…Clueless

I use the StatPress plugin on this blog installation to gather some basic and live statistics of the visitors to my blog. I also use the WassUp plugin to capture some similar statistics. While both plugins have their own pros and cons, there is one thing that used to bother me about the StatPress plugin.

While there is an option to delete the older records from the table after a certain time, there is no option to empty the entire table of the stats. Why is this option required? Well, certain people like me host their blogs on servers which give a limited amount of database storage. Statistics plugins like WassUp and StatPress tend to accumulate a large amount of data and thereby take up a lot of database space.

WassUp has an option to empty the table whereas StatPress misses this functionality. I had to manually go into phpMyAdmin and empty the table. So, I decided to look into the plugin and try to add this functionality within it so that I could save myself from the hassle of going to a another software to manage the mess. I am no coder. I read through the entire code in statpress.php and made modifications as required.

I present to you, StatPress with empty table option.

As the above screenshot clearly shows, when you click on StatPress tab within your WordPress Dashboard, you will see an extra option called “Empty”. Clicking on it will delete all your stats from within the database and makes StatPress start afresh. However, please note that this action is permanent unless you have a previous backup. Once you click on Empty, it will empty your database without any further prompts or warnings.

DOWNLOAD : StatPress v 1.2.9.2 with Empty table option (79KB).

Those of you not wanting to undergo the exercise of downloading a new ZIP file of a plugin, deactivating the original StatPress 1.2.9.2 and reactivating this plugin may simply copy the entire code from the text file linked below.

DOWNLOAD : statpress.txt

Open the statpress.txt file. Either save it as statpress.php and overwrite the wp-content/plugins/wp-statpress/statpress.php file. Otherwise, from within your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins. Navigate to StatPress and click on Edit. Replace the entire text in the textbox on the next page with the text from the statpress.txt file you just downloaded.

Please note that I am in no way responsible to any damage or loss whatsoever the use of this modified plugin may cause to your installation. I am Jack of all trades, master of none. I don’t claim the code and modification is perfect. It is just a basic implementation. Take all precautions before you activate this plugin.

Finally, the development of StatPress seems to have stalled. There is another plugin StatPress Reloaded. Check it out.

No. I’m not on a In.com bashing/loving/reporting spree here. It just so happened that I was browsing both the websites side by side when I noticed the favicons on their respective tabs.

Now, is it just me or the “in” part in both the logos seem kind of similar. The similar background colour, similar text colour and except for a few minor tweaks, the “in” looks quite the same. Now, this could be a far-fetched theory but I’m just writing what I feel (and what I see!).

It was the 1st of August, 2008. I came to know about a website, “in.com”, which had been launched by the guys at Web18 and offered free email accounts @in.com. The offer seemed lucrative to me. In.com is a very tiny domain and I wanted an email address on it, jus for the cosmetic value of the address.

I went over to the website. It clearly said that it was in “beta” stage (testing). I registered for a couple of addresses just for the heck of testing out the service. Then I thought of creating an ID with some special characters. I tried underscore, hyphen and a dot. The minimum number of characters for an ID was 4. Then a brilliant (exaggeration) idea struck me. What if I could compensate some of the characters in my ID with special characters?!!!

Hyphen (-) and underscore (_) are so Web 1.0. I stuck with dot (.). Now, just to test my hypothesis, I typed four dots (….) in the “Email Id” space on the registration page. Immediately, below the form element, it said “Account Available : Yes” !! I never expected this. Seriously. I had my idea in my head but had never expected the software to be vulnerable to it. I went over to the next step and tried to register but it failed.

I hurried back to the registration page again and this time I put it “..in” as my ID. Sure enough, it was available. I went to the next step and BOOM! I was in! Now you, I and everybody would say, what’s the big deal with an email address that starts with two stupid periods? Well the thing is, the in.com website magically eliminated the dots from my id and now I had a shiny 2 letter username on their website, which I supposedly could not have had.

I had “in@in.com” with me. I logged in with “..in” and seperately with “in” and I got into my mailbox successfully. This email address was tiny, very tiny! I liked it just for that. The interface kind of sucked. Yes, they tried to make it all Web 2.0 with ajax and stuff but it was still slow and buggy. On top of that, their SPAM filter was and still is simply useless. And SPAM was the biggest reason that I never really suck to this tiny email address that I had acquired.

It seemed that every third person on this planet earth, who registered for any serive on the web, typed in their email as in@in.com! From Friendster accounts to Cellphone purchases, I got emails from everywhere! On top of that, there was the regular SPAM which targeted my inbox. When there are so many disposable email address services on the Internet, why the hell do you guys have to type in a random email address when you register on a website?! So practically, the super cool looking email address that I had somewhow registered for myself was simply useless because of the sheer amount unsolicited messages that it received with each passing day.

