Description: Elitwee MyTwitter is a simple tweet widget and status updater for WordPress.

What’s New?: This new version allows you to easily add one-or-more Twitter widgets to any widget-enabled WordPress theme. You can also post updates to Twitter directly from the plugin’s Settings page. It is compatible with WordPress 2.8 and higher.

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I spent today finishing the code for the custom WordPress theme I use to power the layout and design of the site. Many thanks to Jason Oxrieder for doing the graphic design work behind the new look!

The new design is just one example of the custom WordPress development I am able to do. I provide WordPress consulting and can answer questions about topics related to customization, themes, plugins, settings, system administration, and more.

Q&A

Stack Overflow
The best site I’ve found for getting questions and answers about anything and everything code-related is Stack Overflow. As of this post, over 200,000 questions have been asked on the site.

Stack Overflow is easy to search because all questions are tagged. If you’re looking for answers to a Perl question about the GD image library, you can search for [Perl] GD and see if any previously asked questions answer the question you have.

For system administrators, Server Fault was recently launched as a sister-site to Stack Overflow.

Source Code

GitHub
GitHub hosts source code for numerous open source projects and, for paying customers, private code hosting. GitHub uses git at their distributed version control system.

GitHub is useful in several ways.
1) Host open source projects for free
2) “clone” (i.e. copy) code in order to use it or if you plan on contributing to the code base
3) Private code storage for paid accounts — store all your code in one place

A few open source projects I follow on GitHub are Prototype (Javascript library), Scriptaculous (Javascript visual effects), Scripty2 (the next version of Scriptaculous), and Slicehost-DNS (a Ruby script to automatically generate DNS records for domains hosted on Slicehost).

A few good git tutorial sites if you want to start learning it: GitHub Guides, git ready, and GitCasts.

News

Hacker News
Hacker News is a Digg-like site for “hackers.” The site is run by Y Combinator, a seed-stage investment firm started by Paul Graham. It has numerous links to articles about code, languages, entrepreneurship, business, and numerous other topics.

It has been a great resource for me and has expanded my exposure to information about programming languages, source control management, entrepreneurship, and more. The resources about git referred to earlier in this post were all gleaned from HN (with the assistance of SearchYC).

Perl-specific Sites

I’ve been using both of these sites for over ten years now and they’re absolutely essential resources for Perl developers.

CPAN is the centralized repository for Perl modules. You can search it and find modules that do all kinds of things.

PerlMonks is a Perl community that helps each other with questions, has code snippets, and talks about anything and everything Perl-related.

What are your essential development resources?

As a developer, what are your essential websites and any other resources you use to make your life easier? Post them in the comments!

I have taken the NWEN website look and feel and adapted it to become a WordPress theme which applies to the entire NWEN Blog.

The theme is standards compliant and works in Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

NWEN Blog Theme

It’s been five years, and the tools for combating comment spam have evolved. Instead of relying on a blacklist as in the days of yore, newer anti-spam services use a variety of tests and heuristics to decide what category a comment falls in.

Comments are classified either as “ham” (a valid comment), “spam” (a bad comment), or “unknown” (unsure). Generally, the ham comments are allowed to go straight through, spam comments are blocked, and unknown comments are held for moderation.

Instead of being built into publishing platforms such as WordPress or Movable Type, most anti-spam solutions are run as web services. The publishing platform will either come with an anti-spam plugin or have some available that will talk to the remote web service to determine the status of a comment.

Here I present three of the best anti-spam tools currently available.

Akismet

Akismet has long been the best anti-spam tool available for use with WordPress. Akismet is free for personal use, but for commercial use a license is required. Akismet is most commonly used as a WordPress plugin, but it is available for other platforms including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, Joomla, and more. Libraries have been developed that enable its use in Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, and more.

Mollom

Mollom is new to the anti-spam game and is is currently in public beta. It originated as a module for the Drupal content management system. It combines many of the techniques discussed above, but to ease the process of moderation also incorporates a CAPTCHA on “unsure” comments to test if the comment is coming from a human rather than a spam bot.

A Mollom plugin for WordPress — WP Mollom — is under development by Matthias Vandermaesen.

Mollom libraries have also been developed for Java, Ruby, Python, .NET, and PHP.

Final pricing for Mollom hasn’t been determined, but according to the pricing page, “The basic Mollom service will be free — yes, as in beer — but it will be limited in volume and features.”

TypePad AntiSpam

TypePad AntiSpam became the newest player in the fight against spam when it was released today (5/29/2008). Six Apart has been doing testing of the service for a few months and today declared it ready for open beta.

Having glowing words from TechCrunch won’t hurt early adoption of the service, and you can’t beat the price. “TypePad AntiSpam beta is free for any type of use, personal and commercial, regardless of how many comments you receive.”

Coming out of the gate, TypePad AntiSpam has plugins for Movable Type 3 & 4 and WordPress 2.5. Six Apart is encouraging developers to get involved and create libraries for languages and plugins for other platforms.

Coming to Conclusions

Up until now, I have been using Akismet to protect my sites from spam. However, I have decided to try TypePad AntiSpam based on the price, compatibility with the Akismet API, and because it has been released as open source. Thus far, I have had no problems.

If you’re looking for the most established solutions, at this point Akismet has been around longer, isn’t a beta product, and has a reputation for stopping comment spam. As Mollom and TypePad AntiSpam mature, they will garner more attention and usage throughout the web.