Tag: wordpress plugin

Posted on
by
Liked 9.0.0 — Growing Up by Matthias Pfefferle (ActivityPub for WordPress)
One piece was missing, though: other people couldn’t add your WordPress blog to their lists, because your site never told their server who is allowed to do that. ActivityPub 9.0.0 fixes this with the new Default Starter Kit policy setting: Anyone, Followers only, or Just me.

ActivityPub for WordPress version 9.0 was just released, and a blog post by lead developer Matthias Pfefferle goes over the new features (you can follow me from Mastodon, Pixelfed, or the like at [at]naferrell[at]social.emucafe.org (or https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell) in Mastodon or similar ActivityPub-powered servers (not to mention Bluesky). 9.0 introduced a few new features that I am enabling:

  1. I enabled a new feature which allows other people to add my author profile here to Fediverse Starter Kits (see featured quote above).
  2. I switched from the Default distribution mode (100 deliveries per batch, 15 seconds pause) to Balanced (50 per batch, 30 seconds pause) because this site has had some slow-downs immediately following the publication of new posts.

There are several other new features that may be of interest to other WordPress websites using the plugin in addition to security fixes. I tip my hat to the team for a good set of updates.

Posted on
by
Replied to My site now supports webmentions by Michael HarleyMichael Harley (michaelharley.net)
Ok you guys, I did it. I finally have webmentions working on my website. It's something I've always wanted to do but it seemed too complicated with my setup. I use a static site generator (SSG), 11ty, to build my site.

Blogger Michael Harley wrote a post about adding webmention support to his blog. I am pro-webmention (see my NLJ post on site-to-site conversations, so I sent my congratulations in webmention form. He explained that he had previously held off on implementing webmentions because his particular static site generator set-up had made it complicated. To be sure, reading about the set-up made me happy that webmention support here on ECS requires little more than installing Matthias Pfefferle’s Webmention plugin for WordPress. For more of my thoughts in the area of webmentions, see my 2023 article Social webs of personal websites.

Posted on
by
Replied to Where do blogs go when they die? by Robert Birming (Robert Birming)
If you're going to remove your blog, at least save the content, even if you think it's crap. If you want to remove specific posts, turn them into drafts instead of deleting them. ... If you're going to bury your blog, at least have the decency to give it a proper funeral by placing the remains in a coffin.

Robert Birming published an interesting short blog post titled Where do blogs go when they die? He noted having noticed that many blog posts shared in recent years by participants in his Junited initiative are no more. From the outset, I agree with Mr. Birming that bloggers can end their blogs at any time and may have good reasons for wanting to remove them from the internet instead of preserving them. Having granted that much, the post inspired me to think about ways to preserve a blog after sunsetting it. One method is to ensure that posts are saved in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (or similar initiatives such as Ghostarchive), which is something I already do (if you use WordPress, I highly recommend the Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin). However, save for limited cases, Wayback Machine preservation will not ensure that links to the sunsetted blog will continue to work. Someone who kills a blog may understandably be disinclined to continue paying for hosting, but provided they are willing to hold the blog’s domain (assuming arguendo they use a custom domain), free hosting options is an interesting topic. For example, were I to sunset this site or The New Leaf Journal (perish the thought) but were willing to hold the domains, I could look into porting my “content” to a free or low cost service (e.g., Bearblog, which Mr. Birming uses, or to a static website and host such as GitHub/GitLab/Codeberg Pages) where it could live on with the same URLs with little-to-no maintenance. Perhaps someone should look into starting a low-cost service for keeping defunct blogs online with their custom domains and URL structures preserved.

Posted on
by

Today is Friday, May 29, 2026. Because it is a day ending in -day that is not Saturday, it is time for our daily Pook-Emu Bee links. There will be no Pook-Emu Bee tomorrow, but you will find even more links in The Newsletter Leaf Journal. I usually do not publish links on Sunday, but maybe I will surprise everyone. In any event, Pook-Emu Bee will be back on Monday. By the way, do you know what the people are saying about Pook-Emu Bee?

