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How To List Top Commentators in WordPress Without A Plugin

Written by Arian Xhezairi on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 @ 4:09 PM and 127 views
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I have always been a big fan of extended functionality, but never a big fan of means to extend by using plugins. Not that plugins are bad, but usually they have the tendency of slowing things down, and that is something not to commend. In the other hand, for the ‘unfortunate’ luck of WordPress being so popular, there are so many plugins in the repository, I suspect there is a developer in the world who hasn’t created his own. I’m thinking whether my grand-mother has developed one yet. Not everything that shines is gold.

After reading this write up by Gines, I suggested not to always rely on plugins, instead try to avoid them where possible. Although he makes a good point when says:

But for our friends who’s not in to coding, queries, development, plugins will have to do.

Anyway, as I challenged myself towards it, I jumped on and started to write my own Top Commentators function so I could list them on the sidebar. Surprisingly Matt listed as second top commenter, and it is a bit odd you know.
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Moving WordPress Blog To a New Domain Without Losing Traffic

Written by Arian Xhezairi on Thursday, July 22, 2010 @ 11:24 AM and 148 views
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WordPress Target Last week, MediaTemple servers got exploited. It was pointed out that target where sites with one or more WordPress installations. Whether you were hosted on a (mt) (gs) or (dv) server, no exception were made whatsoever. Certainly, I had the ‘joyful opportunity’ and was lucky enough to get the injection, which was hidden behind a <script> tag, at the end of every single post and/or page in the database. Injecting the malware script in the posts was very impressive (I pat the hacker in the back), as nothing happened whenever an infected site’s home page loaded, so it was impossible to sniff anything strange around. Nevertheless, once a reader clicked a post/page title, he/she would have been redirected to the infection injecting site, in about the next one or two seconds. It wasn’t quite pleasing tho, but sometimes this things give you a fun experience, like for instance spending half of the day trying to put order back again in the sweet Grid-Server (I headbutt the hacker, badly).
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Add TweetMeme RT and FB LIKE Button, NO Slow Page Loads

Written by Arian Xhezairi on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 @ 1:29 PM and 286 views
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Yesterday I was Googling for better ways of inserting TweetMeme’s Retweet button in a WordPress powered site, because I wasn’t quite happy with the slow load that the <iframe> caused on my blog, accidentally I stumbled upon this article. Admittedly, there are two things I like about the author of the article in word, ONE this SEOmofo guy is very articulated, he explains everything quite reasonably and detailedly, and TWO he is the first person in the world I’ve happened to hear about, who has an attitude very common to mine. And that is, making a public statement, declaring the self-proclamation of being the smartest man alive. I like that.

Now, the method explained by SEOmofo is very adequate when the scenario implies using pure JavaScript. I, however wanted to do the same with the Facebook Like <iframe> button, and as is jQuery (as always) in my case controlling my JavaScript functionality, I had to be flexible and adapt a little.
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Hello World, for the Second time!

Written by Arian Xhezairi on Saturday, February 27, 2010 @ 7:08 AM and 57 views
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It’s me speaking again. I am not going to ramble about stuff right now at this very “first” post after a century, and bore you with personal things. Just passing by and greeting everyone here. My blogging habits have gone through some serious ups and downs, all was related with primary activities in life. I considered everything and concluded for now that I may be ready to start blogging again, not fully engaged though.
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Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me"

Written by Arian Xhezairi on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 @ 9:24 PM and 68 views

From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe.

Need not say more?!