Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

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About Dougal Campbell

Dougal is a web developer, and a "Developer Emeritus" for the WordPress platform. When he's not coding PHP, Perl, CSS, JavaScript, or whatnot, he spends time with his wife, three children, a dog, and a cat in their Atlanta area home.

9rules Network chooses WordPress

Apr202005

The 9rules Network is a website affiliate network. They have chosen WordPress to power their blog, and hint at more things to come. Wordpress’ powerful theme architecture and plugin API gives us the ability to not only build a powerful blog, but to empower an entire Network – as you’ll soon see. WordPress is not just for blogs anymore. We’re utilizing some of the very latest features available in WordPress Strayhorn (1.5) to build the … Continue reading →

Cooper MINI Fun

Apr162005

Recently, while Susan was driving the kids around, our daughter saw a convertible and commented that she’d like a car “with the lid down”. Susan told her, “save your money!” That’s our stock response to the kids whenever they request anything expensive. Anyhow, Susan has always thought that Mary would be really cute in a MINI (when she’s old enough to drive, of course). So we were joking around about that, and began to wonder … Continue reading →

eBay Storefronts?

Apr142005

Has anyone else noticed brick-and-mortar stores that offer auction services through eBay? There are two in my area that I’m aware of so far. One is TheTradingBay, in Marietta, which I pass each day on my way to work. The second is iSoldIt, which has a store in Woodstock. Basically, they operate sort of like a consignment shop which fronts your items through eBay. “Clicks-to-Bricks” isn’t exactly a new idea. But for some reason, I … Continue reading →

SpamLookup plugin for MovableType

Apr112005

There’s a new plugin for MovableType called SpamLookup. Let’s compare this add-on to the anti-spam features already in the WordPress core: Feature Comparison for MT SpamLookup Plugin vs. WordPress Core Feature SpamLookup Plugin WordPress Core IP-based lookup Yes No Domain-based lookup Yes No TrackBack IP check * Yes No Passphrase checks Yes No Checking HTTP Headers Yes No Hyperlink Count limits Yes Yes Dynamic proxy checking Yes Yes Wordlists (blacklist/graylist) Yes Yes Whitelist URL checks … Continue reading →

Wil Wheaton considers WordPress

Apr082005

Oh yeah, and Wil Wheaton is also pondering a possible switch to WordPress. Some plans: […] Rebuild the entire site, either in Movable Type, or in WordPress. Right now, I’m playing with a development version of WordPress, and I’m very excited about what it can do. It may not be for me, but I’m enjoying the test drive. […] I’m still kicking myself for not buying an autographed copy of Dancing Barefoot when I had … Continue reading →

Scrivs considers new CMS for Whitespace

Apr082005

Scrivs is pondering a change for his design blog, Whitespace. The three main choices are Textpattern or WordPress or DIY. I’ve already weighed in with my (admittedly biased) opinion of WordPress. It seems to me that it would be a great fit for his stated requirements. Here is a list of features that I am looking for: Easily import entries from MT Multiple authors with different permissions Multiple blogs. For example, I may setup a … Continue reading →

A modern day fairy tale, part 2

Apr082005

For some reason, our daughter doesn’t like it when I make up new versions of her favorite stories. … Around that time, the three bears returned from their walk to eat their breakfast. When they went inside their house, Papa Bear immediately noticed something wrong. “Somebody’s been DDoSing my server,” he said. Mama Bear checked her server. “Somebody’s been defacing my corporate website!” Baby Bear checked his server, too. “Somebody’s been spamming my blog!” The … Continue reading →

Tartan Day 2005

Apr062005

Today is Tartan Day, which originated in Canada, was later adopted by the United States, and is now beginning to spread to other corners of the world, just as the “Scottish diaspora” has. The celebrations in New York this year were especially auspicious, as they featured the sword of William “Braveheart” Wallace, which has never before left its native Scotland. There was also some controversy this year with the conspicuous absence of Sean Connery, who … Continue reading →

WordPress Scandal: Photomatt Responds

Apr012005

Matt finally had a chance to make a response to the recent WordPress SEO scandal. Here’s a small snippet: The articles hosted content thing was just a short-term experiment, an interesting idea (original and relevant Wikipedia-type content on the site) that was badly implemented. As an experiment it could have been conducted much better than it was. The content should have been more topical to WP issue, I should have kept up with the content … Continue reading →

WordPress Scandal Update

Apr012005

Matt “scum of the earth” Mullenweg, vacationing in a not-very-wired portion of Italy, finally got wind of all the villagers with torches and pitchforks who have been searching for him. I have close to a thousand emails and countless blog posts and comments to go through, but I’ll try to synthesize everything and respond ASAP, I think it’s important because some people seem to be spinning things quite maliciously. If you have a specific question … Continue reading →