Photo of a sign for CARROLL GARDENS PLUMBING SUPPLY LLC on a brick wall. Under the name and logo, we see the next "WE'RE LIKE FAMILY... ONLY NICER"
I took this photo on May 28, 2026. You will never guess which Brooklyn neighborhood this is in. Like Carroll Gardens Plumbing Supply, Pook-Emu Bee is just like family… only nicer. They say no one is nicer, in fact.

1. SiteGround’s Icky Approach to AI in WordPress 7.0 (Rhys Wynne. May 27, 2026.)

Say what one will but automatically adding your commercial AI plugin to your customers’ websites is a tremendous way to make those install numbers go up. No no, you’re very welcome.

2. Spill sends 550,000 gallons of wastewater into Guadalupe River (Ricardo Delgado for San Antonio Express News. May 28, 2026.)

That sounds subpar. There are easier ways to recreate Newton Creek.

3. Revisiting Shawn Kemp for Vin Baker (Harlan Schreiber at Hoops Analyst. May 25, 2026.)

I agree that Milwaukee, the team that ended this three-way trade without Messrs. Kemp or Baker, won (see my article on the 2000-01 Bucks). But the Sonics got even in 2002-03 when they acquired Ray Allen from Milwaukee in return for half a season of an over-the-hill Gary Payton. Of course, the Sonics didn’t end up making much of having a near-prime Ray Allen for the better part of the 2000s, so I suppose no one won in the end.

4. Switch off autoplay on streaming services (Practical Betterments. May 25, 2026.)

I will confess there have been times when I watched that extra episode of an anime on Crunchyroll at 2:00 AM because of autoplay. Not recently, however. I’m way behind. (This is good advice, all jokes aside.)

5. Minesweeper Classic Switch Review (Game Slush Pile. May 22, 2026.)

Please do not spend $5 for a remake of vanilla Minesweeper on Switch. Switch is not really for vanilla Minesweeper unless you install LineageOS on your Switch. In that case, do install Simon Tatham’s Puzzles from F-Droid and enjoy the great classic Minesweeper implementation.

6. A 24-Team College Football Playoff Solves a Problem That Doesn’t Exist (Michael Bryan. May 21, 2026.)

If you have a four team playoff, there will be controversy regarding the 5th and 6th teams. If you have a 12-team playoff, there will be controversy about the 13th and 14th times. So on and so forth. You just push the problem further down the ladder. Funny enough, there were not too many dramatic controversies in the single championship game BCS era (the Oklahoma-LSU-USC mess of 2003 being the notable exception). Maybe they had it right before the playoff!

7. I Didn’t Even Know American Wisteria Was A Thing (Athena Scalzi at Whatever. May 12, 2026.)

But now you do.

Posted on
by

I have more work ahead of me today. But once again, I refuse to let work stand between me and another edition of our regularly scheduled Pook-Emu Bee links.

1. Can an ESPN analyst revive the Scripps Spelling Bee? (Molly Liebergall for Morning Brew. May 28, 2026.)

The premise presupposes that the spelling bee needs to have big (it’s relative) TV ratings.

2. Hochul tries to dunk on Trump over Knicks fandom — but it totally backfires (Haley Brown, Mark Lungariello, and David Propper for the New York Post. May 27, 2026.)

I have an upcoming NLJ article planned that should help the Governor keep her New York Knicks NBA Finals history straight. (Aside: Why does this article have three reporters on the byline?)

3. Japanese government to allow desecration of flags on kids’ meals (Master Blaster for SoraNews24. May 25, 2026.)

Say what one will but the Diet is thorough.

4. Obviously AI, totally acceptable (Herbert Lui. May 5, 2026.)

My policy is … If you didn’t put yourself into it, I don’t want to read it.

I agree with Mr. Lui’s post in full. But I would add as an addendum that if the prose reeks of AI, I will probably click away regardless of the profundity of the insights (it’s not that, it’s [list of three things]…)

5. WordPress 7.0 (Gordon McLean at Happily Imperfect. May 22, 2026.)

I’m on WordPress 7.0 and hadn’t noticed the new “Connectors” option under settings. My life goes on well. But it is clutter so I’ll figure out how to make it go away later.

6. Your WordPress Site — From RSS Feed to Social Account (Matthias Pfefferle at ActivityPub for WordPress Blog. May 22, 2026.)

