOT yet compatible with auto-update. Updating this plugin with the auto-update in Wordpress may cause some issues.

Version 1.2.2 specifically addresses the following issues:

1. Guest voting problem

A problem has been identified that will prevent guests from voting once another person has casted a vote. This affects users using version 1.2.0 and the new database version (3000). Version 1.2.2 fixes this problem and guests can now cast votes normally.

2. Loss of votes when using plugin auto-update

Vote It Up does not support the auto-update feature from Wordpress yet. Fortunately, Vote It Up provides a back up system for votes in the event that the database upgrade failed, hence no votes were lost. Version 1.2.2 adds a roll-back button (accessible via plugin options) that forces the plugin to use the older database instead of the new and blank one generated by auto-update. You will obtain your original votes by clicking on the roll back link.

Using an older version of Vote It Up may restore your votes as well.

3. User register notice

The plugin no longer embeds a hidden layer in a page’s footer if the user chose to enable guest voting.

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I apologize for any inconvenienced caused as a result of the latest update to the plugin.

Regards,

Nicholas Kwan

Changelog

[Changed] - Database format changed. You will need to update the vote database in order to use the new features present in this plugin and future revisions of the plugin
[Changed] - Drafts, private posts and pages no longer show up on widget
[Bug Fix] - Technical limit removed for voting. Votes can be created as long as the blog still has sufficient disk space for it
[Bug Fix] - Fixed duplicate voting issues arising from caching
[Bug Fix] - After Vote Text issue with images fixed
[Bug Fix] - Added pagination for Edit Votes Panel
[Bug Fix] - Votes considered in Most Voted widget correctly includes the most recent posts

Database update

The database format has been changed. Some of the new features or fixes requires this new format.  You can update the database via the Wordpress dashboard through the Vote It Up configuration page.

The following features requires the update in order to work or they will be disabled:
[Changed] - Drafts, private posts and pages no longer show up on widget
[Bug Fix] - Technical limit removed for voting. Votes can be created as long as the blog still has sufficient disk space for it
[Bug Fix] - Fixed duplicate voting issues arising from caching
[Bug Fix] - Added pagination for Edit Votes Panel
[Bug Fix] - Votes considered in Most Voted widget correctly includes the most recent posts

What’s changed:

[Feature] - Added Percent (%) voting mathamatics and capability (inital votes count as “up” vote)
[Feature] - Added Percent skin

Please use the Wordpress mirror to download the plugin. Due to technical difficulties, the plugin page could not be updated on this site.

A summary of changes is listed below:

[Feature] - Initial vote count added
[Feature] - Text shown in place of vote text after user casts vote
[Feature] - Permission setting that can disallow post authors from voting own post. Their posts would show up as voted by themselves
[Feature] - Ability to set number of posts shown in Most voted posts widget
[Feature] - New template added: Text. This is a simplified version of the ticker without borders
[Feature] - Votes can now be edited via “Edit Votes”
[Changed] - Two-way voting now made more flexible
[Changed] - When guest voting is disabled, a popup appears to inform users they need to register
[Changed] - Some visual changes in administration panel for VoteItUp to fit the Wordpress 2.7 dashboard
[Changed] - Template system modified so as to adapt to several plugin changes
[Changed] - Former “Modern ticker” template renamed to “Orange ticker”

In addition, Stoob has been added to the committers list for this plugin.

1. Vote It Up plugin now has a new contributer (SillyBeans from Wordpress)
2. Discontinuation of mini e-zine (MagThis)
3. Discontinuation of ApiThis service. The Social Bookmark service has been relocated to Tevine. An emergency update to Social Dropdown will be released to fix this problem.
4. Some minor administrative changes. Hopefully Tevine may get some updates from other people.

Though, if compared to the previous update, the previous one would be much enjoyed by most webmasters (firsly being that there were much more increases in PR than decreases). Seems like Google may have tweaked the alogarithm a little, or it could be that most webmasters are relaxing after preparing all that Search Engine Optimisation last year.

The previous PageRank update was on May, which means this update came a lot more sooner than expected. Judging from past updates in January, February, and May, it does seem that Google is updating PageRank much more regularly, with its cycles becoming shorter (hopefully moving towards the 1 month cycle Google had about 6 years ago). The current PageRank cycle is estimated to span across 1.5 to 3 months.

Update: The “beta” notice appears to be gone, for now.

Seems like Google is doing a mini experiment on the iGoogle page. This time, it involves a small little yellow notice with a “Close” link. Apparently Google forgot to place any message on the notice.

Clicking on the close link will close the notice, though not for long as the empty annoucement will spring right back on the next time you reload the page.

Once again, yet another one of those minor things to happen on the Google home page.

