So many birthdays this month! Here’s another shout-out…Happy 21st Birthday Brittany…where ever you are! You make me feel old, haha. I’ll be 22 soon. 
(I’m pretty sure it’s today anyway, couldn’t find it on facebook and no wall posts yet…but I remembered something about it being between mine and brandon’s)
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If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.So today has been a pretty typical day. I woke up around 9:30 or 10, got up and took a shower and checked my emails. Oh, I got one Orgoo request last night as well! 10 left if you’re interested!
So I went out to get a hair cut today and man isn’t it nice! My hair was getting a little long and shaggy. This hot weather hasn’t been to kind on me either, haha. Now I can feel the breeze again and not burn up everywhere, haha. I got my ears lowered as they say (they being no one really, just an expression, haha).
It’s good to see the rain coming in now as well! The thunderstorms don’t bother me too much, but when they knock out the Internet connection it gets really irritating. Now that I won’t be sweating everywhere I go maybe I can spend some more time outside and off the computer for a change. 
No real tech news that I care to write about right now, maybe something will happen soon though so I can dig into it and write up a good how to or review!
Take care everyone and enjoy this awesome weather! Try not to work too much. 
Bookmark and Share This Page If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.Just wanted to give a Happy Birthday shout-out to Brandon today on his 22nd birthday! He’s still on the trail, but best wishes for your birthday and the trail B. Make sure you party hard today man!
I’m sure we’ll all be ready to party when you get back man!
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I’ll bet all of you out there have dealt with your fair share of spam. Everyone gets it, in their email, blog posts and lately even WordPress registrations! I have a tool for handling spam comments on my blog, but what do I do when I get 10’s to 100’s of spam user registrations on my blog with names and emails like BuyCheapMeds and FreeSoftwareDVDs@some-russian-website.ru?
Well, thank goodness the WordPress Extend site has so much to offer! After asking in the WordPress forums how to completely disable new user registrations…and getting little response…I decided that I would have to edit some of the WordPress files to ignore new user registrations in a fashion to fit my needs. I wanted to keep them open from the admin panel so I myself can add new users, but block outsiders from registering so I could control the spam registrations.
To my surprise I got a response in the forum thread that I started with an example plugin that could be used. I looked into the example plugin, but I found myself confused at the description and uncertain of how the plugin actually worked. Who wants to install something on their site when they have no clue how it works!
I dug a bit deeper and searched this time for only 5-10 minutes and came across two plugins that were capable of handling my needs and one that was just plain cool.
To control your spam registrations I would suggest the following three plugins which are ordered according to the order that I would choose them.
If you’re wondering why I sorted them this way then I’ll try to explain quickly.
Referrer Bouncer was the one that was suggested to me in the forum thread, but I found that it was a bit more involved than the others and it required the user to create a file called “referer.txt” and add domains that should be blocked (at least I think it was for blocked domains…not a clear description or how to 
) and it just made more sense to go with a different plugin rather than tracking down all of the referring sites that I needed to block.
Sabre does exactly what I wanted to do. It was like it knew what I wanted before I asked, haha, but I decided to go with Register Plus in the end because it allows me to create invitation codes so that I can easily leave the registration open to the public, but they will need to contact me and request an invitation.
Why did I chose this method? I figured that most people would prefer not to register in the first place. Nothing at kyleabaker.com is restricted to the general public that is open to the registered users…it’s all the same. So if you wanted to post then you can freely post comments here. The invitations are for friends and people that I know so they can register if they wish and I know they won’t be spamming me. 
Except maybe Dan…he’s done it before.
The third plugin that I found (the Referrer Bouncer was found by someone else and posted in the WordPress forums for me) was one that allows users to login via OpenID! This is really cool because it doesn’t require a user to actually register at your site and waste space! They can register at any website that offers OpenID such as Yahoo, WordPress, Flickr (also Yahoo) and many more!
I didn’t go with WP-OpenID because spammers can still register via OpenID and login on your site. They wouldn’t be spamming the registrations, that’s one plus side, but they are still encouraged to test out my comment filtering system..and they always jump at chances to piss people off like that.
So I suggest you look into my “research” if you’re having similar trouble! Enjoy!
Bookmark and Share This Page If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.As many of you may already know, today is the last day that Bill Gates will be working with Microsoft. He will be stepping down from his position with Microsoft and is currently the third-richest man in the world!
Microsoft will undoubtedly continue to prosper without Gates of course, but what he did to build and develop the company will be unmatched for the the rest of it’s existence. Although I’ve long since switched to open source platforms such as Ubuntu linux, I must respect the work and effort that he has put into building the corporate Microsoft that we know today.
While catching up in the news over the past few days, I came across a hilarious video featuring Bill Gates and several celebrities in a short skit. You should check it out!
Bill Gates will now be spending his time and work to contribute to charities. What a noble thing to do! I mean with his wealth and status he could do anything, but he chose a very respectable way to spend his retired time.
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