I looking forward to these new features making it to self-hosted WordPress.

7. This Is Your Reminder to Go Touch Grass (Absurd Pirate’s Internet Blog. May 26, 2026.)

Photograph of the Manhattan Skyline and Brooklyn Bridge Park from the Fruit Street Sitting Area in Brooklyn Heights. The BQE is the immediate foreground. The trees and grassy hill Brooklyn Bridge Park is in the middle. Off in the distance we can see the southern tip of Manhattan, a Staten Island Ferry, and the Statue of Liberty.
I took this photograph this morning from the Fruit Street Sitting Area in Brooklyn Heights. We see the BQE, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the East River, and Manhattan/New Jersey/Governor’s Island off in the distance. The orange just leaving Manhattan is the Staten Island Ferry. If you squint, you can also see the Statue of Liberty way out back. No fires in New Jersey today.

Posted on
by
Replied to ATmosphere 1.0.0 — Liftoff by Matthias Pfefferle (ActivityPub for WordPress)
When you publish a post, ATmosphere shares it on Bluesky and stores the full article on your AT Protocol account as a structured record. Bluesky replies, likes, and reposts come back as comments on your WordPress post. Approved comments from logged-in readers go the other way and appear as replies under your original Bluesky post. The same conversation lives in both places without you having to copy anything by hand.

I use the ActivityPub for WordPress plugin here on ECS (follow me from Masotdon or similar at @naferrell@social.emucafe.org). Because ActivityPub for WordPress is a key part of this project, I subscribe to the ActivityPub for WordPress blog with my feed reader. Thanks to my subscription, I was able to read ATmosphere 1.0.0 — Liftoff. ATmosphere is a new WordPress plugin which integrates a Bluesky account with a WordPress website, such that “[w]hen you publish a post, ATmosphere shares it on Bluesky and stores the full article on your AT Protocol account as a structured record.” Moreover, “Bluesky replies, likes, and reposts come back as comments on your WordPress post.” I set up something similar by using Bridgy Fed to bridge my ECS ActivityPub account to Bluesky, but why not create a whole Bluesky account? I installed ATmosphere, set up a new Bluesky account (I have a “personal” account for sharing links but it goes mostly unused), and connected it with ATmosphere. Set-up went well. The only issue I had was that I had to manually create a .well-known directory to set up social.emucafe.org as the Bluesky account handle, but it is done — so you can follow this site from Bluesky at social.emucafe.org. (I would offer some sort of guide, but the blog post and WordPress plugin page guides are the ones to follow.)

Posted on
by

Work did not allow for timely Pook-Emu Bee links, but today I return with nine new links from around the web.

1 Popular WordPress redirect plugin hid dormant backdoor for years (Bill Toulas for Bleeping Computer. April 29, 2026.)

Not popular enough for me to have been using it (but do attend to the issue if you happen to be running Quick Page/Post Redirect on WordPress).

2. Waylay Callais! (Josh Blackman for The Volokh Conspiracy. April 30, 2026.)

After much anticipation, the Supreme Court finally decided Louisiana v. Callais. (The Chief Justice pronounced it as waylay.) I have some preliminary thoughts.

3. No Country for Moderate Men (Amit Segal at It’s Noon In Israel. April 30, 2026.)

According to several senior Iranian sources, only one man has direct access to the definitely-still-alive-Supreme Leader: IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi.

It just so happens that Mojtaba and Vahidi are in complete lockstep.

Iran is really doing a visual novel plot here.

4. France’s domestic intelligence agency monitors ‘masculinist threat’, reluctantly (Carl Deconinck for Brussels Signal. April 30, 2026.)

Look! Shiny object!

5. How I Do Content Engineering with Claude Code (Ryan Law for Ahrefs Blog. April 28, 2026.)

“Content engineering…”

6. Saying “No” In an Age of Abundance (Jim Nielsen. February 3, 2026.)

In an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying ‘no’ is more valuable than ever.

7. Introducing RateMyPet (Fraser McLean. May 17, 2025.)

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a new pet project (excused the pun 😂), called RateMyPet. It’s a social site where users can share photos and stories about their pets, and rate each other’s pets. The idea is to create a fun and engaging community for pet lovers.

