Then I noticed something last morning that made me think. I know that does not happen often but I like it when it does. I happened to click on the “Activity Log” tab on the VaultPress dashboard and found the following.

VaultPress Activity Log

For those of you that are not the programmer types, the above is a list of all the database “writes” that this blog had performed in the last 3 minutes. Also for the non-programmer types, database reads and writes for the most part, writes more so than reads, are what increases or decreases the time required to produce webpages that are generated by applications with a database back end. That was a mouthful. Simply put, in general, the less interaction with the database or the more efficient the interaction, the more efficient your page. So when I found this nicely tabulated list of database queries with past histories of each entry, I was pretty happy. Now I know which plugin(s) the above queries are from, I can remove them and/or fix them and the problem would go away.

Now back to VaultPress. What an elegant way to troubleshoot errant code that is write intensive! It acts like a scrolling database change log, along with the recent history of all such activity, for each commit! This is the stuff of geek dreams!

Not only does the service offer you peace of mind from disaster, protect your blog from malicious file changes (version update oversights notwithstanding), it also gives you a very elegant way to perceive your blog, in real time, from the perspective of your database.

I can’t wait to find other nondescript ways that VaultPress will prove to be useful. Besides the obvious stuff, the statistics, the security and now the activity log, what other gems have you found hidden in the vaults of VaultPress?

When most people hear about Akismet, they often think about WordPress, but Akismet is actually available for over twenty additional systems and platforms, including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, PunBB, and libraries for PHP, Python, and .NET.

If you’re running, or planning to run, a social network or online publishing service, the Akismet team wants you to know that they can not only protect you from direct spam, but from parasite spam as well, as long as you can give them a way to contact you.

Akismet’s pattern and volume monitoring abilities make direct spam easy to filter, but ever since the dawn of forums, spammers have opened accounts for the sole purpose hosting their spam on your site. Thanks to Akismet’s pattern monitoring, the Akismet team can easily track the source of these parasite spammers and notify the site’s owner, but there’s little they can do if they can’t get in touch with you. Since contact forms can break without warning, the Akismet team recommends that you provide a traditional abuse@yourdomain email address. If you don’t want to make this email address public, at least contact Akismet and have it placed on file.

Are you using Akismet on your social network or online publishing service? With so many options available, why not try it today? Parasite spam can hit almost any site driven by user content, so don’t forget to offer your contact information to the Akismet team.

Mark Jaquith has a great suggestion on how to Import a Vox blog into WordPress or almost anything else. In short, he suggests that you import your Vox blog into a vanilla WordPress.com blog and then export it out as a WordPress export file. Then you actually have a bunch of choices of what to do with your blog. PS: Be sure to mark your WordPress.com blog as private before importing if you do not intend to make that your final destination.

New Features (and Some Comments)

• Landscape mode with extra wide keyboard
  
  This is probably the most desired feature for this application simply because it is physically painful to type a full length blog post in the iPhone portrait keyboard. I am glad that the portrait keyboard restriction is now a thing of the past!
• Link creation help
  
  
  I wasn’t sure where this feature was hiding at first, but I soon found the trick to invoking this feature. Basically anytime you are writing, you can type something that resembles a link (for example “www.” or “http”) to invoke a little prompt that asks you if you want to create a link. Answering yes will bring up another prompt asking you to fill in the URL. I think this is slick interface although some people might find it a bit annoying. It would be nice to merge these two dialogs into one dialog and also have the option to turn this feature off.
• Support for editing and creating pages
  
  There’s not much to say here. Previously you weren’t able to create/edit pages. Now you can. Note that this feature is only available for WordPress.org 2.7+ or WordPress.com blogs.
• Comment moderation
  
  This is one of my other favorite enhancements because I usually spend more time moderating comments than writing blog posts. To be able to do this on-the-go without having to continually login and deal with browser cookies is quite convenient. Note that this feature is only available for WordPress.org 2.7+ or WordPress.com blogs.
• Asynchronous publishing
  There weren’t any visible changes for this feature, but I assume asynchronous is better than what was in the earlier version.
• Photo resizing options
  
  When this feature is enabled, all photos attached to the post will be resized to be no larger than 640×480 to save space and publishing time. It’s a nice feature to have, but I don’t think I will be using it personally.

Bug in Version 1.2

I know that you are thinking, “already?” right? Indeed, the WordPress for iPhone App team has confirmed the existence of a photo bug in this version.  They are assuring us that the fix will be pushed out as soon as possible.  It’s best for you to wait on the upgrade if you post photos with the WordPress for iPhone application. If not, then you should definitely upgrade and enjoy these great new features! Version 1.21 is out with this bug fixed.  Go grab it now!

Go grab it!

You can get the WordPress for iPhone (and iPod touch) app for free at the iTunes App store.

• Send to Twitter (or consequently, send to Techmeme via Twitter)
• Create an RSS feed link
• Insert Adsense into a post
• Insert an RSS reader into a post
• Add shortcodes to sidebars

Please let us know if you have used any of these or know of/have created others that might be useful.

Speaking of new features added to WordPress 2.7, Demetris has written a post on the Ten New Features in WordPress 2.7 that strikes him as the most useful. I really like his illustrated style of writing. It is worthy of note that some of the features he mentions are dependant on compatibility with your theme.

What was most useful for me in that post was a link to another post on the Google Webmaster Portal that helps you create better 404 pages using an experimental widget. Now I am sure there are ways to incorporate a Custom Search within the 404 without using the widget but I stuck with it because the output looked useful. Quick Online Tips had a post on the Google Custom 404 widget a couple of months ago that also talks about this widget.

This link to a fictitious “hotmail” page is an example of the output that our 404.php (in the theme folder) at weblogtoolscollection.com generates. We still need to fix the footer and the sidebars but it works for now.

Here is a screencast showcasing the generator in action.

Shortcode generator from WebInventif.fr on Vimeo

Linking to an image I found on a quick Google image search, this is what I was able to come up with. Click on the image to see the full size.

Big Huge Labs allows you to edit your result, save the image or share it through links or email. You can also elect to start over if you choose.

Although I hate seeing Kubrick being used all over the place, it’s nice to see such a generator service for those that would like to do things this way. I realize the default Kubrick theme has the option to upload a new header image but it’s no where near as nice as this generator.

I just tried out some of the features including addition of pictures and related links but the soup generated is not pretty and I personally do not care for it. But it is still Alpha code but it sure is fun to play with and discover related and relevant content to display to your readers. If you are a WordPress (or Blogger) user, give it a try and let us know what you think.

• Call (646) 200-0000 from any phone (You have to know the number/callerID of this phone, Skype would probably not work)
• Thats it! BlogTalkRadio puts out a podcast feed with an MP3 at a pre-defined URI. Just visit https://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/number_you_called_from   (replace number_you_called_from with your phone number)
• Use some sort of a plugin for WordPress to import the said feed into your blog and you be podcastin’!

The only major drawback I see is the phone number at the end of the RSS URI. Since this would probably be exposed over the web, if I were concerned about my phone number, this method would not work for me. However if you import the RSS feed (and import the MP3 generated), you should be fine.
Thanks to a post from Dave Winer.