The account kept lying unused for about a fortnight after which again I tried to login. It failed. I tried again. It failed again. I logged into the other 2 letter and 3 letter accounts that I had registered along with in@in.com I successfully logged into each of them. So it was evident that the folks at In.com had found out about my successful circumvention of their registration restrictions and had disabled the email address : in@in.com.

The same day, I tried to see if the bug still existed in their software. It did. It was there for a few more weeks. This morning, when I checked, it was gone. They had patched their software. A bug, which should have not been there in the first place itself; a bug, that should have been found on the first day of the testing; a bug, which affected the most fundamental module of their software - the registration had been rectified after months and months of so-called testing.

So what have I learnt after all this? Well for starters, the other email accounts I had grabbed are still intact and functioning. Secondly, I should have sold off the email address to some fool while I had the chance (just kidding) ! Thirdly, the guys at Web18 need to employ some actual testers at their development centre itself. And lastly, the advertisments that they are currently running on their TV18 network make no sense at all.

And one more thing, the guys at in.com should give me the id back as a token of gratitude for not disclosing the bug until it was rectified (some might say I should have informed them myself). What would I do if I got in@in.com back? The answer is nothing until people start using their real email addresses or take some pain and use a disposable email service to register accounts on different websites accross the web.

Adios.

From what I saw on Zee Business, the iPhone is to be launched in India by Airtel on the 22nd of August. They also telecast a telephonic interview with some president of Airtel who confirmed that there would be no subsidy on the iPhone.

That final statement alone is a deal breaker for me. 3G is a long way to come. Free WiFi is not a realistic option. EDGE is really crappy in its current form. What is the use for a device whose USP is its ablity to connect to the Internet but has no means to do so in India? And now that Airtel has confirmed that there is going to be no subsidy, I can safely say that we must forget about getting the iPhone for anywhere around Rs. 8000 to 12000. Not that I’m dying to. Get realistic people. Buy an E71.

Closely on the heals of me.com, which is the official site for Apple’s MobileMe service, Web18, a venture of Network18 has launched in.com. in.com was rumoured to be bought by Web18 for a sum of 2 crores, which is equal to 20 million.

I happened to see the advertisement for in.com on tech2.com which is another website owned by Web18.

Now that I’m on the topic of the shortest email address, the shortest address that I have been able to find on the Internet is www.v.gg. That’s right, yourname@v.gg. It has a free as well as a premium version. The free version offers 25MB of storage. But “v.gg”, although two characters shorter than in.com, does not seem to be cool or hip. Furthermore, their interface is ancient offering just 25MB of email storage.

On the other hand, in.com offers us an AJAX-ified interface, with gmail style linked conversations and a sufficient 10GB of space. Since the service is new, you can easily grab a cool email address of your choice. I grabbed a couple just to reserve ;). For example, usernames like fcuk or kick (kick-in, get it?) are still available. The least number of letters allowed in a username is 4. So, counting the @ and the period, the shortest email one can grab is four+@+in+.+com = 12 letters. Not too shabby! Go grab yours!

The last time I reported, Airtel Broadband was redirecting the erroneous traffic to a partnered website (onspeedsearch) where they displayed advertisements.

Just five minutes back, I noticed that erroneous traffic is now being redirected to a page hosted by OpenDNS. Now, I have no clue if Airtel has in some way partnered with OpenDNS to monetize this kind of traffic.

Another theory that is currently running through my brain is that maybe Airtel is redirecting its customers to the OpenDNS servers. This could be because of the recently disclosed vulnerability by Dan Kaminsky which makes all DNS servers prone to attacks. OpenDNS has already stated that it’s servers are patched. What I feel is that Airtel is unable to patch it’s own DNS servers at this point of time so they redirected their customers to OpenDNS. Obviously, there is no way to verify this and obviously this means that OpenDNS is the party that is profiting here.

I am still using the same DNS servers as mentioned in my previous post but this time I am redirected to :

http://guide.opendns.com/?url=badbadurl.in

badbadurl.in is used as an example here.

More discussion about this can be found at IBF.

Airtel has started redirecting traffic from dead links, non-existant domains and typos to a website of its own where it displays advertisements and a search box surrounded by some categories.

The search box is just a dummy form element because if you type in another term it yields no result. Airtel is in partnership with a website called onspeedsearch.com for this and a quick search on Google revealed that many other ISPs have also partnered with onspeedsearch to display advertisements for erroneous traffic on their networks.

Here’s a screenshot of the said redirected page :

The DNS currently in use are :

• 202.56.215.55
• 202.56.215.54

Seems Airtel is trying to earn from it’s customers’ mistakes. Sweet.

Update : For further discussion on this subject, check out this thread on IBF.

I was surfing the Internet when I came across another piece of news which suggests that iPhone will be launched in India on the 18th of August, 3 days after the Independence Day.

Vodafone will be joining the iPhone bash earlier than Airtel. The iPhone wll be available exclusively on Vodafone for the first fifteen days.

