kottu wordpress bug

there was a blog post by a self proclaimed voice of colombo... who i personally think needs to clear his/her throat... and this voice had accused another person of "Stealing Traffic" from kottu.org... 'cos it seems like he/she lives off advertisements in his blog... and probably get a bit upset to find that someone had managed to very easily stay at the top of the list... and since he obviously had noclue of how syndicated content polling works... he felt a bit "unfair" that his posts didnt appear at the top of the list...

i'm just kidding...

back to the flaw in kottu.org...

seems like the rss / atom / html importer in version of wordpress used in kottu.org has a flaw such that it uses the timestamp of the imported content without validating with its own... that is... if i write a blog post at 11:59 PM since its the latest... it will appear at the top... i gave up on wordpress because drupal seemed to be better... well it api was much easier so you can write your own modules or extend the existing ones... wordpress wasnt that cool... so i gave up on it... and switched to drupal...

i made two blog posts: a and b

a and b was posted around the same time (around 6.30 PM on 5/15/07)
but i had put two different timestamps

a: at 5/15/2007 06:00:00 PM
b: at 5/15/2007 11:59:00 PM

b would appear before a in kottu.org

so how do you fix that?

well consult a professional software engineer... its a capitalist world after all...
i'm just kidding... wordpress should have a patch for it... :)
i would run a cron every 15 min or whatever and just import content and stick to my server timestamp... as opposed to using the timestamp in feed....
wordpress is written in php so if you know a bit of php you can modify the code by yourself... its legal 'cos wordpress is opensource...

do the right thing?

the the fuss is about posting a future dated blog entry with the intention of making it stay at the top so that he/she would want some traffic to his/her poll or whatever... and thats supposed to be unethical.... and the solution is to get all the bloggers in kottu.org to stone unethical blogger by visiting the ethical blogger's post...

ya well i dunno... i'd rather try to fix the code in kottu.org and worry about all that ethical bullshit!

and the voice is being anal about this whole thing saying "DO THE RIGHT THING" i just read the thread in his blog... so what if prabath fixed a false date? and DOING THE RIGHT THING and shit like that is boring...

forward dated and back dated blog posting is necessary... its like you've got this diary and you've made notes on another diary and you want to update your main diary... and if the main diary didnt allow you to write on whatever page you wanted to... then thats screwed up... say there is a future event... and you def know that you cant be in front of a computer or use your phone to make a blog post...

modify the code!

if wordpress has issues with taking content and assuming that the date stamped is the actual posted date then thats screwed up
how about this... i have my own server... and i have wordpress running on it... and i modify the code so that whatever blog entry thats put there would have 12:59 PM as its timestamp...

look its an accepted content validation practice... like i said... i would use my time as reference... the time my server imported your content is what would matter...

Related Blog Posts

Memory Bank Threatened..!
Stealing Traffic on Kottu.Org. Bloggers Be on Alert!

Memory Bank had misunderstood my initial comment on the ads... and had said in his blog: " So, for all my blog readers, I would like to say, Memory Bank never depends on 'ads', so never goes after popularity. "... i was not referring to him... i was referring to the colombo voice!
but leaving all that a side... its an issue with kottu.org and not Memory Bank...

kottu -> pls modify your code!