Category Archives: Internet

wordpress

Make WordPress K2 Themes Refresh Faster

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The pages with wordpress K2 theme loads fast when you click them, but if you try to refresh the page it will be very slow to load, while other themes don’t have this problem. To fix this follow this guide taken from K2’s forum:

find the folder js inside the K2 folder, then for each .js.php file comment out the ‘require(….. wp-blog-header.php)’ line and replace ‘!get_settings(‘gzipcompression’)’ with ‘( ob_get_length() === FALSE)’. After that the first few lines should look like this:

//require(dirname(__FILE__)."/../../../../wp-blog-header.php");
// check to see if the user has enabled gzip compression in the WordPress admin panel
if ( (ob_get_length() === FALSE) and !ini_get('zlib.output_compression') and ini_get('output_handler') != 'ob_gzhandler' and ini_get('output_handler') != 'mb_output_handler' ) {
ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
}

Then add the following lines on the top of the files livesearch.js.php and rollingarchives.js.php after the php tag:

// Echo a translated string.
function _e($text, $domain = 'default') {
global $l10n;

if (isset($l10n[$domain]))
echo apply_filters(‘gettext’, $l10n[$domain]->translate($text), $text);
else
echo $text;
}

For livesearch.js.php, comments.js.php:
replace all
bloginfo("template_url")
with
echo str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'],'',realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../'))
There are two instances of these in comments.js.php, and one in livesearch.js.php.

After all these the pages will refresh very fast.

Original post in which this guide is taken from…

Internet

Phishing PayPal email in my Gmail account

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I got a phishing spam PayPal email that mimics the address services.paypal.com in my Gmail account, with title “Notification of Limited Account Access,” and a url that asks me to verify my paypal account but pointing to http://www.soios.com/matiz/varios/www.paypal.com/ssl/, which is not paypal’s website. It’s actually from servidor01.mimela.com, not paypal’s server. Here’s part of the heading of the email from the original message, which can be seen in GMail by clicking the arrow next to the reply button and then click “Show original.”

Received: from servidor01.mimela.com ([64.22.85.7])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 26si58691192wrl.2006.12.03.18.12.08;
Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:12:08 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning [email protected] does not designate 64.22.85.7 as permitted sender)
Received: from soios by servidor01.mimela.com with local (Exim 4.52)
id 1Gr3KQ-000599-7W
for [email protected]; Mon, 04 Dec 2006 03:13:10 +0100
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
............

Message-Id:
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 03:13:10 +0100
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname – servidor01.mimela.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain – gmail.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID – [32705 32706] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain – paypal.com
X-Source:
X-Source-Args:
X-Source-Dir:

Here’s the picture of the email (click for original size):

paypal phishing

hosting

My experience with switching in between paid web hostings

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Yesterday I started to look for a reliable web hosting. I searched online trying to find a good yet reliable web hosting and realized that many of them either require you to pay for a whole year at once to get a cheaper price(which is still not cheap), or have too few bandwidth per month in general.
After hours of struggle I found Host Department and almost signed up for it, but its website was very unprofessional and very tricky, i.e. you have to click “Php Web Hosting” in the bottom of the page where it says “Host Department’s Specialty Hosting:” in order to get php hosting package at the same price instead of the non-php, also the advertisement in the home page is very confusing and the sign up process is very poorly designed, i just gave up before paying for it.
I then tried GoDaddy’s hosting’s Economy Plan, it allows you to pay about $8 for the first two months and $4 each month afterwards. But alas, while GoDaddy is good for domain registration it really sucks for hosting, it takes about thirty minutes to do what you could have done instantly in other hostings, like setting up the account and creating a mysql database, its server software is very outdated, it gave me hard time to import mysql databases because of its older version of mysql. Finally it doesn’t seem to support .htaccess that well, you can’t make custom error pages there, but only in the freaking control panel that takes even thirty minutes to change custom error page. I also heard other people say about the lock table issue when hosted on GoDaddy. Because of all these I gave up GoDaddy and asked them for refund on the hosting account calling the non-toll-free number.
Later on I stopped looking for cheap web hosting because for me they’re unreliable unless they provide less features like space and bandwidth. I looked for some more expensive yet reliable ones and found HostGator and DreamHost. HostGator got many positive honest reviews from some trusted sites like whreviews.com, while for DreamHost it has more disk space and bandwidth. I had asked some people who is using it about its reliability and many of them didn’t have any problems with it. But I first decided to use HostGator anyways with its baby plan since it allows me to pay with paypal and I can try it the first month for $0.01, the plan is $9.95 each month and with a promo code like “jury” you can get $9.94 off for the first month on plans other than hatchling(the cheapest one, billed annually and 1 month free with promo code), I was very satisfied with it and didn’t have any reason to switch.
But today I had one little problem, a problem that probably won’t apply to you. I asked one friend from China to visit my blog and surprisingly they said they can’t open it anymore since I switched to HostGator, I then asked others to try to open it and they can’t either! I started to realize that HostGator is blocked in China by its “Great Firewall”, just like Blogger had been blocked! That really frustrated me since I’m planning to develop a Chinese website with other registered domains in the same hosting account to take advantage of its multiple domain hosting, I also didn’t want to lose any visitors from China. I had to switch again since what I’ll lose is just one cent. I then switched my blog to DreamHost today, which has a lot more nice features, space and bandwidth, and I’m very satisfied with it. It has many more features than HostGator plus 200 GB Disk Storage and 2 TB bandwidth even with its basic plan with the same price as HostGator’s baby plan.

