I actually use Intense Debate on my main website, Blondish.net and at first, it was an experience I was conducting to see what would be better – Intense Debate or Disqus?

I have really enjoyed the updates in the past few months that have come up and even deciding to try Disqus on another blog has been pushed to a low priority. Sad, because I could be blogging my own experience here at WPAddict, but great because that means I really do like Intense Debate.

So far, Intense Debate has integrated CommentLuv, and just a few days ago rolled out automatic logins from various places including Facebook, Twitter, WordPress.com, and OpenID as mentioned at Introducing WordPress.com User Accounts & Auto-Login to IntenseDebate.

Truthfully, I think it would be wild if they tried working with Disqus to allow a login for that since there are a lot of Disqus users too. Though, it is just a whimsical thought.

This is great as Intense Debate has finally started to catch up to Disqus. I can only wonder what else they have planned.

I have been tagging quite a few commenters for spam and noting at other WordPress related sites, that there have been a lot of people leaving comments for their premium plugins.

The message has nothing to do with the original post and in my case, it was on a post of a plugin that had nothing to do with the premium posts.

Rather than go about it this way, perhaps the plugin makes should consider releasing the plugin to notable people in the WordPress community to try out and write their feedback. Commenting and leaving a spammy link does nothing but go to the trash or get ignored.

There are better ways to get the word out including affiliate programs, effective advertising on various networks, and as I have said, through word of mouth through product testing. My concern is that these commenters are the type who were hired cheaply at some freelancer website and by someone with no grasp on how to use social media marketing effectively.

So, this is just a heads up to those in the WordPress community. If you talk about WordPress or WordPress plugins, you might be targeted for comment spam.

Have you experienced this? How did you respond to it (or did you)?

Ian Stewart posted on ThemeShaper.com Hacked about a a security issue he found in the theme, particularly in the sv_ss.php file located in the languages ( thematic/library/languages/ )

Ian recommends going to the WordPress theme directory and downloading the Thematic WordPress theme copy from there.

It is important to note that things like this DO occur and Ian did catch this hack and inform others about it. (Thanks Ian!)

Some suggestions for users even if they are not using Thematic:

1. Make sure your WordPress version is up-to-date. This is the first and best thing to do up front. You can also use secure or hardening methods to your WordPress if you want.
2. Make sure your theme version is up-to-date. Some designers do update and fix any bugs that come up.
3. Make sure your plugins are up-to-date. Some plugin developers do update. Word of caution. Newly updated plugins, you should hold off at least a week before installing in case the new version is incomplete or another bug issue comes up. This will prevent further headache.

When I first started using Tweetmeme on my own personal site, I ended up blogging on how it was not validating. In fact, Mike Little pointed that out too when visiting the site. Tweetmeme plugin developers eventually validated another earlier version that I reported (and I am sure others did too), but somewhere alone the line, that got lost.

As few days ago I had to take down the plugin for the Tweetmeme retweet button because of this issue and reported it. I received an email this morning from Tweetmeme that they have corrected the URL outputs and validation, as noted in the Tweetmeme button changelog.

I have since upgraded and activated the plugin. Version 1.7.2 of the Tweetmeme button is confirmed as validated! So for those code ninjas and W3 accessibility folks, it is good to use.

I also suggested to Tweetmeme for future versions to add a function like the Sociable plugin for users to be able to disable the button on individual pages or posts as obviously some pages might not have any valuable information to retweet (like contact forms).

TDO Mini forms, a flexible form plugin by Mark Cunningham had been updated on November 18th at the WordPress Plugin directory for users to be able to upgrade. Unfortunately the plugin version issued was not complete and called fatal errors.

Example:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function tdomf_get_all_users() in /home/themes/public_html/test/wp-content/plugins/tdo-mini-forms/include/tdomf-notify.php on line 60

This errors was just for the form, but the entire site. I use this on Blogrity, the social bookmark site for bloggers and was unable to see anything except the fatal error. Mark has since then reloaded and mentioned the fix for the fatal errors of version 0.13.7 of TDO mini Forms.

The fix does work. I have tried it out. All you have to do is delete the old files and reload the new files. If you use TDO mini forms, and have any suggestions, plugin bugs to point out, or plugin fixes, you can go to thedeadone.net Forums.

Chat Catcher, which has a plugin for WordPress users allows bloggers to install their free service and add a “reaction” like in Disqus or trackback entries from Twitter, FriendFeed, and identi.ca, along with various url-shortening services.

Here is what Shannon Whitley, the creator of Chat Catcher said in an email I received for Chat Catcher users:

Greetings,

I’d like to make everyone aware of an issue we are having in processing your comments. The bit.ly url shortening service temporarily blocked Chat Catcher and we were not able to expand bit.ly urls. This has prevented us from linking comments back to your blog if bit.ly was used to shorten the url. Links from other url shortening services were not affected.

This was a temporary situation due to routine maintenance at the bit.ly site. I have been in contact with support staff at bit.ly and we are working on the issue. At this time, you should begin to see comments again.

For some posts, Chat Catcher will go back and retrieve comments that were missed during this period. There are some limitations around historical searches and it’s probably best to assume that most of your missing comments will not be retrieved.

I apologize to those people who have missed comments. As a user of the service, I’m disappointed as well. I am doing everything I can to make sure Chat Catcher runs smoothly and will post any updates to the @ChatCatcher account on Twitter.

Thank you for your support.

Best,

Shannon Whitley
Whitley Media
swhitley AT whitleymedia DOT com

By the way, separated the email address so Shannon would not have any extra spammage.

So, basically until Bit.ly is fixed, Chat Catcher cannot process urls with Bit.ly. However, they will be able to go back and catch up from skipped tweets once they are back up.