Corey Salzano – Page 7 – Web developer, music lover

Clobber spam users WordPress plugin
I’ve built another plugin for WordPress websites with open registration. This plugin makes it easy to prevent spam accounts from publishing posts.

A screen shot of the dashboard this plugin creates

Frequently asked questions

What does this thing do?

This plugin adds an item to the Users menu of your administration dashboard. Click the “Clobber Spam” link and you will see a page that puts the most recently created user names next to the email address and the title of the most recently created post by that user. You can check a box next to the users that have submitted spam and click a button to delete all their posts and prevent them from logging in again.

Why not just delete the users?

Because the software these spammers use will try to submit more than one post for each account, sometimes days later. If you delete the user, the same user name can be recreated. We can prevent the account from being used by changing the password and email address. The spam software is forced to create a new account to continue bothering us. Also, I already use a really good plugin to delete old and unused user accounts. It is called Inactive User Deleter by shra and I regularly use it to delete users with no posts and no comments that are at least 6 months old.

Can this process of deleting spam post submissions be automated?

I would love to build the “akismet for posts” because I could make a lot of money selling it. I have been using Ban Hammer and Stop Spammer Registrations and I still decided to build this plugin to handle about 50 posts a week that these plugins are failing to prevent.

Can you add feature X?

Send me your idea, and we can have a conversation.

I have been running a WordPress website with open author registration for a few years, and the majority of the plugins I have written have been focused on making the management of that sort of site easier. Here is a list of the unreleased plugins I am using that I have created:

Count comment author URL as link: Include the comment author URL in the max links allowed for comment moderation

Disable comment author homepage links: Removes home page links from comment author user names

Hold posts with links: Set post status to pending when a new post is published containing any hyperlinks

Show pending posts count: Show the number of pending posts in the admin dashboard menu just like comments

A list of the plugins I have published is always available on WordPress.org. I also use a version of WP Status Notifier that I have modified to include a post excerpt and a hyperlink that starts the user deletion process.

With this plugin, Clobber spam users, I am going to stop deleting spam user accounts immediately and simply prevent their use for a number of months instead. I have given some thought to making the registration process more cumbersome for everyone, but I don’t want to sacrifice the user experience of real humans to fight the bots.

Here is a download link: clobber-spam-users.zip @ WordPress.org
October 13, 2012
Detecting mixed case strings in ASP Classic
I needed to detect a mixed case string in classic ASP. I define a mixed case string as containing both upper and lower case characters, like AuxagGsrLpa. I could not find a free function on the web to make this decision, so I wrote one.

<% Function isMixedCase( str ) 'detects mixed case strings using the english alphabet 'ignores spaces and other non-alphabetic characters str = trim( str ) isMixed = false lastCase = "" for i=1 to len( str ) currentChar = mid( str, i, 1 ) if asc( currentChar ) >= 65 and asc( currentChar ) <= 90 then if lastCase <> "" and lastCase <> "upper" then isMixed = true exit for else lastCase = "upper" end if else if asc( currentChar ) >= 97 and asc( currentChar ) <= 122 then 'lower if lastCase <> "" and lastCase <> "lower" then isMixed = true exit for else lastCase = "lower" end if else lastCase = "" end if end if next if isMixed then isMixedCase = true else isMixedCase = false end if End Function %>

Here are a few test strings to demonstrate the functionality:

<% response.write "Hello " & isMixedCase( "Hello " ) & " <br>" response.write "hello! " & isMixedCase( "hello!" ) & " <br>" response.write "HELLO " & isMixedCase( "HELLO " ) & " <br>" response.write "hello there " & isMixedCase( "hello there" ) & " <br>" response.write "hellothere " & isMixedCase( "hellothere" ) & " <br>" response.write "hellotherE " & isMixedCase( "hellotherE" ) & " <br>" %>

Here is the resulting HTML output of the tests:

Hello True
hello! False
HELLO False
hello there False
hellothere False
hellotherE True
January 16, 2012
Matching MD5 hashes in ASP.NET and ASP Classic
The goal of this page is to put two MD5 code samples on the same web page, one for ASP classic and one for ASP.NET. String formatting (like ASCII vs UTF-8) can trip up coding these two routines. These two code samples will produce the same MD5 hash output.

Classic ASP/VBScript MD5

The ASP code is simple once you have a copy of md5.asp from http://frez.co.uk. The only file in the ZIP that you need is md5.asp.

 <% response.write md5("[email protected]") %>

ASP.NET MD5

The keys to getting the .net output to match are encoding.ascii and toString("x2").

