–
Apparently Bash doesn’t like ampersands (&) within your commands. So when I tried to run Mysqldump with my new password with an ampersand I got this dumb error:
mysqldump -uusername -ppass&word --host=elite.db --add-drop-database --add-drop-table --hex-blob --all-databases

-bash: word: command not found
Usage: mysqldump [OPTIONS] database [tables]
OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --databases [OPTIONS] DB1 [DB2 DB3...]
OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --all-databases [OPTIONS]
For more options, use mysqldump --help

Anyway, the trick (as I graciously learned here) is to use the longer --password option and to enclose the password in escaped quotes as so:
mysqldump -uusername --password=\"pass&word\" --host=elite.db --add-drop-database --add-drop-table --hex-blob --all-databases

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as WordPress, Other, Ubuntu at 1:41 AM MST

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Believe it or not there is a WordPress blog set up for the explicit purpose of testing trackbacks.
To Test:
Simply go on over there.
The sidebar there has the login info.
Log in and make a quick post with the trackback info for your own post you want to test.

Read this guide to make sure you are setting up your test post right.

And then I believe you sit and wait umm, 4-12 hours*. If you don’t see a trackback, your trackback spam solution is blocking it or something else is wrong. This site will put you on the right path to fixing your problem at least for WordPress.

*I don’t know exactly how long a trackback should take to appear. Perhaps an experienced reader can fill us in?

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as WordPress at 12:02 AM MST

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You may not know it but a few months ago I had an embarrassing problem with trackback spam. I searched around in anguish and finally settled on this wonderful WordPress plugin as the solution:

The Trackback Validator Plugin

Here’s the description from the homepage. The logic makes sense to me:

The TrackBack Validator plugin for WordPress performs a simple but very effective test on all TrackBacks in order to stop spam.

Legitimate TrackBacks are sent by people commenting on your weblog, accompanied by a URL that points to that commentary. Spam TrackBacks are accompanied by a URL that points to a pay-per-click affiliate website or other irrelevant material. The Validator exploits this key difference:

1. When a TrackBack is received, the plugin retrieves the Web page located at the URL included in the TrackBack.
2. If the page contains a link to your weblog, the TrackBack is approved.
3. If the page does not link to your weblog, the TrackBack is flagged as spam and rejected.

Because TrackBack spammers do not set up custom Web pages linking to the weblogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate Trackbacks.

We are actively developing additional heuristics to add to the plugin; if you observe TrackBack spam that makes it past this plugin, please let us know.

Note: I waited 3 months + after installing this plugin to post about it because I wanted to make sure it truly worked. And it has, I haven’t gotten a single trackback spam since.

Tags: Trackback, trackbacks, trackback spam, trackback spam prevention, wordpress, wordpress trackback

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as WordPress, Meta at 11:01 PM MST

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This SEO tips post, for tip number 2 says:

Short relevant TITLE = must. Don’t put “news”, “home page”, or other such stuff in the title tag. Format: [document title] - [site title]

So, assuming this advice is valid, I went ahead and made the change to this website. Here’s how I did it in case anyone else finds it non-obvious.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as WordPress at 3:49 PM MST

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Quick Answer:
A quote from the AWStats glossary:

Add To Favourites:
This value, available in the “miscellanous chart”, reports an estimated indicator that can be used to have an idea of the number of times a visitor has added your web site into its favourite bookmarks.
The technical rules for that is the following formula:
Number of Add to Favourites = round((x+y) / r)
where
x = Number of hits made by IE browsers for “/anydir/favicon.ico”, with a referer field not defined, and with no 404 error code
y = Number of hits made by IE browsers for “/favicon.ico”, with a referer field not defined, with or without 404 error code
r = Ratio of hits made by IE browsers compared to hits made by all browsers (r <= 1)

As you can see in formula, only IE is used to count reliable "add", the "Add to favourites" for other browsers are estimated using ratio of other browsers usage compared to ratio of IE usage. The reason is that only IE do a hit on favicon.ico nearly ONLY when a user add the page to its favourites. The other browsers make often hits on this file also for other reasons so we can't count one "hit" as one "add" since it might be a hit for another reason.
AWStats differentiate also hits with error and not to avoid counting multiple hits made recursively in upper path when favicon.ico file is not found in deeper directory of path.
Note that this number is just an indicator that is in most case higher than true value. The reason is that even IE browser sometimes make hit on favicon without an "Add to favourites" action by a user.

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Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as WordPress, Other at 8:05 PM MST

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