1. Buy Entrecard credits

After much debate on whether Entrecard credits are available with cash (officially anyway), Entrecard decided to fill in the gap by introducing the option of buying credits. The buy credits link is available from the main page. Credits are only purchaseable using PayPal. Credits can only be bought in batches of 1000, 5000 or 10000 credits, with each 1000 credits causing $9.50 (presumable determined automatically via a system within Entrecard). Only 12000 credits are allocated for purchase for all users, probably as “market mechanism” to prevent rapid devaluation (or the reverse) of Entrecard credits.

While third party credits are usually offered at a lower price than the official price, there are nonetheless some great perks of the credits coming directly from Entrecard: They are much more secure, and that money spent on these credits go back to the community. The 12,000 credits quota set is partly due to a second feature of Entrecard credits - you can possibly earn actual cash from it.

Entrecard credits sold by cash are compensated to original members who have sold their Entrecard credits back to Entrecard. Hence Entrecard acts as the middleman. However, only certain members would benefit from the extra revenue, and it is generally those who are regarded as trusted and reputable. This applies mainly to active members.

2. Blog on Entrecard blog

If you are not a contributor for Entrecard’s blog, you can get your post published on Entrecard and earn credits for it. Each post successfully approved will get Entrecard credits credited to your account. The better the post, the larger the payout. The payout is largely variable, but the average suggested by Entrecard is in the area of several hundreds, but it can reach a possible maximum of 2000 credits.

Each post on Entrecard will contain a link to your site, thereby promoting your own site as the Entrecard blog receives thousands of views each day.

3. Get paid to blog on your blog

Entrecard has taken one step further to helping new bloggers get the promotion they need. The moment you make a post on your own site, you would get paid 25 Entrecard credits per every 3 days you have made at least one post on your site. Entrecard would detect if you have made a new post on your site via checking your site’s RSS feed.

I’ve just realized that Google changed it’s favicon from capital G to small g. For those of you who do not know what a favicon is, it is that small 16 by 16 pixels icon you sometimes see beside the address bar. I guess that’s probably one of the minor changes that I’ve ever seen happening on the Google homepage.

Nonetheless, it does appear that someone spotted it as well. Kudos to all who managed to spot the change.

I still can’t get accustomed to the new icon. Maybe I’ve been using Google for a very long time and even a small icon change makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Hopefully I could get accustomed to it sooner or later. Honestly, while the new icon looks pretty sleek, the shadow (or gradient?) behind the “g” makes it look ackward. I guess that’s because I’m using IE7 and that the icon appear to be semi-transparent. On Firefox, the icon looks great.

*Note: In order to view the new favicon, you can shortcut the caching process by simply accessing the favicon directly (i.e. google.com/favicon.ico) and refreshing it. Tada, the new Google icon!

Let’s hope Google won’t be turning lowercase anytime soon, otherwise it’ll look pretty odd.

The flaw is being used by Chinese hackers (presumably, since most of the affected sites are in China) to steal World of Warcraft passwords through the installation of a keylogger that records keystrokes for certain programmes. It also attempts to disable Kaspersky Anti-virus (fortunately most other anti-viruses are not affected).

The attackers also attempted mass SQL injection attacks (i.e. attempting to insert some “additional” stuff or modify things in your site) early on and are using these victim sites as a means of

While the bug affects Internet Explorer more often than Firefox in a way, it’s still a good idea to update your Flash player immediately (even if you not play World of Warcraft).

Looks like even after extensive testing on Wordpress’s side, one nasty bug managed to slip through, and it’s not the fault of Wordpress either. Apparently, anyone using mod_security on Apache will not be able to upload anything on Wordpress 2.5 or Wordpress 2.5.1. This could be because mod_security doesn’t take a liking towards the Flash uploader Wordpress now uses. This is a big problem for Wordpress, since more than 30% of the Internet uses mod_security (courtesy of Hostgator and numerous other Internet web hosts), which means these uploaders won’t work if you simply install Wordpress and do nothing else after.

The fix?

Simply create or edit your .htaccess using your text editor. Insert the following lines to the file:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

That should switch off security only for your uploader, and chances are your uploader should work fine.

Alternatively, since the entire problem is caused by Flash, you could try disabling the Flash uploader using a plugin that does that.

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A second glitch is that sometimes the media gallery in Wordpress 2.5 may not be able to insert images. In addition to that, changes to your post might be lost for unknown reasons after doing that. Nonetheless, you can insert the image in another method by copying the URL of the image in the gallery and inserting it via Add Image in the toolbar.

My Search Funds is offering to pay you just for web searches. That’s probably one of the easiest ways to earn money, since after all, you do use Google or Yahoo right? Results are obtained from Yahoo, Ask, and Windows Live. Google is not supported since Google doesn’t permit third parties to modify searches. In order words, MySearchFunds would be Dogpile, except that it pays.

The new Dogpile?

Dogpile is already popular enough just for implementing the idea of combining all your favorite (and not-so-favorite) search engines in one. My Search Funds is very similar, except that you need to install a plugin in order to use their service. This plugin appears to record your searches, naturally since it has to know how and what you are searching for. The programme may discredit related searches so as to prevent “repeated searches”.