<%@ Import Namespace="System.Security.Cryptography" %> <script language="VB" runat="server"> Public Sub Page_Load( sender As Object, e As EventArgs ) Dim strPlainText as String = "[email protected]" dim md5Hasher as MD5 = MD5.create( ) dim result as byte( ) = md5Hasher.computeHash( encoding.ascii.getBytes( strPlainText)) for each singleByte as byte in result response.write ( singleByte.ToString("x2") ) next End Sub </script>
January 12, 2012
aspSmartUpload.dll usage
aspSmartUpload.dll Q&A

Frequently asked questions

IIS7 installation and configuration

Registry key and properties

Troubleshooting errors

Downloads and official documentation

What is aspSmartUpload.dll?

A 32-bit library to facilitate file uploads via ASP Classic and IIS.

Will aspSmartUpload.dll work on Windows Server 2008 64 bit with IIS7?

Yes.

IIS7 Installation and configuration

Install at C:\Windows\SysWOW64\

Register the DLL via command prompt: regsvr32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\aspSmartUpload.dll

Enable 32-bit applications on the website’s application pool

IIS7 considerations:

Mind the Maximum Requesting Entity Body Limit property, a member of the Limits Properties under the ASP icon of the website profile in IIS7. The maximum file size is limited by the request object to the number of bytes set there. You may log 500 errors with a description of, ASP 0104 : 80004005 Operation not Allowed, Request object if the file sent with the request is bigger than the set limit.

Another Limit Property controls the amount of time the server allows ASP requests to complete. The Script Time-out property defaults to one minute thirty seconds.

Can this DLL upload files to another Server 2008 in the same domain?

Yes. Change the user account that handles Anonymous Access in the Authentication section of IIS7 to Application Pool User. Use a UNC path in your call to mySmartUpload.Save.

Errors

If you do not have the ability to IIS reset or reboot the server that holds this DLL, your life may be miserable. I have been using this DLL for years, and sometimes the only way to prevent aspSmartUpload.dll from erroring is to restart the machine.

ASP 0104 : 80004005 Operation not Allowed, Request object

Configuration prevents file size. Adjust the IIS7 Limit Properties.

error: -2146778286 Server.CreateObject Failed, 800ac352 Server object

True story: one day I could not escape these errors until I rebooted the Windows machine. Restarting the IIS service may also work (iisreset /NOFORCE at a command prompt).

error: -2147024882 Server.CreateObject Failed, 8007000e Server object

Make sure the DLL is registered and in the proper location.

Unable to save file (Error 1120)

This could be permissions on the folder for the Internet Guest Account. However, I had to reboot the server containing the upload script to stop this error. My setup is the script runs on one server and the files are saved on another. I believe the server where the files were saved was not found during boot up (because it was also rebooting) and so the save directory was unavailable.

Where is the registry key?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Advantys\aspSmartUpload

Key properties:

TotalMaxFileSize

MaxFileSize

AllowedFilesList

DeniedFilesList

DenyPhysicalPath

How to modify these properties in code:

dim mySmartUpload set mySmartUpload = Server.CreateObject("aspSmartUpload.SmartUpload") mySmartUpload.TotalMaxFileSize = 8388608 mySmartUpload.MaxFileSize = 2097152 mySmartUpload.AllowedFilesList = "jpg,jpeg,png" mySmartUpload.DeniedFilesList = "bat,exe,com,asp" mySmartUpload.DenyPhysicalPath = False

Read more details about these properties here.

Downloads & documentation

These files were distributed more then 10 years ago by Advantys, the makers of the DLL.

aspsmartupload_v3_3.zip

aspsmartupload_samples.zip
January 9, 2012
How to: add images to reddit sidebar
Here is one quick and dirty way to add an image to the sidebar of a subreddit. You must be a moderator of a subreddit in order to edit its stylesheet.

Upload the image

Add this CSS to the stylesheet:
/* add image to the bottom of the sidebar */ .side .usertext-body{ padding-bottom: 400px; background: url(%%image_name%%) no-repeat; background-position: bottom center; }

Replace %%image_name%% with the name of your uploaded image

Change padding-bottom: 400px; to a value in pixels that is at least the height of your image

Similarly, here is a CSS code that will add an image to the top of the reddit sidebar:

/* add image to the top of the sidebar */ .side { padding-top: 400px; background: url(%%image_name%%) no-repeat center; }

This adds a background image to the sidebar and positions it at the bottom. The padding creates enough blank space to make the image visible.