8. FDNY Lithium Ion Batteries To Blame For Garbage Truck Fire In Downtown Brooklyn (Rob Flaks for News12. April 24, 2026.)

The fires always start from that which you would least expect.

9. Colored Pencil Review: Pentel Mulit8 2mm Lead Holder (The Well-Apportioned Desk. April 23, 2026.)

I don’t need colored pencils. But if I did, I would probably find this one compelling.

Posted on
by

Delayed by work, but not denied, The drags on, Pook-Emu Bee links for April 23, 2026.

1. Hochul’s Fast-Track Booze Permit Sets Stage for World Cup Street Parties Across New York (Reid Carlisle for Hoodline. April 22, 2026.)

Their desperation to pretend that the World Cup is happening in New York City continues to lead to public nuisance as public policy.

2. Listening to criticism (Andrés at Wawawa Comics. April 22, 2026.)

But my art teacher hated my work so much, I could hear his sighs every time I walked into the classroom, haha. One day he told me, “You should quit. You don’t have a future in drawing.”

No one needed to tell me that I didn’t have a future in drawing. I knew. But this inspires me. If Andrés could overcome that to make a popular online comic with cute little animal characters, I can do the same (with crooked stick figures).

3. 3. 8.1.0 — By the Numbers (Matthias Pfefferle at ActivityPub for WordPress. April 22, 2026.)

I have upgraded and see the new statistics chart. Fancy.

4. Read-Only Address Book (Brian Tremblay at BTrem. April 5, 2026.)

We begin with a question…

Can Thunderbird’s RSS support be extended to enable address book subscriptions?

I am all for creative RSS use-cases (albeit I don’t have a need for a read-only address book).

5. New flat M.2 SSD adapter doesn’t stick out from the motherboard, unlocking PCIe slots hidden under massive GPUs — JEYI’s new ‘ArcherX’ AIC lays completely flush and supports PCIe 4.0 speeds (Hassan Nasir for Tom’s Hardware. April 19, 2026.)

I’m not struggling for storage space but this does look like a neat expansion idea.

6. A Defense of the NBA Play-In Tournament (Neil Paine. April 14, 2026.)

I wouldn’t go so far to defend it and one could probably make a credible argument that it has made “tanking” worse (teams that want to guarantee a spot in the draft lottery need to finish 11th or worse instead of 9th), but it is not bad as far as NBA gimmicks go. I agree with Mr. Paine in full on one point:

My biggest complaint with it might simply be that its stats don’t count anywhere — they neither belong to the regular season nor the playoffs, so player accomplishments this week live in a weird record-keeping no-man’s land. But this would be easily corrected by simply counting them as playoff stats, which I think is plenty defensible.

That will soon be a “thing I learned” post.

7. Cherry Blossoms (2026 edition) (David Billa for Liminal Web. April 12, 2026.)

Many pretty cherry blossom photos. It is warm in Brooklyn today, so it feels seasonal (some of our cherry blossoms are coming in).

Posted on
by

We have a second consecutive warm day in New York City. We also have a third consecutive day of Pook-Emu Bee links.

1. Seven Myths About the Iran War (Michael Doran for Tablet Magazine. April 13, 2026.)

Good start. Hard to choose just seven.

2. Someone Bought 30 WordPress Plugins and Planted a Backdoor in All of Them. (Austin Ginder for Anchor. April 9, 2026.)

WordPress should send notifications to webmasters whenever an installed plugin from the standard WordPress repository changes hands.

3. Sam Altman’s house targeted in second attack; two suspects arrested (John Owen Lamb for The San Francisco Standard. April 12, 2026.)

Scary stuff and good thing both attacks failed (these sorts of types are often not too competent). Let us hope the perpetrators are dealt with appropriately and quickly to minimize the number of other deranged individuals who may take inspiration.

4. Reflecting on Microsoft Windows Vista in 2026 (Maya Posch for Hackaday. April 9, 2026.)

Say what one will but my Vista experience was fine. I’d take it over whatever is going on with Windows 11 these days.

5. Failing the Fix (2026) (U.S. PIRG Education Fund. April 7, 2026.)

I won’t spoil everything but I will note that having recently operated on a 2006-07 Macbook, I can confirm that Apple’s failing grade is nothing new.

