GMail is obviously not GMail!

You’re probably asking yourself why you care, and why I’m stating something that could be obvious?

Well, because to a LOT of people, it’s NOT obvious.

In fact, to any normal techie, it’s a head-slapping problem. Non-techie visitors to THIS site, which in my mind looks NOTHING LIKE GMAIL, are STILL trying to log into GMail using the search box. They’ve just searched for something like “GMail Login Page” and land on this website. Then, without thinking, try and log into GMail here.

I’ve got quite a few search results in my site stats with email addresses.

That sounds dumb, right. Now, imagine how many usernames and passwords gmail.co.za is getting?

I REALLY hope they’re responsible, and don’t decide to use that information for evil!

By the way, for those readers who are wondering, the correct address is www.gmail.com

How YOU can help!

Link to this article, spread the word, or something like that.

Yes, it sounds selfish, but so many times I feel like I am really glad that I am the owner of a specific website, because I could defraud a LOT of people out of a LOT of money if I were evil.

But I’m not, and I hope you’re not either.

(click to enlarge)

There are no MAJOR changes.

Here are the changes that HAVE been made:

• * Updated look & feel of admin page
• * Changed to use new “get options” methods
• * Added pretty little “Plugin Appreciation” box on the Admin page
• * Updated links to the plugin’s pages

Go read more about this plugin here:

Generic Stats Plugin

Here’s a copy of the “changelog” section in the readme.txt:

= 1.5 =
* 2009/11/01
* Fixed changelog

= 1.4 =
* 2009/11/01
* Recoded to use new Options methods
* Changed look & feel of admin section
* Added option to modify size of TextArea (the box for link code)
* Changed main URLs for the plugin
* Added ability to add the box to a Page

I had 2 updates today because I had a copy/paste issue with the documentation. It’s been a long day.

You can read more about it the plugin here: Please Link 2 Me WordPress Plugin

This was obviously an attempt at an April Fool’s Joke. I must say, I’m quite impressed with my WordPress/Google Logo

I was chatting to my cousin a couple of hours ago via IM, and he let slip about the news that Automattic had sold off WordPress to Google.

He knows this because he works with Matt Mullenweg, but he obviously doesn’t want me to “reveal his name” until the news is made public (which is going to happen in a few hours time apparently). So, for the purpose of this post, let’s call him Byron.

I asked if he minded if I copied and pasted a part of our conversation about it and he said he didn’t mind because the news would be released later today anyway. (I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that by the time anybody reads my blog, it will have been announced already).

geniosity [09:40 PM]:

So, how much did Matt sell it for?!

Byron [09:40 PM]:

Sorry, can’t say that just yet . But let’s just say he’ll be able to buy that Jazz band he always talks about starting. It wasn’t quite a YouTube deal… Or maybe it was.

geniosity [09:42 PM]:

Who approached who?

Byron [09:43 PM]:

Google approached us. We mentioned that they didn’t need to buy it, because it’s not like we’re in it for the money, but they said that it would be better for their image if they owned the world’s most popular blogging software.

They were just tired of everybody complaining about the Blogger platform. It crashes, it’s insecure, and it’s just not as cool as WordPress. So they decided to throw in the towel. Don’t quote me on this, (ok, quote me ) but even Evan Williams (of Twitter fame and the creator of “Blogger”) is embarrassed at the state of Blogger.

geniosity [09:44 PM]:

So will they be moving all blogger blogs to the WordPress platform?

Byron [09:44 PM]:

That will eventually happen. It will take a couple of months, but thanks to the great WordPress community, there’s already a Blogger importer, so it will just be a case of converting all the boring themes on Blogspot into WP themes, and then ironing out a few of the minor “missing features” in the importer, and they’ll be good to go.

geniosity [09:45 PM]:

What’ll happen to the Automattic team?

Byron [09:46 PM]:

Well, we’ve still got other software that we can focus on. We’ll be working out of the Googleplex, so there’ll be free food (for a few months at least, because I hear they’re planning on limiting that due to the current global financial crisis).

geniosity [09:47 PM]:

And did u get anything from this.

Byron [09:48 PM]:

he he he… I did, and I’m REALLY happy with it…

geniosity [09:48 PM]:

When’s it going to be announced?

Byron [09:49 PM]:

Should be in the next few hours. You’ll probably see something on Matt Cutt’s blog some time on Wednesday morning because he’s also pretty excited about it. But we’ll see what he says. (Especially since he already uses WordPress for his blog).

So, there’ you have it. Was quite an interesting IM conversation.

This plugin will show a popup window if somebody right-clicks on an image and asks them to use specific code which will link to your article.

Below is an image example.

You can read more about this on my blog post:

Hotlink 2 Link WordPress Plugin

This plugin is based on and uses the JavaScript widget “LinkMyPics“

Do you have the urge to SPY on your visitors?

The Generic Stats WordPress Plugin is a plugin that allows you to add any statistics tracking code to your WordPress blog without having to edit your WordPress Template’s code.

What does this have to do with spying on your website’s visitors? Well, you could easily sign up for the Performancing Metrics statistics service, and EASILY let you add the statistics tracking code to your blog, without you needing to change ANYTHING ELSE on your site.

This plugin also allows you to specify whether you’d like the code to be place at the top of your page (before the <body> tag) or at the bottom of the page (just after or just before the closing </body> tag).

This option is due to the fact that some statistics packages, like Google Analytics, prefer that you place the statistics tracking scripts at the top of the page, whereas it is actually recommended that you place all external scripts (external to your site) at the bottom.

The reason it’s better to place the code at the bottom is just in case the external site is down, it won’t prevent your site from loading.

Click on the image at the below to see what the plugin looks like on the admin side:

Click here to download the plugin

To be kept aware of updates, please subscribe to the comments feed on this page.

Oh, and Click Here to sign up and try out Performancing Metrics. You will SERIOUSLY get addicted to watching your visitors moving around your site, IN REAL TIME!

Don’t Alert Others of your Ideas!

There is one MAIN thing you want to be careful of when checking to see if a domain is available or not, and that is alerting others that somebody is searching for it.

You see, there are some people who monitor searches for domains so that they can quickly register the domain in the hope that you will buy it from them at more than they paid for it.

A good way to prevent this is to use tools available from respected and well known Domain Registrars, such as GoDaddy and Moniker.com.

Tools to help you

To facilitate this (because I register domains quite often now, IT’S A DRUG I TELL YOU!) I have created to search tools that you can install if you use IE7 (Internet Explorer 7) or FireFox web browsers.

You will then be able to just type the domain that you want to check it’s availability of, and press enter.

To install these “search engines”, just click on the “down arrow” at the top right of your browser and click on the “Add DomainCheck“. This Search Engine will use Moniker.com’s Domain checking service to see if a domain is available to be registered.

The reason I use Moniker.com is because it can check more than one TLD at a time, for example, if you type in “james” (without the quotes) and click on the magnifying glass, the Moniker.com results will show you the results for james.com, james.info, james.org, etc. etc. etc…

You might have also noticed the ability to add the “CoZaDomains” Search Engine.

This search engine will check the availability of “.co.za” (South African) domains, using the tool provided by www.anno.co.za (the site that hosts my website).

Anyway, let me know if you find these tools useful…