Edit Comments On

I added the edit comments plugin to this blog. After you leave a comment, you’ll have about 12 hours to come back and make changes. Authentication is based on IP address. It’s surprising that so few blogs implement such functionality, given how common it is to leave embarrassing typos or misspelled URLs in comments.

One patch is needed for the plugin to work with the latest WordPress release. Specifically:

$location = add_query_arg('jal_edit_comments', '', $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);

needs to be changed to:

$location = add_query_arg('jal_edit_comments', FALSE, $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);

I’m sure this will be added to the mainline source soon. I had to fish the fix out of the 300+ comments on the page for the plugin.

In other “this blog” news, I simplified the sidebar appearance and made all the long lists collapsed by default with CSS. Hopefully it renders well on all browsers. Lately, I’ve come to doubt the utility of “lists in sidebars” at all. Perhaps a person’s latest content preferences (books, film, music) aren’t that interesting after all.

Incidentally, since I made the transition to WordPress, I’ve found it much easier to keep this blog active. Less time spent on administrative issues, and the web-based (rather than ssh–>vim) posting just makes a lot more sense these days. Comment spam is virtually nonexistent. I can get an entry up in five minutes on the train in to work without hassle. WordPress has also greatly reduced server load (perhaps because I had an inefficient blosxom setup). I recommend it.

If you are already a WordPress user, as a public service announcement I’ll repeat the announcement from about two weeks ago: WordPress 2.1.1 may be dangerous:

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Ken Shan Has A Blog

Ken (Chung-chieh) Shan started a blog this year, apparently running on ikiwiki software.  Ken is one of those people whom you want to have a blog.

The focus seems to be linguistics (generally Ken’s academic field) and “miscellaneous.”

Welcome to the blogosphere, Ken.