6. You Should Be Using Reddit on Your RSS Reader (David Nield for Lifehacker. April 10, 2026.)

That is an interesting suggestion but I counter with “use an RSS reader and don’t use Reddit at all.”

7. Amazon is ending support for Kindle devices from 2012 and earlier (Brad Linder for Liliputing. April 7, 2026.)

But not all is lost for people with ancient Kindles: “You can still ‘transfer personal documents’ to an unsupported Kindle using a USB cable, although you may need to use a third-party tool like Calibre to convert some eBooks into a format that your Kindle recognizes.” Calibre does handle conversions to MOBI.

8. MLB pitcher Merrill Kelly says California tax rate swayed decision to reject Padres’ free agency offer (Chantz Martin for Fox News. February 28, 2026.)

Today reminds him why he made that call in free agency.

9. A medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are, in fact, fiction (Retraction Watch. March 3, 2026.)

But other than that, the reports were accurate.

(HT to Pixy Misa for links 2 and 3.)

Posted on
by

Yesterday I shared Discover more of the Fediverse with tags.pub in my Pook-Emu Bee links for the day. The post introduces a new feature for the ActivityPub for WordPress plugin: Subscribing a site to the tags.pub relay for hashtag boosting. It provides the following instructions for self-hosted WordPress sites such as this one:

For self-hosted WordPress sites, head to Settings → ActivityPub → Settings and scroll to the Relay section. Add one of these URLs:

  • Inbox: https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/inbox
  • Shared Inbox: https://tags.pub/shared/inbox

The instructions offer two URLs and say “[a]dd one.” I added the second because it is more aesthetic. But I did wonder what the difference was between the two URLs. So too did commenter bocops:

Could you explain the difference between the “Inbox” and the “Shared Inbox” relay URLs?

Post author and ActivityPub for WordPress developer Matthias Pfefferle answered the question:

from a user perspective there is none. you can use either one of them!

While the instructions do say “[a]dd one of these URLs” and I interpreted the instructions correctly in the first instance, I will offer my two-cent take that it does raise a question why there are two URLs and how they may differ. I dealt (and will deal again) with this issue regarding site feeds. On NLJ, I make a point of promoting various feed formats, namely RSS, ATOM, RDF, and JSON. However, I am sensitive to the fact that many readers may not be familiar with feeds, much less different formats. Thus, I explain that RSS (our default) and ATOM should work in all feed readers, so most people should use one of those formats (usually RSS since that is the WordPress default at /feed/) unless they have a specific reason to use JSON (which I use to subscribe to NLJ in Miniflux) or RDF (that seems less likely but maybe there are some RDF fans out there). Regarding the tags.pub  post, I would recommend offering one link as a sort of “default” while adding a note (or footnote) on the distinction (if any) for people who may be interested.

All that aside, tags.pub works for me and is a very nice feature for WordPress sites (both .com and .org) taking advantage of new Fediverse features. I tip my hat to Mr. Pfefferle and everyone who is working on it.

Posted on
by

For once I’m not too busy today. But even if I were busy, I would still publish the newest edition of Pook-Emu Bee.

1. Discover more of the Fediverse with tags.pub (Matthias Pfefferle at ActivityPub for WordPress. April 2, 2026.)

Done!

2. Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due to Flash Shortage (Jason Schneider for PetaPixel. March 27, 2026.)

AI has come for the SD cards. Constantine XI implores us forward. Hang on to your thumb drives!

3. Nike just can’t do it in China (David Lozo for Morning Brew. April 2, 2026.)

Couldn’t happen to a nicer company.

4. Canonical raises Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Desktop minimum RAM requirement from 4 GB to 6 GB (Paul for AlternativeTo. April 2, 2026.)

I’d make a RAM joke but to be fair GNOME would have already been close to the last desktop environment I would run on something with 4 GB RAM.

5. The White House’s AI Strategy Is Too Little, Too Late (Danny Crichton for City Journal. March 24, 2026.)

Agreed to the extent which they spent a year running roughshod over legitimate concerns about the behavior of AI companies before considering changing course. Not sure about all the solutions. For example, I don’t think the AI leaders in place now are capable of “energetically persuad[ing] voters of the benefits to come” without being creepy, but a small reassessment is welcome so perhaps it is not “too late” yet.

