CompuSkills Blog

It seems that Compuskills Web Design Blog is now ranked as “Number 1″ in the world by Technorati! I am sure there are lots of you who wont believe this, and it may even no longer be the case by the time you check but, to prove the point, we have taken a screenshot:

(Note: We are aware this is almost certainly down to a technorati error — it seems like they regularly break, which is reassuring for people investing in webservices for their office programs… — but it is nice to pretend once in a while!)

Just a reminder for everyone who uses WordPress that there has been a security upgrade (patch) released. Find out more.

If you are Compuskills customer, your word press has been upgraded.

As mentioned last week, the Compuskills site has undergone a bit of a makeover, with considerable changes to the backend (the server side PHP) which should make it easier for future maintenance to take place.

Everything has progressed well, (you can see the development in progress on the testbed site) and it looks like the deadline will be met.

Tags: Compuskills, Web Design, PHP, UK Company, Site Makeover

If you are interested you can see the development of the new Compuskills home page taking place over on the web design testbed.

The estimated “Go Live” date for this new overhaul is 00:01hrs 17 Feb 07. Most of the changes have taken place at the back end, with more and more the content being CMS generated through PHP. The general look and feel of the site has only undergone minor, cosmetic, changes.

As this is a PHP heavy site, we were (unfortunately) unable to use it to test Expression Web design, but will keep working with the package on other sites and report our progress (if any) in due course. At the moment, we are not really sold on this software. Pretty much all the work on this makeover has been done in Dreamweaver or notepad.

Tags: Expression Web, Dreamweaver, Compuskills, Web Design, PHP, UK Company, Site Makeover

On the heels of the previous list we have added the following IPs to the blacklist:

• 61.55.135.167
• 209.67.219.74
• 72.21.42.139
• 66.90.101.223
• 66.63.170.194
• 66.90.103.243
• 62.212.81.166
• 208.113.151.29
• 69.16.212.134
• 64.27.0.166
• 72.232.65.154
• 72.232.207.26
• 82.138.6.154
• 69.30.192.191
• 64.72.127.155
• 205.196.208.26

As you can see, there has been a bit of an increase in the volume of spam comment messages trying to get themselves posted. Such is life.

Tags: IP Address, Blacklist, Comment Spam, Blog Spam, Spam, Technology, Software, Blogging

Previous discussions have identified that using a CAPTCHA may not be the best method of preventing spam comments while allowing accessibility. While the W3.org comments on the subject may have been valid a few years ago, even the most out of the way blog today risks being inundated with spam comments, which in turn can cripple how a blog is indexed.

Since the chance to WordPress 2.1 we have removed the CAPTCHA and although spam comments are still attempted it seems they are being held back.

Recently it has also become quite apparent that there are a limited number of IP addresses from which this spam is being generated. As a result, any IP address which generates more than four spam comments will be added to the black list and at irregular intervals we will identify the most recent additions here.

Today, 85 spam messages were generated by the following IP addresses:

• 62.149.14.43
• 5.255.119.75
• 6.232.107.234
• 18.72.250.54
• 95.225.177.4
• 85.255.119.132
• 75.46.50.213

Geographically speaking, there is not a lot of variation.

If you are the owner or administrator of one of the above domains, there is a good chance you have an open network which is being misused.

Tags: IP Address, Blacklist, Comment Spam, Blog Spam, Spam, Technology, Software, Blogging

Skype is the world’s main provider of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone services. It provides free PC to PC phone calls. Its paid services offer PC-to-phone calls and supply additional software like KishKish

The KishKish add-on analyses audio streams for signs of stress that are supposed to identify lying.. See BBC report.

However, according to the Register, 25 January 2007, users could be breaking the law if they don’t let the person on the other end of the phone know that they are using it.

As well as contravening the Data Protection Act, use could contravene the Regulatory Powers Act, which carries the possibility of a prison sentence and up to £5,000 in fines

However, this seems debatable. If the law refers to interception of communications, it’s unclear whether analysing comms that are stored on your own PC is illegal. If this were the case, then network traffic analysers might already exist in a grey area. I think that the point that Out-Law are making in the Register article may apply if the software is used in such circumstances as they suggest, e.g. an employee phoning in sick and facing consequences on the basis of a detected “lie.” However, the source of such “evidence” would in itself be unlikely to be divulged in any dispute and a company would probably use other means to confirm the untruth.

In any case, the protection of the privacy of personal does not seem a major concern at present. Penalties under the Data Protection Act - which the software would seem to contravene quite clearly - are limited to civil claims. The Act has so many restrictions on its applicability that it does not seem that a challenge on the grounds of the DPA would be worth making for many people caught out by the process.

Technorati Tags: Skype Internet Communications VOIP Telecoms Technology Law Lie Detector Voice Over Internet Protocol DPA Data Protection Act Internet Phone

It looks like the upgrade to version 2.1 went faster than anticipated with (so far) no teething problems. Everything should be working now.

One comment though, I am not convinced any of the new “features” are actually all that worthwhile. So far, nothing the upgrade has added seems spectacular. Code view (in the write post panel) is faster and the autosave seems cool, but well, it seems a damp squib. In the current editor window I have now, it is not as user friendly (adding links is labourious for example), but this may change with future updates.

Technorati Tags: WordPress Blog Software

As previously mentioned, WordPress version 2.1 (Ella) has now been released and it is our intention to upgrade this site to take advantage of what this offers.

It is anticipated that this upgrade should take less than ten minutes to complete, but to allow for any unforseen problems it is expected that we will be unavailable until 2000hrs GMT, 23 Jan 07.

If you have any questions please let us know.

Technorati Tags: WordPress Blog Software

In response to a few emails we have received over the last couple of days, it seemed worthwhile to clear up the matter of the FAQs posted here.

It may seem like this are often simplistic answers to what can be very complicated questions, and this is pretty much the case. The idea behind posting these FAQs is to allow Compuskills Web Design Service to provide advice in response to customer questions and queries. By it’s very nature, this advice is in the form of fairly short responses - which in the past was given over the telephone or by email.

There are several topics for which this shortened form is clearly unsuitable and we will endeavour to produce longer posts or articles looking at the questions / topics in greater details.

Technorati Tags: Compuskills FAQ Frequently Asked Questions Articles Web Design Web Design Advice