Source :

• India to Get iPhone 3G on August 18
• Vodafone To Beat Airtel To iPhone 3G Launch; Expected Next Month

One of my friends went over to the Vodafone store in Sector 19, Chandigarh yesterday. He wanted to book the iPhone. They asked him to send a message to a number (Airtel and Vodafone have been playing this stupid booking game since long) which I think is kind of an alert service since they have not asked for any booking amount.

Now, on to the main news. The sales representive told my friend that the iPhone would be priced at INR 8000. Yes, Rs. 8000 which almost equals to $199. Airtel hasn’t confirmed anything about their pricing. I highly doubt what the Vodafone people are saying. The iPhone has to be imported. Where do they include the duties etc in the price? And what use is a 3G device which mainly boasts of a rich internet experience when even their existing EDGE network is shitty and expensive with no good unlimited browsing plans.

But if it does indeed launch at Rs. 8000 then there’s nothing like it in the market. I would definitely not be one of the early adopters. I’ll just fiddle with the iPhone that someone buys and make up my mind if it’s really worth getting into a contract that would surely be expensive.

My only motive of buying the iPhone would be the rich Internet browsing it’s browser offers. I’m not in for the memory, the iPod etc. It’s just the phone and the Internet on the move.

Another news that was given to my friend was that the phone would be launched when the next month commences, i.e. August.

That’s all the news I have about the iPhone due to be launched on Vodafone and Airtel in India. Gotta hand it to Apple, they manage to create an amazing hype. People don’t even know what the iPhone is and are already dying to own one.

UPDATE: iPhone to be launched on August 18th, 2008 in India. Vodafone gets a head start over Airtel.

Well since I just finished migrating this blog over to this new domain, I thought I’d just describe how I actually did it. Firstly, login to your existing blog, Goto Settings, Permalinks and activate the default permalink structure. I recommend doing this because I’ve been locked out a dozen times while updating my blog because of a misplaced .htaccess file. If that happens, whenever you try and login to the WordPress dashboard, it fails. Save your custom permalink structure, if any, for use later. Goto Plugins and de-activate all your plugins. Open up the Akismet page and delete all SPAM that you have in queue (to keep out the junk from getting imported to the new server). The next step is to disallow all robots from your new server. For this, create a file robots.txt with the following content :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Now, since I changed servers also, I copied over all my WordPress files from my old server to the new location i.e., from www.uthfull.org/blog to rahulsarin.com. This must include all the content that you might have uploaded, your plugins & themes, the .htaccess and the wp-config.php file.

Use whatever database administration tool you like (I used PhpMyAdmin) and export your database in the form of SQL queries (.SQL) and save it to your PC. Now, use a text editor, such as Notepad++ to open the databse and find all instances of your old domain name and replace it with the new domain. For example, what I did was :

Find : http://www.uthfull.org/blog     Replace with : http://www.rahulsarin.com
Find : http://uthfull.org/blog     Replace with : http://www.rahulsarin.com
Find : http://blog.uthfull.org     Replace with : http://www.rahulsarin.com

Now you might ask why one shouldn’t just change the blog URL in the WordPress admin panel. Well, changing there changes your blog URL but it will not fix the links within your posts, the links on your comments, the link in your user profile and trackbacks & pingbacks (remember, if you link a post on your blog within another post, it sends the post a pingback). You can either go over each change one-by-one or just press the Replace-all button like I did!

Save the edited database file. Now, head over to your new server and create a new empty database. Create a new user and grant it all priviledges to operate upon the database. Now, simply use the import feature to import the database you just edited into the empty database. Wait patiently for it to complete the import.

Once you’ve setup your database, its time to head into your WordPress directory and edit the wp-config.php file. Change the database name to the database you have just created. Change the username and password to that of the new user you have created.

Fire up your browser and type in your new blog address. Hit enter. If you did everything right, then your blog will appear as it normally would on your previous domain. Open up the WordPress dashboard. Re-activate the plugins you had disabled in the first step. If you have any problems with any of the plugins, I recommend deleting all the plugins and simply installing them all over again. I ran into a few errors and they were sorted out this way. Now, head over to Settings, Permalinks and change the permalink structure to your custom structure, if any. Enable your themes, check your blog settings once again and make sure you give your blog a thorough run.

Remove the robots.txt file that you had created to let the spiders come rolling in!!

The final step is to head over to your previous domain. Open up the .htaccess file and type in the following :

Redirect 301 /blog/ http://www.rahulsarin.com/

Change the above according to your own domains. This will help set up a permanent redirect which will point your readers and the search engines automatically to the new domain. It will even work for all pages and posts. So, no readers lost and you get to keep that SEO juice!!

That’s it! Your blog should be up and running on the new domain with all the hits from your previous domain being automatically redirected to the new address. Hope this article helps. I got help from these websites :

• Move your WordPress blog to a new domain in 10 steps!
• Moving your WordPress blog to a different host and address