Disable WordPress Autosave Plugin

WordPress autosave is the best features which I hate in WordPress. AutoSave will auto save a copy of edited post or page every 60 seconds provided there is a change on the content in the editor. However, there is only ever a maximum of one AutoSave version for any given post. New AutoSaves created will overwrite old AutoSaves. Beside, AutoSaves are stored as a special type of revision so that the auto saved with a more recent version of data does not overwrite actual published content, and is used to restore unsaved work only when necessary.

While each Post Revisions is stored in its own database table, the auto-save is only stored once with previous versions being overwritten by the new auto-saved content. So, if you’re worried about your database growing to massive proportions because of auto-save, you can stop worrying.

These are methods that disable or delay the WordPress autosave functions.  The Most easy way is using plugin. The disabling plugin works with versions 2.3 through 2.7  while the delay configuration works with 2.5 and later.

Copy this text to a text file, name it whatever you want (using the .php extension, of course) and upload it to your WordPress plugin directory. Activate it and it works immediately, but you need to clear your browser cache:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Disable autosave
*/
add_action('admin_print_scripts', 'plugin_deregister_autosave');
function plugin_deregister_autosave() {
 wp_deregister_script('autosave');
}
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS',false);
?>

Z-Blog URL Redirect Security Affected Spam Attacks

Z-Blog system contain a security issue that allows spam attack to Wikipedia by using url redirect.

The design of Z-Blog anti-spam encrypts the URL before redirect it. The name of the redirected file is c_urlredirect.asp. With the parameter of this page Z-Blog kann redirect to various pages. Sorrowfully the used encryption is very simple. One just need to put the odd characters together. With this methode blackhat SEO manipulates redirects from other Z-Blog websites to call its own website. Thus even if the original address is listed on the blacklist by Wikipedia, the manipulated redirect would still work and be used as spam.

The solution for this problem is not easy. The most simple way is to delete c_urlredirect.asp. But this method would also prevent the blogger himself make redirects.

Source . thanks for Wing translation

Google Earth Layer Blocked in China

China appears to have blocked access to the popular internet maps service - Google Earth. Google Earth is a virtual globe program that displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and houses from a bird's eye view.

Google's map and satellite-photo service offered Chinese Internet users something they rarely could see: a bird's-eye view of the secret compound of Zhongnanhai(located west of the Forbidden City), where the country's top leaders live and work.

But in recent weeks, some layer of Google Earth(such as Google Earth Community) could not load and work in China. The Google Earth Community is an online forum which is dedicated to producing placemarks of interesting or educational perspectives. It may be found on the Google Earth webpage or under the Help section on the program itself. After downloading a placemark, it will automatically run Google Earth (if not opened), and fly to the area specified by the person who placed it. Once there, you can add it to your "My Places" by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Save to My Places". Additionally, anyone can post a placemark for others to download; as long as you have an account.



When I run a proxy program, and open Google Earth again, the Google Earth Community layer is right there, everything is ok.



Then I close the proxy program and click the layer again, it's tell me "Fetch of NetworkLink failed(http://mw1.google.com/): Connect Failed."



That mean the Weather,Gallery and Global Awareness layer is blocked in China. Google Earth Community is in the Gallery layer,  so it cannot be open again.

If the Chinese government is blocking its own citizens from seeing where their leaders live, whereas the rest of the world can see just fine, we're talking some major institutional paranoia.

Is Blog Dead in China ?

In the past year, there is a continuing discussion in the Chinese blogosphere on whether blog culture is dying down. Moreover, recently bokee.com and blogchina.com, the two earliest BSPs founded by Fang dong-xing in China, are at business crisis. Fang is looking for investing to transform the websites into multi-media community platform.

What we see is: BSP and services related with blogs are slowly disappearing, blog has passed its golden days and walked into a dark future. The main reason is because the services around blogs cannot make a profit.

Why can't they make a profit? The content quality of blog is better than SNS, Twitter and Digg, their traffics are high. They should be able to get income from Ads. However, at present, blogger's income is too narrowed. Basically, they depends on Google AdSense. Which means their profit is affected by Google.

When Google entered the scene, it developed a huge number of blogging tools, such as google reader, feedburner, blogsearch, etc… which destroyed other BSPs dream for profit while google has a monopoly status in the market.

Blog is more open and individualized, its content quality is relative higher. SNS is more closed, especially towards search engine. It contrasts with blog's openness and affects information dissemination. A good article is very difficult to get disseminated via SNS. Now most of the SNS in China are coping the facebook, which is a dead end. The best SNS is Tencent's QQ, but you can't find any similarity between QQ and facebook. The funny thing is Tencent never claimed itself to be a SNS.

Thanks globalvoicesonline translation

GoDaddy and SourceForge Blocked in China Again

GoDaddy, the world's largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, and SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China again after Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed.

A screen copy of the command tracert shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

Update: SourceForge unblocked on Nov 2 2008, GoDaddy unblocked on Nov 10 2008.

China Internet Censorship After Olympic Games

As Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed, the Internet censorship in China further tightened. Undeniably, this deterioration has affected and frustrated an increasing number of netizens in China.

lot's of foreign websites have been blocked again after the Beijing Olympics drew to an end. Meanwhile, although other foreign websites remain approachable in China, some of their touchy contents are actually not accessible.

Want China Milk, Mr. Mandelson?

British politician Peter Mandelson, who was feted in China for drinking a glass of yoghurt on television in Beijing last week, has been rushed to hospital suffering from a kidney stone.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson drinks a Beijing-branded yogurt at a press conference in the Chinese capital on Friday September 26, 2008. Mandelson said he was confident of Chinese dairy products despite the recent tainted milk scandal. On October 6, Peter Mandelson is to have a kidney stone removed after attending the first meeting of Gordon Brown's economic war council.

Thousands of babies across China have suffered kidney stones after drinking formula milk mixed with the industrial plastic melamine.

Also, if you want to get an idea of how the Chinese government is handling the post-scandal media since the milk powder contamination was revealed, here are instructions reportedly from the propaganda bureau on how to report the incident:

Recently, the Sanlu mild powder contamination story attracted a lot of attention on the Internet. Now we are issuing some requirements for managing online news publishing:
1. Strictly standardize news sources, only use dispatches from Xinhua, People’s Daily and other central media outlets.
2. Do not make any headlines or features on this topic. Emphasize the government’s handling of the crisis and progress, and the care given to the babies by hospitals and other care providers.
3. Forums and blogs should not recommend this topic, not put it on the top of their pages, and the atmosphere and number of threads in the forums should be monitored and controlled.
4. Firmly block and delete information and posts that criticize the Party, the government, instigate petitioning and spread rumors.
5. Mobilize online commentators to guide the opinions. The general guidance should be based on information released by the Ministry of Health, and lead online users to support the Party and the government, convey the effectiveness of the efforts by concerned agencies.