Honeypot for Contact Form 7 v2.1

Honeypot for Contact Form 7 v2.1 has been released. Aside from a couple of minor bug fixes, the main addition in v2.1 is the inclusion of a new (optional, and disabled by default) form submission time check. This new time check records the time when the form is loaded and checks again when the form is submitted. If the form is submitted in under a user-defined number of seconds, the form is rej…
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Honeypot for Contact Form 7 v2.0

Honeypot for Contact Form 7 v2.0 has been released, and it's the biggest update to the plugin since it was created 10 years ago. Fundamentally, the function of the plugin remains the same - stop dumb @#$%! bots. While the spammer detection is the same, what happens after has been improved. Previously it was a simple validate/not-validate. However, I wanted to improve integration with CF7's buil…
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ToTop Link 1.4 for WordPress

ToTop Link 1.4 for WordPress is out. This simple plugin gives WordPress-powered sites an easy way to add a "return to top" link to their pages. You can see it in action on this site, simply scroll down the page a bit and you'll see a "return to top" link appear in the top right. New in v1.4: This update brings with it the ability to customize the scroll trigger offset -- meaning, instead of…
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ToTop Link 1.2 & 1.3 for WordPress

ToTop Link 1.2 for WordPress is out. This simple plugin gives WordPress-powered sites an easy way to add a "return to top" link to their pages. You can see it in action here, simply scroll down the page a bit and you'll see a "return to top" link appear. New in v1.2: You can now completely customize the positioning of the link/graphic. All the pre-sets (top-left, bottom-right, etc.) are stil…
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SEOSimple now for Joomla 2.5

Just a quick update to say SEOSimple 2.1 has been released, and now has a Joomla 2.5 version. I've also added an option that allows you to define whether you wish your category description to be used as the category page's meta description. Optionally, you can use the content of the top-most article in the category listing. If set to "category description", and no category description is avail…
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New WP Plugin: ToTop Link

I'm pleased to announce the release of our latest WordPress plugin, ToTop Link. This simple plugin gives WordPress-powered sites an easy way to add a "return to top" link to their pages. Rather than explain how it works, simply scroll down the page here and you'll see the link image appear in the top right corner. Settings allow you easily to adjust the positioning and style to best fit your…
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Drupal and WordPress founders interviewed together

A bit of a landmark co-interview with opensource CMS luminaries Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) and Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal) at SchipulCon 2011 in Houston, Texas. Bear with the initial audio -- the irony of tech stuff going wrong is not lost on me either. Here at Dao By Design we near exclusively build using one or the other, and I couldn't agree with Matt's comment that initial…
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SEOSimple Joomla plugin – now for J1.5 J1.6 and J1.7!

After almost exactly two years of no updates, I'm quite happy to announce the release of SEOSimple 2.0 -- now compatible with Joomla 1.6 and Joomla 1.7 as well as Joomla 1.5 . That's not all -- I've finally fixed a number of small bugs that have been growing dust on my todo list - including fixing the K2 compatibility issue and the occurrence of an "uninitialized strong offset" error. I've…
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Adding a little honey to WordPress’ Contact Form 7 Plugin

I've just released a new WordPress plugin that adds honeypot functionality to the popular (and frankly, awesome) Contact Form 7 plugin for WordPress. Built out of self-necessity, the Contact Form 7 Honeypot plugin simply gives CF7 users an additional "honeypot" element to use when building their forms. A honeypot, for those unaware, is a spam trap that attempts to prevent spam bots from clo…
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Dao By Design Launches China Blog Network

In early 2008 Dao By Design added a feature to its China-expat focused community site -- Lost Laowai -- which allowed bloggers focused on China to connect with one another. In the time since the feature has become increasingly popular and outgrew its position as a periphery feature on another site. So, we did the only thing we could: redesigned it, repackaged it, and relaunched it on its own domai…
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Dao By (new) Design — our shiny new look

I'm way (way) behind on announcing the new look and identity of Dao By Design, but cobblers' kids and their shoes, eh? So, welcome to the new look of Dao By Design. Slicker, more organized (or will be when we get everything in its place), more useful and generally just much much better. Previously the site utilized Joomla for the main CMS and WordPress for the blog. With the CMS-focused improvem…
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WordPress 3.0 "Thelonious" Released

And doesn't it look fantastic. WordPress 3.0 has some features that have been in high demand for some time, and that theme developers have had to muddle their way around when using WordPress as a project's CMS. Namely: Custom backgrounds & headers (no more custom fields and php wizardry needed) Shortlinks (our tweets thank you) Menus (I can't tell you how exited I am to retire the rather…
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SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.4

I need first apologize for the length of time between updates. I have no excuse other than an insane work schedule. I, initially at least, was also trying to hold off releasing a new version until I had some significant bugs to fix or features to add. Perhaps it's a testament to the simpleness of the plugin, but bugs are few and far between. That said, an encoding bug has been the bane of the plu…
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SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.3

Man, since I released SEOSimple v1.2 a few weeks ago I've learned a massive lesson - WAY too many people are still using servers that employ PHP4 - the php engine that was replaced with PHP5 four years ago. For anyone that tried to use the plugin with PHP4, I'm sorry about breaking your site. Actually it's an old PHP4 bug that broke your site, but I'll apologize anyway. So sorry I sat my butt dow…
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SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.2

Close on the heels of the release of v1.1 I'm releasing v1.2 of the SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 plugin. I've just tweaked a few things to better support UTF-8 encoding, word wrapping of the descriptions and better handling of the Section and Category page descriptions. Please report any problems you have either on the SEO Simple Support Forum, or in the comments on the SEOSimple home page.…
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SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.1

Just a quick note to say that version 1.1 of the SEOSimple plugin has been released. This was just a quick release to add some additional front page title tag configurations. You can now totally and independently control your Joomla 1.5 front page title tag using the following options: [optional fp title] | [site title] [site title] | [optional fp title] [optional fp title] [site title] *…
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autoMetaDescSEO changed to SEOSimple – new name, new features!

I've released a new version of autoMetaDescSEO, fixing many of the problems - including the stupid name - of the first release. I've changed the name to SEOSimple to better reflect the fact that the Joomla 1.5 plugin project has expanded to include a few more useful SEO features. Briefly, features of SEOSimple include: - Auto generation of meta description tags for all pages/articles that don't…
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New site: Tip. Trick. Mod.

When I initially began this blog as an extension of my design business, I wanted a place where I could write about various tips and tricks I come across due to spending an overly large portion of my day online. Recently I've begun to refocus this blog as being more an outlet to discuss the happenings of Dao By Design, as well as other related news or topics from the field - including design, maki…
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