Update: Have you ever tried to comment or trackback to LBC, and wondered why it never showed up? If you aren’t a troll, your comment was most likely blacklisted. Certain words and IP addresses are stored for protection against spam and trolls, and you probably used at least one of the words or part of it. I know it’s drastic, but the alternative is deleting hundreds of spam comments a day.
Thanks to a cool comment plugin, I can retrieve blacklisted comments from the database and approve legitimate ones (which also means I need to delete spam from the database). I just approved dozens from months ago, weeks ago, and today.
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Update II: The ultimate goal is strict XHTML compliance. If you’ve got the talent, I’ve got the need. Contact me.
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I’m supposed to be working, but once I start fiddling around with WordPress code, I can’t stop!
Last year when I moved to WP, I asked several users to critique my blog. The first template I had used tables. If you’re up on the latest web standards (and W3Schools), you know that tables are passé. Tables are great for data, bad for layout. Designing a site with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the way to go. Wikipedia has a helpful entry about CSS. The current template is stylesheet-based, more flexible, and loads easier in most browsers, including tiny browsers on personal digital organizers.
Back to the critique. I got so much feedback about the tables and how sloppy the coding was, I spent two days learning about XHTML and how to clean up the code. I also learned that WP geeks are serious about their code. I use the word “geek” in a good way, especially now that I’m becoming one. I’m even citing Wikipedia, another geek paradise. The more I understand how my blog functions behind the scenes, the more I want to learn about WP in general, PHP, and how to find better and more dynamic plugin for added features. (Also see the WordPress wiki)
I’ve spent the last two hours tinkering with code and downloading plugins from Tempus Fugit, run by freelance coder Mark Jaquith, and Cold Forged. Every now and then readers ask if I plan to install a comment spell checker. Well, I uploaded the plugin and couldn’t get it to work properly. Maybe I’ll try again later. I also want to add comment preview.
If you want to talk about WP, CSS, PHP, Movable Type, XHTML, the web in general — whatever — this is the thread to do it. Also see Why Should I Avoid Tables (for Layout)?
The tables vs. stylesheets discussion has been going on for years. I found a 2002 article by blogger Dave Winer, inventor of RSS. To find out if your site is constructed with tables (and you care), go under “View” in the toolbar if you’re using IE and select “Source.” In Firefox, select “Page Source.” Firefox gives you a color-coded view, much easier to understand. If you see “table” and a bunch of “td” tags, the page is made with tables.
About XHTML, you’re probably more familiar with it than you think. For example, if you’ve noticed that more sites are replacing the bold tag (b) with strong (strong) and the italics (i) with emphasis (em), you’ve seen XHTML. The new standards are one reason I used to disable hypertext and most HTML tags in comments. I couldn’t assume commenters knew XHTML. Now WP 1.5 supposedly fixes invalid code automatically.
