Updated Joomla! bad-behaviour plugin to latest release of bad-behaviour(2.0.28) and fixed 2 bugs.
What has changed in bad-behaviour:
- A particularly nasty trackback spammer advertising various drugs was blocked in the 2.0.27 release. An error in the logic may have caused legitimate trackbacks to be blocked. This error has been corrected.
- A PHP warning which appeared in the IPv6 handling code has been corrected.
What has changed in the plugin:
- correct way of checking guest group id
- removed a var_dump() call
More on the project page or joomla! extension site.
Bad Behaviour saved this blog many times from spam and that protection should be available to Joomla! 1.5 as well. There is already a mambot out there but I wanted no legacy coding or database dependency for this plugin. So I have modified Bad Behaviour a little to work without a database and with some checks removed (cookie and black hole).
Cookie check will be brought back in on the next release but using the Joomla! framework so are some modification to make up for logging and black hole lose, but that is still a bit of a secret…
You can however find hints on project page: plg_badbehaviour
Due to my new appartement I have a new ISP, like all of them reroutes every connection on port 25 to it’s own smtp server. This is fine if you use their e-mail service but not if you are a domain owner or small company that just wants to use it’s own mail server. Today I fixed this issue in 10 minutes using rinetd on a server of mine, it redirects tcp traffic from one port to another, bypassing port 25 until I’m past my isp network.
The setup is quite simple:
- apt-get install rinetd
- note down, server ip and destination ip(mail server)
- add your redirect line according to format
- restart rinetd
- all, done.
This is of course if you are running ubuntu or debian on your server, but for other distros it should be almost as simple.
It’s just fun to code for the new Joomla! API and I like linking and dynamic content as well as stats. So after catching up on opensourcecommunity.org I saw their popuri.us widget and though it would be nice for a Joomla! site as well.
Stats, being covered by popuri.us module, it will display the widget in your module position of choice and has a option to link to popuri.us to get more stats. The widget will only show your Google pagerank, Alexa rankin, yahoo back linking and Technorati linking blogs.
Project Page: mod_popurius
Dynamic content, we get from del.icio.us. I have a similar wordpress plugin ready for my blog update, but it would be nice on a Joomla! site as well, so for everybody to enjoy get it. It will display your bookmarks with/without tags and/or long description.
Project Page: mod_delicious
I have written another small plugin, Google Verify, it place your verification meta tag on your Joomla! website without needing to modify your website template(s). So you don’t have to manually update every template or new template on your site.
Project Page
After joining Project Honey Pot and their release of http:BL, I wanted it to use on my blog and Joomla! sites, for wordpress there was already a plugin that does the job, but couldn’t find any for Joomla! so I made a system plugin.
http:BL System Plugin allows you to verify IP addresses of clients connecting to your website against the Project Honey Pot database. It checks whether your visitor is an email harvester, a comment spammer or any other malicious client. Communication with verification server is done via DNS request mechanism.
Now, thanks to http:BL System Plugin any potentially harmful clients are denied from accessing your website and therefore abusing it.
Project page
I was busy with some Joomla! modules to help navigate my site better, but due to a bug in Joomla! 1.5 API, which is okay as it’s still no stable release. Only the search module is ready. You can place it on your searh page to give some extra guidance to your visitors by showing what others have searched.
I’m also working on most popular section/category and content with some extra options, but they have to wait until the bugs are solved.
Most searched: Project page
The dust is settling and I feel quite at home in my new place and Joomla! 1.5 is getting closer and closer. It’s time to get busy again with some projects. Languages files are different and my last approach for multi languages support was not a very good one. So first in business I have nearly completed a translation program which fetches the current svn languages files and lets anybody submit a translation for any of my projects. It’s based on the roundcube translator but modified for Joomla! languages ini files.
Hope it’s ease of use and the integration with svn will draw some translators.
I have returned the keys from my previous home and the new place is home. Hopefully after time consuming task, the little tasks like unpacking the last things and finishing touches , I will have more free time todo coding and other fun things.
I have, as promised, some for/during/after pictures, with the after pictures being work in progress. You can view them at family gallery.
Spamming got a little out of hand, about 650 day, besides that some got through akismet. So some extra things where added, you have to solve a small math problem and trackback are being checked if there is really a link. Hope this will keep those spam messages from showing up.
Sorry for the extra checks but it’s not my fault.