6. Paul Pierce on the Dwyane Wade or James Harden debate (HoopsHype. April 1, 2026.)

Interesting debate. Mr. Wade’s “prime” was relatively short and some of it was wasted (2006-07 through 2009-10) on bad-to-mediocre teams. He was at his best from 2005-06 through 2010-11 before the knee problems really took their toll. Mr. Harden had a longer peak and is having a better post-peak. But if we are making a best-vs-best comparison, I’d be inclined to say Mr. Wade’s 2005-06 campaign, capped by his historically great playoff run and Finals, would take the cake. But this is one comparison where you can go either way depending on how you look at it.

7. The Good Old Hyperlink (Kyle Labriola at Discard Pile. February 6, 2026.)

No shortage of those here!

Posted on
by
Replied to Returning to Koko Analytics From Statify? by Nicholas A. FerrellNicholas A. Ferrell
Upon close inspection, Statify was over-counting in two obvious ways. First, relative to Google Search Console stats (by about ~40%), and second it was picking up things like “page 2 of tag archive X” when it didn’t obviously follow from the articles that had been visited before. This may have...

I briefly returned to Koko Analytics but noticed two things that made me leave it for the second time for Statify. Firstly, Koko was also recording hits for random tags which did not follow from any of the posts it recorded, which suggests it has a similar issue to Statify (Koko Analytics did not show taxonomy hits prior to version 2.0.0). Secondly, speed testing shows that NLJ is a little bit faster with Statify. Thirdly, Statify has one database table while Koko Analytics has six (granting Statify’s database grows at a quick clip due to how it saves data). I’ll look into seeing if there are some ways to make Statify a little bit more accurate (note that those ways do not include enabling async JS with ful page caching, that makes it record very little).

Posted on
by

Upon close inspection, Statify was over-counting in two obvious ways. First, relative to Google Search Console stats (by about ~40%), and second it was picking up things like “page 2 of tag archive X” when it didn’t obviously follow from the articles that had been visited before. This may have to do with my page caching (WP Super Cache, advanced caching enabled, preload enabled), albeit that wouldn’t have explained the strange archive hits (tag and category archives are not cached). In any event, I saw there is a new Koko Analytics version, so I am giving it another go and not trying to re-import my old stats, which I salvaged in a Koko Analytics export in any event.

Posted on
by
Filed an Issue Koko Analytics Recording SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 Requests as Visitors/Page Visits · Issue #296 · ibericode/koko-analytics by nafnlj (GitHub)
My Set-Up I run the non-pro version of Koko Analytics on my WordPress site. I disable cookies and exclude visits from all logged-in users. What Happened? On two separate days, Koko Analytics was sh...

On March `12 and 19, I received a highly unusual number of visitors and page views on The New Leaf Journal according to Koko Analytics. By “unusual,” I mean about 10X as many visitors as expected. No individual article had an unusual number of views and my Koko Analytics stats showed the usual list of referrers (mostly search engines) at usual referral numbers. I checked by server logs on the 19th and determined that the likely culprit was SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 (it appears to be a Japanese web crawler for AI), which was hammering my site with requests as I was seeing unusually high visitor numbers. I used Jeff Starr’s BBQ Pro firewall plugin to block the bot. My Koko Analytics stats quickly returned to normal. I reported the issue to Koko Analytics on GitHub, so I hope the relevant IP addresses are added to the do not count list if it turns out that my diagnosis was correct. (In any event, one of my former visitors, PoorlyConfiguredWebCrawler, was much better behaved than SBInstitutionsBot.)

Posted on
by

I discovered a new use for the excellent Hum link shortener WordPress plugin (provides entirely local short-links). I have a BuddyPress activity stream on this site. While I do not know if this would be the case for every activity stream set-up, especially when used with themes designed with BuddyPress in mind, long URLs (or even regular-length URLs) do not look good in posts here. However, Hum-short URLs work well, so that makes it much easier to include links to new posts (or New Leaf Journal posts) in activities.