vBulletin Tagging

The vBSEO team is proud to announce its latest release!

Don’t miss out on the 72 hr vBSEO End of Summer Sale!

<div id="cd-container">End Of Summer Sale ends in:<script src="http://www.vbseo.com/countdown.php?timezone=US/Eastern&amp;countto=2009-09-07 20:00:00&amp;do=t&amp;data=0"></script></div>
vBSEO End of Summer Sale Details

vBSEO 3.3.1 is now available in your Downloads area. 3.3.1 is primarily a maintenance release, but does include some new features as outlined below. This update is available for all non-expired licenses. [Check License Status]

Bug Fixes:
FIX: Invalid argument in functions_vbseo.php on some server instances
FIX: Virtual HTML breaks W3 validation
FIX: vBSEO Acronym expansion for Guests
FIX: Acronyms – Ajax edit
FIX: Missing 301 redirect for member profiles applied
FIX: Social Groups – Discussion title caused invalid…

vBSEO End Of Summer Sale, Tweet-enable your website!
For the next 72 Hours ONLY, vBSEO will be holding a special end of summer sale event.

<div id="cd-container">End Of Summer Sale ends in:<script src="http://www.vbseo.com/countdown.php?timezone=US/Eastern&amp;countto=2009-09-07 20:00:00&amp;do=t&amp;data=0"></script></div>

15% off EVERYTHING in our Inventory
+
500 exclusive Tweetboard Alpha Invites (on a first-come, first-served basis)
(Use Promo Code TBSUMMER72)

72 Hours ONLY!
This sale is flat 15% through the full 72 hours. There are no laddered or time-based discounts like we had in our last sale. But, it only lasts for 72 hours, ending at the end of Labor Day, Monday night. After that, it is done.…

Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!!

Update your WordPress blog before you continue reading this post. That’s how critical this issue is.

Things You Need to Know Now

Here is what you need to know right now, constantly updated with news as we get it.

UPDATE NOW! Reports are that this attack impacts ALL versions of WordPress up to 2.8.3 and 2.8.4, the most recent release.
Report from WordPress…

Stats – Stats – Stats.  They can drive everything for your WordPress site.  They can help you understand how visitors move around your site; how they got there in the first place; what are the most popular posts they are visiting; what browser and OS they are using. The list can go on and on.

I have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking for just the right plug-in to track stats on my WindowsObserver.com website and I think I may have hit the mother lode with my most recent discovery.

CyStats is written by Michael Weingaertner and…

I’ve managed to scrape up some defines/constants for use in vBulletin’s config file (config.php)

This forces all userinfo queries to include avatar information.
define(’AVATAR_ON_NAVBAR’, 1);

This bypasses the file checks, e.g that install.php one you get after installation. This is potential security risk, shouldn’t be enabled in production.
define(’BYPASS_FILE_CHECK’, 1);

This defines whether vBulletin is in demo mode or not.
define(’DEMO_MODE’, 1);

Our famous saviour for when modifications go bad…. thank you hooks
define(’DISABLE_HOOKS’, 1);

This forces all the hooks to be used, however, the above overrides this.
define(’FORCE_HOOKS’, 1);

This disables mail being sent out from your server.
define(’DISABLE_MAIL’, 1);

Sends pasword as raw…

I am proud to announce the availability of the first supported Support Toolkit package.If you are unfamiliar with the toolkit, please see the RC1 release announcement and the Support Toolkit page.Starting with this version, the Toolkit will be officially supported. LIkewise, the use of the Toolkit may now be recommended within support topics. Members of the community who assist others are encouraged to become familiar with the functions included in the Toolkit.Those who have 1.0.0-RC1 installed should delete the stk folder and replace it with 1.0.0-RC2. The following changes have been made in this version:[Fix] Remove hardcoded location of the…

vBulletin.com Blog Entry: vBulletin 3.8.4 Release Chaos
Author: Andy Huang
Published: 11th August 2009 04:33 PM

As many of you have no doubt noticed by now, we are running vBulletin 3.8.4 here on vbcom. In fact, we’ve been running the code here since around 11AM Pacific yesterday. But, this version is not available to the general public yet. Here’s a brief account for what happened, and why it is not ready yet.