This won’t work if you already have a background image on the the sidebar as part of other visual changes on the subreddit.
October 4, 2011
gif2frames.exe: Extract frames from an animated GIF
I built a Windows 32 bit command line executable, gif2frames.exe. (Go to download)

This tool will take an animated GIF image file and save a separate static image for each frame in PNG, BMP or JPG format.

The reason GIFs are useful is because the files can be optimized to reduce the size on disk. If a frame is visible for 1 or 10 seconds, a single copy of the frame may be stored inside the image file and a frame delay can help the player coordinate the animation.

For this reason, when you say “extract frames from a gif file” you could mean two things; each unique frame could be extracted just once, or each frame could be extracted for each unit of time it is visible. If you want the latter, you must then decide on a rate of frames per second.

Also interesting: the timing is funny business. Minimum frame rates (per second) can be determined by the software displaying the GIF file (more info at the bottom of this page). This makes the number of frames in a film strip style export of frames hard to calculate. I workaround this problem by finding the frame with the shortest display time and divide all the other times by this number. This means animations where all frames are shown for three seconds will only produce one image for each frame. If this is not what you are looking for, try ImageMagick (convert.exe).

Usage

Here are a few cmd.exe examples showing basic calls.

Animated GIF to PNG images

C:\>gif2frames.exe at.gif

Animated GIF to BMP images

gif2frames at.gif -bmp

Animated GIF to JPG images

gif2frames at.gif -jpg

Only unique frames

gif2frames at.gif -png -unique

Downloads

Download gif2frames.zip
October 2, 2011

Top users WordPress plugin

I wrote a new plugin to list the contributors to a WordPress website. The comment and post counts are added together, and the top X users are listed in a simple table alongside the counts.

Download top-users-by-comment-plus-post-count.zip.

Installation instructions

Upload the `top-users-by-comment-plus-post-count` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Place this or a similar function call in your theme: <?php top_users_by_comment_plus_post_count( 10 ); ?>

CSS sample

This is the CSS I am using to style the output.

#top-users-by-comment-plus-post-count td.tu-author{ padding-right: 8px; }
#top-users-by-comment-plus-post-count td.tu-count{ text-align: right; }

Sample output

I added tab and line break characters for readability.

<table id="top-users-by-comment-plus-post-count">
	<tr><td class="tu-author">DisgustedInDenver</td><td class="tu-count">297</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">Corey</td><td class="tu-count">109</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">G11</td><td class="tu-count">60</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">jmbecker13</td><td class="tu-count">10</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">trustmedotcom</td><td class="tu-count">9</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">ulfwolf</td><td class="tu-count">8</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">noscamsforme</td><td class="tu-count">8</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">who8dapple</td><td class="tu-count">7</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">cindmo</td><td class="tu-count">7</td></tr>
	<tr><td class="tu-author">nytemare4u</td><td class="tu-count">7</td></tr>
</table>

August 27, 2011

Disable comment author links in WordPress
I just wrote a new plugin to disable commenter names from linking to the website URLs they may provide when commenting.

Some themes allow commenters to provide a home page URL along with their comment. The comment author’s name then becomes a link to that website wherever it appears on your site. This plugin removes those links.

Download disable-comment-author-links.zip

Installation instructions

Upload the `disable-comment-author-links` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory

Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
August 26, 2011
Add content to the bottom of every WordPress post
Bottom of every post is a WordPress plugin I wrote in July of 2011. This plugin is a simple filter that adds some content to the bottom of each post. I thought for sure a plugin like this would already exist, and I was surprised to find a few very complex solutions with way more features than necessary.

This plugin has no other features and adds no administration options pages in your admin dashboard (because you can edit the settings via the Plugin editor). The message that is appended to each post is saved in a text file in the plugin directory. I chose a file on disk instead of a WordPress database option because I dislike plugin options pages for simple plugins.

This plugin will never be updated, and that is a good thing. It is very simple and designed for you to make edits to suit your needs. An update would erase your customizations, so there will never be a new version.

How can I edit the message?

To edit the message that will be added to the bottom or footer of your posts, Go to Plugins > Editor and choose “Bottom of every post” with the top right selector. The plugin’s files will be loaded on the right. Choose the file `bottom_of_every_post.txt` and edit at will.

How can I remove the message from my home page posts?

You’ll have to edit the plugin. Find this line:

if( !is_page( ) && file_exists( $fileName )){

…and change that code to one of these lines depending on your configuration:

Blog post home page

if( !is_page( ) && !is_home( ) && file_exists( $fileName )){

Static front page

if( !is_page( ) && !is_front_page( ) && file_exists( $fileName )){

How can I not show the message on a certain category?