Bonus: if you sign up with the promo code USEFULHOST50 for DreamHost you’ll get
$50 off (the maximum possible) on any hosting plans

blogger

Blogger blocked again in china?! (not anymore)

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Today I asked some of my friends in China to open my Blogger’s blog, surprisingly nobody could open it while I could, then I though maybe Blogger is blocked again. After that I searched “blogspot blocked china” in google and found many recent blog posts that said they can’t open blogger’s blog recently and blogger is probably blocked in china again. Fortunately I moved my blog from blogger to WordPress a month earlier, so now this blog is still accessible worldwide.
update: it’s unblocked on 11/21/06 or earlier.

wordpress

Today I changed my blog’s template to TripleK2

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Today I changed my blog’s template to TripleK2, a theme based on K2 but with three columns, with a very nice style TechnoBlue(found in the same website). Now I have one sidebar on the left and one on the right. The theme is similar to 3k2, but I didn’t use 3k2 since the last time it’s updated is like half years ago, it uses a much older version of K2 which probably has some bugs that cause trouble. I really liked the style TechnoBlue, since it looks very nice and neat, if you’re looking for a three-column K2 with a nice style it should be your choice.

triplek

wordpress

How to add social bookmarking in wordpress

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In the entry Let Your Blog Be Social nongeek talked about the advantage of social bookmarking and how to add bookmark area in blogger’s template. You can also do that in wordpress too, using the same way he said in that post, but substitute Blogger’s template tags with wordpress’s tags. For example, if you want a “Submit to del.icio.us” line you should add

Submit to: del.icio.us

instead of

Submit to: >del.icio.us

to your template’s php file before or after the line depending on if you want it to appear before or after the posts.

If you want to submit to Digg there’s a great WordPress plugin called Digg This for WordPress Reloaded that lets you to add a very cool “Digg This button” like the one I have in the posts, without changing the template’s codes. It also comes with a Complete admin interface with options for many customizations, like positioning the button, what pages to show the button, the style of the button , and many others.

tips, wordpress

how to fix wordpress 404 error when posting in wordpress

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If you have mod_security turned on in your server you will sometimes get a 404 not found error when you try to save or publish your post. To fix this add the lines
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
to your .htaccess file in your wordpress’s root directory to turn off mod_security’s keyword filtering feature for posting forms, and you should not get the error anymore when you try to post.

wordpress

Flash objects break wordpress in Internet Explorer

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Today I had problem loading my pages properly in Firefox but not Internet Explorer, I wondered why this happen as I never had this problem with my blog before. At first I thought there was a problem with the scripts, but it still won’t load completely even after disabling the scripts, then I tried to disable activex controls, and it loaded perfectly without the flash objects. Then I suspect the flash videos I have is causing those problems, I tried different flash objects and I found out that those with tags won’t break the page, but those with actually do. I changed all my videos to

name=’allowScriptAccess’ value=’sameDomain’ /> name=’quality’ value=’best’/> name=’scale’ value=’noScale’ /> value=’TL’ />

Before changes: After changes:
blogger

My former Blogger’s blog doesn’t update in technorati

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My former blog angelchen1111.blogspot.com doesn’t update in technorati at all, except for the links. The last date I updated it was Saturday, October 21, 2006. but in technorati it says it was updated 67 days ago, the exact day I created that blog in Blogger. I don’t know why, I only have problem with that blog, I don’t have problem with other blogs like this blog and the other blog from Blogger.

Tips and tricks and tech thoughts for computers, internet, and mobile.