Originally, we planned to have the release out two weeks ago. However, because everyone with sufficient access was busy with working on 4.0 alpha, we did not had the resource…

vBulletin.com Blog Entry: vBulletin 3.8.4 Release Chaos
Author: Andy Huang
Published: 11th August 2009 04:33 PM

As many of you have no doubt noticed by now, we are running vBulletin 3.8.4 here on vbcom. In fact, we’ve been running the code here since around 11AM Pacific yesterday. But, this version is not available to the general public yet. Here’s a brief account for what happened, and why it is not ready yet.

Originally, we planned to have the release out two weeks ago. However, because everyone with sufficient access was busy with working on 4.0 alpha, we did not had the resource…

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Board 3.0.2 has been released.

This is the second maintenance release for IP.Board 3 and addresses various bugs and adds in some enhancements to existing features. Also, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads have received a maintenance update.

Major Changes Since 3.0.1

Among many dozens of smaller bugs fixed, the following large changes and fixes have been made in the 3.0.2 release:

Improved search and member list performanceDate filter options for Active Content pageMany improvements for Sphinx searching (i.e. ability to filter by forum, ability to search titles only, ability to group posts as topics, plugin functionality…

On my way to work recently, I was listing to a Drupal podcast (because I had already listened to all of my WordPress-related podcasts). The participants spent some time talking about something they called “Drupal Distributions”. This is a Drupal feature that lets a developer pre-package the Drupal CMS with a set of modules and settings to create a custom install tailored to a specific task.

Each distribution takes some set of Drupal themes and modules and packages them together with the Drupal core, along with custom installation steps, documentation, and so on. For example, one could create a distribution called “Drupal…

We, the Modifications Team, are proud to announce the availability of the 1.0.0 Gold Release of UMIL, the Unified MOD Install Library.UMIL is a library for MOD authors. It enables them to create database installation and update scripts for their MODs easily. It provides a unified way to access phpBB’s API for adding modules, modifying the database and more.This release includes a number of bug fixes and some additions. For details, please refer to the changelog. We hope this version to be the most stable so far.You can find the download on the UMIL page (bottom right). For more information,…

Now that you have optimized your WordPress settings, you are almost ready to welcome visitors to your blog, however there are also some unwanted visitors called spammers.

WordPress has a very good plugin to take care of such spammers in the form or Akismet, this plugin will block spam comments and help you keep your blog clean from spam links.

Akismet plugin is available by default in all new WordPress installations, however it does not work out of the box and you need to setup Akismet to work for you blog, in this post we will see how to setup Akismet to…

vBadvanced CMPS v3.2.1 has been released and is now available in the Members’ Area here. The changes since v3.2.0 include:All currently known bugs & issues have been fixed.
Better handling of imported vBadvanced Dynamics modules.
A new "Reset Layout" link has been added on the user-end so the member can reset their layout to the default. If you have customized your ‘adv_portal’ template, please see the note below in the ‘Upgrading Section’.
Better system to update customized user layouts when modules are added/removed from a page in the Admin CP. Before, a member’s custom page layout was only compared to…

Some idiot at 213.155.4.184 hit all my websites over the last few days trying to login to my blogs. He fired off hundreds of automated requests probing and searching and testing my admin login. Each request had a different password. I use difficult to guess passwords but seeing the attempts was disconcerting.

I went searching and found the Limit Login Attempts plugin. After installing, a new page appears under Settings with a wealth of options:

I’m glad I did install it, it caught the same guy when he hit this blog a few hours later! You should probably install it too.

PS. Matt…

Update: We have renamed the series to WordPress for Beginners. WordPress for Dummies is a trademarked book, we respect trademarks, we apologize for the confusion.

Welcome to WordPress, now that you have installed one of the best platform to blog with, there are a few things you might want to tweak and change to get the best out of it.

I am starting a new series called “WordPress For Beginners” that will focus on helping newcomers and moderate users optimize their WordPress installation, though I will try and cover many things here, there may still be things that may not make it to…