First, be sure whether you need a category exclusion or a custom post type exclusion. For categories, add a call to has_category:

Exclude a category

if( !is_page( ) && !has_category('portfolio') && file_exists( $fileName )){

Exclude a custom post type

if( !is_page( ) && 'portfolio' != get_post_type() && file_exists( $fileName )){

Download bottom-of-every-post.zip

Installation instructions

Modify `bottom-of-every-post.txt` to contain the content you would like at the bottom of every post

Upload the `bottom-of-every-post` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory

Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

I am also going to use this code to teach a few people how to create their own WP plugins. Here is the full source code of my new plugin:

<?php /* Plugin Name: Bottom of every post Plugin URI: https://coreysalzano.com/wordpress/bottom-of-every-post/ Description: Add some content to the bottom of each post. Version: 1.0 Author: Corey Salzano Author URI: http://profiles.wordpress.org/users/salzano/ License: GPL2 */ /* avoid a name collision, make sure this function is not already defined */ if( !function_exists("bottom_of_every_post")){ function bottom_of_every_post($content){ /* there is a text file in the same directory as this script */ $fileName = dirname(__FILE__) ."/bottom_of_every_post.txt"; /* we want to change `the_content` of posts, not pages and the text file must exist for this to work */ if( !is_page( ) && file_exists( $fileName )){ /* open the text file and read its contents */ $theFile = fopen( $fileName, "r"); $msg = fread( $theFile, filesize( $fileName )); fclose( $theFile ); /* append the text file contents to the end of `the_content` */ return $content . stripslashes( $msg ); } else{ /* if `the_content` belongs to a page or our file is missing the result of this filter is no change to `the_content` */ return $content; } } /* add our filter function to the hook */ add_filter('the_content', 'bottom_of_every_post'); } ?>
August 3, 2011

“Time ago” formatting in ASP classic

Today, I needed to convert a time stamp like “1/25/2011 10:42:11 AM” to a readable sentence format like “2 months and 6 hours ago.” Here’s the code I came up with:


	function timeAgo( byval time )
		sentence = ""
		hits = 0
		piecesAgo = array( 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 )
		piecesTotals = array( 0, 12, 30, 24, 60, 60 )
		labels = array( "year", "month", "day", "hour", "minute", "second" )
		dateAddSymbols = array( "yyyy", "m", "d", "h", "n", "s" )

		for p=0 to uBound( piecesAgo )
			piecesAgo( p ) = 0 + datediff( dateAddSymbols( p ), time, now( ))

			if piecesAgo( p ) <> 0 then
				time = dateAdd( dateAddSymbols( p ), piecesAgo( p ), time )
			end if
		next

		'remove negative values
		for p=uBound( piecesAgo ) to 0 step -1
			if piecesAgo( p ) < 0 and p > 0 then
				piecesAgo( p ) = piecesAgo( p ) + piecesTotals( p )
				piecesAgo( p-1 ) = piecesAgo( p-1 ) - 1
			end if
		next

		for p=0 to uBound( piecesAgo )
			if piecesAgo( p ) <> 0 then

				if len( sentence ) > 0 then
					sentence = sentence & " and "
				end if
				sentence = sentence & piecesAgo( p ) & " " & labels( p )
				if piecesAgo( p ) > 1 then
					sentence = sentence & "s"
				end if
				hits = hits + 1
				if hits >= 2 then
					exit for
				end if
			end if
		next

		set piecesAgo = nothing
		set piecesTotals = nothing
		set labels = nothing
		set dateAddSymbols = nothing

		timeAgo = sentence & " ago"
	end function

March 14, 2011

Export comments WordPress plugin

I launched a new WordPress plugin to export a blog’s comments. Specifically, this plugin creates a tab-delimited text version of the wp_comments database table. Options include approved, pending or spam (or any combination of) comments.

This page will soon expand. For now…

Download this plugin from WordPress.org

January 27, 2011
WordPress comment paging creates duplicate content

I learned something today about WordPress that I would like to share. The “break comments into pages” feature can create duplicate content for all posts that have only a single page of comments. I made this graphic to explain exactly what happens.

December 14, 2010

Frequently asked questions

Classic ASP/VBScript MD5

ASP.NET MD5

aspSmartUpload.dll Q&A

IIS7 Installation and configuration

Errors

Downloads & documentation

Usage

Animated GIF to PNG images

Animated GIF to BMP images

Animated GIF to JPG images

Only unique frames

Installation instructions

CSS sample

Sample output

Installation instructions

Blog post home page

Static front page

Exclude a category

Exclude a custom post type

Installation instructions