It’s pretty unusual that someone would offer paid to search services, especially since they may make a huge loss out of it. I’m sure that My Search Funds would be using the information collected in order to perfect their search results, or something else. Nonetheless, for those of you who are not too concerned with privacy issues, go ahead and use My Search Funds.

Nonetheless, the information collected by My Search Funds would be incredibly useful to companies like Alexa, since it records search traffic.

Privacy issue?

My Search Funds states in its privacy policy and Terms of services that it would collect information and retain it. Fortunately, it’s not much of a problem, since Google does almost the same. However, the fact that they are willing to divulge your personal information to the authorities meant that they will keep your personal information forever. Most search companies do not do that, so you may want to be wary of that.

Not much information was given on how the information might be used for future purposes.

To trust or not to?

There are no costs involved in participating in the programme, but you may want to note that My Search Funds is recording whatever you are searching. While you may not mind that, some do especially if they are searching for you-know-what. The pay rate sounds cheesy - but it’s possible that they may have gotten that from just ad revenue.

I’m pleased to announce that the Convault theme is available for download. The convault theme is a 2-column layout that supports widgets.

The other theme is still undergoing further testing and may be released shortly.

Dofollow enabled

Tevine would be removing nofollow from comments (i.e. dofollow) to further credit any commentators. If you are a registered user, your comment would not be subjected to immediate moderation. However, if you are not registered, your comments would only appear after moderation.

#1 Pligg - Digg

Pligg is the closest you can ever get to Digg, except perhaps the interface (but you could always make one up right?). Currently the most popular CMS under social bookmarking, Pligg is used numerous entreprening site owners. Pligg also supports anonymous voting, perhaps one element that Digg cannot offer (yet).

The 10 minute install guide to Pligg (assuming you have your web host ready):
1) Download Pligg, install it to where you want it to be. Make these directories writable (CHMOD 777) otherwise some features might not be available: backup, cache, templates, templates_c, avartars
2) Go to the installation page (i.e. http:// yourpliggsite /install/) and follow the instructions on the installer
3) If you done it right, Pligg would be installed within 5 minutes. You can then log in using your own password.
4) Go to the administration panel (link is at the top panel) and browse/tinker with the options available.

While Pligg may be still in beta, it is fairly stable and usable. There might still be some glitches though, but chances are it is fixed with every update. Fortnately, Pligg is in active development and a final release may come out at any time.
Rating: 9/10
Sites using Pligg: Sphinn

#2 Drupal (+ plugins) - Reddit

Drupal is a general Content Management System, but with the addition of some modifications it can emulate Reddit. The Vote Up/Down package allows you to do just that.

Installation:
1) Install Drupal
2) Download the package and install it to the “modules” directory
3) Log into your Drupal install and enable the Voting modules: actions, links, userpoints, views, vote_storylink, vote_up_down, voting_actions, votingapi.
4) Upload node-storylink.tpl.php, template.php (may need to be combined/merged with the existing file if any) files to the theme directory.
5) Disable “Vote widget display” in admin/settings/vote_up_down (if using node-storylink.tpl.php).

Note: This module is discontinued due to inactivity and is not updated for several months, thus no updates are expected.
Rating: 7/10

#3 Corank - Digg, Del.icio.us

A pretty nice Del.icio.us clone, Corank is perhaps a great alternative to the above 2 especially if you do not wish to install anything much. However, there’s only one problem with using Corank - it’s not something that comes out-of-the-box. You’ll need some pretty decent programming skills to make use of the API they provide. However, because this makes use of an API, you need not worry about resource problems. Fortunately, this API is very robust and can do quite a lot of things. In order to access Corank’s API, you need to register an account there. CoRank does not support anonymous voting.

Rating: 7/10

#4 Upwarded - Digg

Now a discontinued project, this would-be Digg clone has fallen out of favour and is released to the public as open-source code. If you are looking for a really, really simple Digg-like CMS, Upwarded would probably be the perfect choice since the files are very easy to customize. Upwarded allows users to vote for articles anonymously. The only drawback is that it doesn’t support user registration.

1) Download and upload the files to a suitable place
2) Run the SQL script in sql.txt (via phpMyAdmin)
3) Create a cronjob (view the readme file provided for further information)

Since this is a discontinued project, it is unlikely that there would be any updates. Nonetheless, the project is fairly complete, and does what it’s suppose to do.

Rating: 6/10

#5 Blinkk - Digg

If the above three are not enough to satisfy your needs, perhaps Blinkk will. Blinkk is the merger between the main Social Bookmarking sites that inspire all. Sadly, this project doesn’t seem to be quite as popular compared to the others.

The open-source project is discontinued a few months ago and was converted into commercial software.

Rating: 5/10