Published on
May 18, 2008 at
2:23 pm.
Alright after a few suggestions, I have fixed up the plugin. I’ve added options to enable SSL, be compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict, the ability to change the theme for the registration form recaptcha, and the ability to not show the recaptcha on comment posts (In case you only want it to show on the registration form and only allow registered users to comment). I’ve also fixed a few bugs. I’ve also kind of redesigned the options page, only a little. I’ve separated some options so that users have an easier time understanding the context of all of them. Here is what it looks like now:
You can download the reCAPTCHA WordPress Plugin version 2.8 Release Candidate 2 here.
Published on
May 16, 2008 at
10:19 pm.
After some time I think I have finally finished version 2.8 of the reCAPTCHA WordPress Plugin. Back in January I believe I was contacted by Ben Maurer who works on reCAPTCHA asking me to work on the official reCAPTCHA plugin for WordPress. He asked me this after seeing that I wrote the WP-MailHide plugin. Well I took forever but I finally think I’ve finished. I might have one or two things to add but they should be minimal. I am just posting this here so that people see it and hopefully try it out and tell me what they think.
If you don’t know what reCAPTCHA is, you can read about it here. It is a really genius concept and I encourage you to read it. Basically these guys put meaning into CAPTCHAs. Instead of just randomly generating letters and numbers, they take words that Industry Standard OCR Scanners can’t read and construct the CAPTCHAs with them. One of the words they do know and one they don’t. After a certain complex condition is met (For example after a certain percentage of the people put the same spelling for the same word) the correct spelling is then given to the OCR scanners so that they could finish digitizing the books that they are scanning. So basically this means it is fundamentally (Whatever the opposite of flawed is) … epic? Spam bots that can bypass CAPTCHAs use OCR libraries. If industry level OCR scanners couldn’t read the word, I’m pretty sure these home-made OCR spam bots can’t either. Also, it removes the pain and frustration of having to fill in CAPTCHAs because you know that every word you type is going to a good cause.
Anyways, like I said it took me a while but I think I’m nearly finished if not finished already. The changes that have been made and things that have been fixed can be seen here. I have added a slew of features and options which aren’t meant to confuse the user but hopefully give them more freedom as to how to protect their blog from spammers. Among the many features I’ve implemented, a few are:
- Integrated MailHide into the Plugin. This scans each post that’s about to be viewed for emails and hides them using the MailHide method. More information on the wonderful MailHide technology can be found here. MailHide makes use of the mcrypt PHP module. If the module isn’t loaded, an alert will be displayed and it won’t be enabled.
- Stylesheet for all reCAPTCHA related things ranging from hidden emails, administration options, etc.
- XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant (Or so I believe, according to the validator. If you see otherwise please tell me)
- Ability to turn off reCAPTCHA and/or MailHide for Admins
- Ability to choose from different Languages and Themes
- New improved regular expressions for matching of all types of email addresses (For MailHide)
- Special nohide tags (BBCode Format, with []’s surrounding them) will allow one to bypass MailHide if they really want to directly show an email.
- Ability to add reCAPTCHA to the registration form.
- Fixed Akismet conflicts. Now, according to my tests, failed reCAPTCHA’s won’t equate to spam and therefor won’t be added to the Akismet Spam queue (No more ‘why am I still getting spam?’ questions).
Here are a few examples demonstrating MailHide:
test...@haha.com
This is a hyperlink with a plaintext email in the href
This is a hyperlink with a mailto: email in the href
The following are the same emails but won’t be hidden thanks to the nohide tags:
testing@haha.com
This is a hyperlink with a plaintext email in the href
This is a hyperlink with a mailto: email in the href
I would definitely like you guys to try it out and let me know what you think. Following are some screenshots, the download link is at the bottom:
Download the Official reCAPTCHA WordPress Plugin 2.8 Release Candidate 1 Plugin here.
Published on
May 15, 2008 at
5:53 pm.
I always wondered why the government hasn’t thought about putting windmills in the middle of the streets and roads. I don’t know if you guys have ever been near roads and/or streets (Haha if you haven’t), but they can generate a lot of wind. I mean it’s not going to be as crazy as if they were up in the mountains or in the desert or something, but it should still be better than nothing. After all, usually the only things in the middle of the streets or roads is cement. Some have trees and bushes and the like, and that’s fine of course.
Just imagine though: Electric cars in the future, which by the way isn’t unlikely given how electric cars have been around since the 1800s, driving up and down the streets and generating wind (Be it unintentially or intentionally with a small flap that opens on the left side of the car which would help generate more wind) and making the windmills move, effectively generating electricity which is then piped to the closest electric station where these cars would ‘re-charge’. That would be awesome.
I just recently watched Who Killed the Electric Car? and was amazed at the history of it. I remember having seen a few electric cars but then suddenly not seeing anymore, I never thought much of it until I watched this movie. Tesla Motors, which is based in Silicon Valley, is aiming to create cool electric cars. Their Tesla Roadster is one great example of this. The only ‘catch’ is that it’s priced at around $100,000 , so this might be more of a luxury car which can go from 0-60 MPH in 4 seconds and is the equivalent of 100 MPG. It is extremely quiet. However, I do hope that more research is done into electric cars and are hopefully manufactured on a large scale soon.
Really cool Tesla Roadster
Tesla Roadster Test Drive
Check out a video of a test drive here.
