WordPress Upgrade and Makeover

For more than 1 year I’ve been using a terribly outdated version of [Wordpress](http://wordpress.org). I was reluctant to upgrade to the latest version because I was under impression it would be too much of a work. I created and maintained several [WordPress plugins](https://priyadi.net/archives/category/wordpress/), and from the amount of feedback I get there, it appears that all of my plugins don’t work in any later version of WordPress.

Yesterday I decided to take the plunge. I have to do that sooner or later anyways. Nobody has a slightest idea of what bugs and security hole lurk in this piece of unmaintained software.

To my surprise and delight, however, almost all of my plugins work with this latest version of WordPress without a single modification. The biggest culprit would be TinyMCE (it is the WYSIWYG engine of WordPress). Disable it and all problems with plugin compatibility are simply gone. The only my plugin that doesn’t work is my [bayesian comment spam filter](https://priyadi.net/archives/2005/10/07/wpbayes-naive-bayesian-comment-spam-filter-for-wordpress/). I didn’t expect it to work anyway, it touches too much of WordPress core to be useful in another version of WordPress. For spam filtering, from now I’ll just use the WordPress’ built in [Akismet](http://akismet.com/).

To tell the truth, WordPress core is not, shall we say, a pretty sight. I would be very happy to avoid exposing myself with too much code in WordPress core. For this reason, I’ve been contemplating to write my own blog engine. With current state of affairs, writing a specialized blog engine should be very easy. On the other hand, if my experience is any indication, that kind of optimistic statement would just become another [famous last words](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_last_words_(sarcasm\)). For the time being, I’ll just have to settle on this little upgrade.

Now, on to the changes!

The biggest (and probably the most desired) change would be the new comment karma system. In every comment, there should be a thumb up and a thumb down button. You will be able to moderate a comment up and down using either button. Each comment will be assigned a karma to it, defaults to zero. Every time it receives a thumb up, its karma will be increased by one, and vice versa.

You will be able to filter out comments with low karma by setting the ‘karma threshold’ just above the comment section. For example by setting the karma threshold to +1, only comments with karma +1 or above will be shown. This, of course, does not apply to my own comments :). My comments cannot be moderated and will always be shown regardless of current threshold.

Hopefully this will solve the problem with a post that have too many junk and/or trollish comments that I don’t have enough time to react to. Readers should be able to self regulate when necessary, even if I’m on ‘extended leave’. In the future I might show the users with most or least karma (my money is on [Rendy](http://rendymaulana.com) for this one) to further deter inappropriate comments.

I don’t know if this is enough to improve the situation, but we shall see. The plugin used is Alex Bailey’s [Comment Karma](http://cyber-knowledge.net/blog/2006/10/15/wordpress-plugin-rate-your-comments-comment-karma/) with a few modifications.

Other changes are minor. I replaced [IP to country](https://priyadi.net/archives/2005/02/25/wordpress-ip-to-country-plugin/) plugin with one with GeoIP backend (not released yet). This is much easier to update, hopefully this will minimize the situation where my location is detected far too far to the southeast then actually it is.

I cleaned up my blogroll, hopefully removed all those dead links.

At first, I’d very much like to add [OpenID](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openid) commenting here. But after trying quite a few plugins out there, none really satisfy my liking. I’m hoping to add this feature in near future.

69 comments

  1. Dulu pingin pake Comment Karma, tapi kayaknya kurang pas, karena blog saya sepi pengunjung… blognya pak pri emang lebih cocok… :D

  2. Masa sih malah balik pakai Akismet? Capek, harus bebersih banyak spam yang masih bisa nembus juga :(. Kalau blogroll emang udah nggak musim ya?

  3. I replaced IP to country plugin with one with GeoIP backend (not released yet).
    Kapan kira2 bisa dirilis :d
    Trus makeovernya apa yah..?? still with same color n view. Maybe didats will make this site freshly :d

  4. walaupun ga terlalu ngerti artikelnya…
    yah… habiss… daripada mumet bahasa inggris kayak gitu…
    tapi tetep di tes… tes… :d

  5. Keren ya, jadi ada rating commentnya, kayak di digg.com

    Kalo misalnya jumlah digg negatif, ntar commentnya ditutup gak?

  6. wew.. comment yang isinya “pertamax” langsung dapat nilai -5, wah.. ternyata banyak juga pengunjung yang mulai bosan dengan hal begini :D
    kalau gitu.. berarti saatnya untuk mengehentikan comment dulu baru posting.. :D
    Hebat!!

  7. @ 9 : lho masah akismet sering ditembus spam?? :-?
    Punyaku setiap hari ada sekitar 40-150 spam yang berhasil terjaring Akismet dan tidak ada satupun yang pernah tembus. :)>-
    ——-
    Om pri, di komenku no 15 koq kotanya Rungkut? Itu bukan kota lho.. Tapi salah satu daerah di Surabaya.

  8. iya pake akismet suka ada yang kelewat, padahal jelas2 masuk kategori spam… :(

    berhubung masih males, dan spamnya juga ngga rame banget ya udah dibiarin dulu.. :D

  9. waduuh kok Bekasi….?? salah kota kayaknya…

    uuhm tapi…
    oowh, ai si ai si…

    hebat juga nih GeoIP Backend nya.. :D

  10. plugin yang keren itu…
    jadi comment nya bebas spam dan trackback nya juga bebas spam
    pantas dicoba.. :)
    pake akismet ya??
    hehe :d:d

  11. ngetes juga!
    eh hari gini ada yang belon tau KARMA
    itu tuh kalau kita berbuat salah ma orang, entar kita akan dapetin balasan yang setimpal.

    oh salah ya?
    KARMA itu sosiolog yang terkenal itu!

    Karl Marx kali!

  12. Coba ngetest juga ah … dimana saya?
    Btw, jadi nambah field buat nama kotanya yah, wah, banyak banget kota sedunia disimpen semua

  13. I’m so glad to read this! I desperately want to use your comment smileys, but they aren’t clickable and the ‘more’ doesn’t work for me either.

    I will save your feed address so I can check back often so I have it as soon as you release it!

    ~J

  14. Hmmm Priyadi,

    the GeoIP database is commercial stuff, right? And quite expensive, too IMHO. I tested my current IP from their web site, and they resolved it to “Munich, Germany” – which is not exactly right; I live some 35km NE of that.

    But of course the next biggest Gigabit Internet line from German Telekom might be in Munich, and I guess this is how that whole IP2City thing works…

    Anyway, thanks for your great plugins. Really appreciated.

  15. salam kenal mas pri

    bisa ga tulungin bagaimana bisa pasangin google adsense ke wordpress kita [situs aslinya], kalo misalnya pake domain laen, ada gak domain freephp hosting, jadi kita bisa install wordpress 2.5.

    kalo misalnya gak bisa difree hosting , berarti beli dong domain , ada ga yah yang mo kasih free domain hahahaha…… :d :d/

    makasih…

    ps: buat para master blog juga nih disini hehehe

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