Finally in the gap between end of exams and family celebrations the week of the 19th I decided enough was enough though. I exported all the entries. Gzipped up all the files in the account, dumped it to the laptop and then deleted the whole damn thing off the server.  

Dreamhost has a great one-click installer for WordPress that I used to reinstall WordPress to the domain running on a new database. A few minutes later and the entries were imported back in, with the old account names (new passwords) in place and I started re-uploading the files that were not covered by the import/export. (my “theme”, plug-ins, etc).

I took my time about it, checked every file I re-uploaded (lots of graphics mostly – OSX’s Quicklook rocked that task!) and did some testing, but it appears, everything is working just as it was. It’s running now on the latest greatest WordPress, with updates being now extremely easy to perform thanks to Dreamhost’s updater

One click…done.

So are the Asshats gone for good? Who knows, but I have a clean, known working point with a limited set of reviewed plugins so if they come back it will be easier to eliminate how they got in. It has been over two full weeks with no sign of them either.

Here in a controlled environment though the use of synonyms makes tags even more powerful for me. For instance I have a number of Osprey photos and related entries here on Eclectic Echoes. I have tried to be consistant with tagging them all with the tags “osprey”, “raptor”, “bird” and “Pandion+halieatus” (the last being the binomial scientific name of the Osprey). While I have tried, I have often failed to tag them consistently. With synonyms though I have set “pandion+halieatus” and “osprey” to be synonyms, ensuring that any tag search for one will return all the relevant entries tagged with either tag. I still have to work on being more deliberate in taggin entries well as even synonyms doesn’t help if entries aren’t tagged at all or the case of “raptor” or “bird” above. All osprey are birds, but not all birds are osprey, type of thing.

At any rate, I am continuing to work on tagging some older entries a bit at a time, and will put a tag search function in here in the near future, but at this point by clicking one of the tags you can get all entries with that tag easily. Going to eclecticechoes.com/tag/johann/ for instance will bring up all entries tagged with “johann”. I will probably also add links to Technorati, del.icio.us and flickr from the tag archive pages. I say probably, mainly because many tags have questionable carry through to those services:
Osprey: Locally, at Technorati, at del.icio.us and at flickr.
In this particular case the only one that really works (connects to related subject matter) is flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us have more links about the aircraft (civilian and the Navy V-22), backpacks and peer to peer software than the bird.

Unfortunately it required a patch to overcome the fact that the nofollow is not entirely implemented as a filter in WP, but rather hard coded into the comment functions file for the comment author link. While using the WP Filter plug in and the patch I was able to remove the attribute from the author link, as well as any URL defined in the comment body using an <a href> tag. WordPress also has a nice feature in the comments where through the “make\_clickable” filter it will convert a URL entered into a comment as plain text (e.g. “www.salsaexpress.com” ) into an actual link enclosed in an <a href> tag. Unfortunately the converted link has the rel="nofollow" attribute attached to it. Again , as with the comment author link, this has been hardwired into the make\_clickable filter. I could either change the make\_clickable filter or make or find a plug in that would override the all the hardwired nofollow tags.

Luckily Christoph Rummel had the answer: no nofollow. After returning the patched files to their original state — so now all the core files are, again, unmodified — I installed the plug in and checked against the comment left on the short Tracks application entry which first showed the issue. Worked like a charm.

A nice additional feature is that you can set the plug in to keep the comment links with nofollow on them for a set number of days, and then they revert to normal links without the attribute. This is really handy as the links will stay nofollowed until you can check them and delete any that may be spam yet got by the filters or what have you.

Of course I would still like to see a more flexible system. Mostly for when someone who comments regularly here leaves a comment, I want their comment links to not ever have nofollow attached. Same thing for any registered users.

It actually only took about 8 minutes to install WP and then import all the old entries. Sweet.
I took some time yesterday and today looking through a variety of plug-ins, tweaks and options for WP. I have installed a few plug-ins — although I have not modified the index to implement all of them. Right now I plan on using:

• Adhesive to enable sticky posts — hopefully on a category by category basis.
• Breadcrumb Navigation to add the classic Home > Category > You Are Here functions.
• Technorati Tags — I’m not sure how much I will use these. I have questions on the long term utility of folksonomies. They are definitely easier for most people to implement than taxonomies or ontologies (each a marked step more structured and constrained than the previous), but in the long term how useful will they prove considering the (almost ?) complete lack of structure? They are however interesting to watch emerging, and may lead eventually into an adaptive core taxonomy and ontology which I believe would be highly useful yet remain easy to use.
• WP-CC which automatically inserts my chosen Creative Commons license both in the meta and visible page.
• WP Filters Manager to control the default and added filters. I hoped this one would allow me to remove the rel="nofollow" from the comments section without having to edit the actual core files. Alas, while it did remove it from any links in the body of the comments, it did not allow me to remove the nofollow from comment author’s emails. Not a failing of the plugin. A little looking around and I found a patch to correct this. The patch removes the hardcoded nofollows in and replaces them with the — already provided — filter. Now the Filter Manager can turn it on and off.

I also have the stock plug-ins which come with 1.5 — Markdown, Staticize Reloaded, and Textile 1.

After an initial spin around and looking at some of the tweaks and such out there, I really like WordPress. Of course I do have some minor issues, but they are just that — minor.

I would like to see more flexibility in implementing the nofollow tag among other things. I don’t believe rel="nofollow" is bad or will break the net, but at the same time I am seeing many situations where websites are applying nofollow to every external link on the site. Many people are nollowing their blogrolls, all the links in their posts — even when they are simultaneously recommending the link in the text of the post — one site even had some internal links nofollowed! I’d like to see some of the same comment moderation systems applied to the nofollow tag. Apply nofollow to new comments and the author url (if given), unless the same author has previously been approved in a different comment, or is a logged in user of a certain level. Then in the comment moderation panel allow not only the approval of comments but an option to remove the nofollow tags as well. Selective, intelligent, subtle use of the nofollow tag instead of trying to drop a nuke on the building next door.