A friend, and my PHP guru, Khalid has been working hard recently on a brand new site. Similar to TinyURLs, he and a partner has set up URL.co.uk, a URL redirection service with a few additional differences.

At present the main difference is that any URL added is checked against a frequently updated phishing database to ensure that the URLs being used aren't going to scam you of stacks of money! The extra features that should be added soon sound great from what he's told me, potentially including the ability to edit your URL at a later date and statistics information too.

Anyway, he explains it better than I do so pop over to his site and read his Creating Short URLs post on the subject

PS. Have a good weekend, I'll be back on Monday!

I've just upgraded this blog to the new version of WordPress and it seemed to go pretty well. As it is a major update I first grabbed new versions of all the plugins I use to try and ensure I didn't break anything! Luckily everything I use is either already compatible or had been updated ready, so it's all gone smoothly. Even my own WordPress plugin works fine

What's new on this new version? Well from a brief look I've noticed the new tag system, which I probably won't use as I'm not a fan of tag clouds. The best improvement I've noticed so far is the plugin update check. After upgrading I went to take a plugin off that had been replaced with a new name, and noticed another plugin hadn't been upgraded and it just says right below 'There is a new version of *plugin name and version*. Click to download'. So it doesn't upgrade for you (which is good!) but keeps a check on the plugins. Of course I'm guessing those are the plugins known to WordPress, afterall if I upgraded my plugin, there's no way WordPress would tell you I'll get it submitted to them once I've got the admin page done.

The upgrade didn't go 100% smoothly though. I had a load of database errors come up complaining of duplicate entries, however this was in a database table that's new, so it wasn't down to my existing version. I guess the upgrade script has a couple of bugs in it? I'll see what happens when I upgrade another blog and see if the same issue is there. It's not stopped anything from working, and I'm not sure what the new table (wp_term_relationships) is actually for. Maybe it's to do with the tags? Still, otherwise it all seems okay so far. Let me know if you see anything that doesn't look right

Update: Seems they've moved a few too many tables around as my front page now doesn't work Which means the feed won't either. I may get this fixed before I go away tomorrow else it won't be until Tuesday.

Update 2: Yay I fixed the front page after working out their new category system! I also discovered by category pages were erroring so that's fixed now.

For those of you who don't read my AIS Blog, then a quick intro is needed for my first ever WordPress Plugin. What this simply does is take the RSS feeds supplied under the WordPress blogroll (if you have entered them in) and retrieves the most recent post from each site. It then takes the 5 most recent posts and displays them in the sidebar under the heading 'What Others Are Saying'. This combines the idea of linking someone with the idea of showing what that person is actually writing about too. I've often been on a site, looked at the external links but the title just hasn't got any oomph to get me to click on it. However a good post title can pull people in.

There is a certain widget that does something similar, except you can't control who is on your list, nor can you control what is on the list, as I discovered within 36 hours of putting it on my site (let's just say X rated post title, not for the under 18s). This plugin provides natural, non JavaScript, links, usually direct to the blog post. I say usually as there is one feed that I'm still trying to get the true URL to come out as Feedburner is getting in the way!

You can see it in action below my Top Commentators and Most Commented section on the sidebar. Mine updates every 3 hours so as to not overload the feeds in my blogroll.

If you want to give it a try then I'd love to hear your feedback.

» What Others Are Saying Plugin.

After my lack of success with BlogRush last week, I took Gary's thoughts, which were a simpler idea to one I'd had pre-BlogRush, and have created my own script to display the last 5 posts on the blogs I read. It's down near the bottom of the sidebar and is set to update at least every 3 hours, or whenever a visitor arrives after the 3 hour update break – this is so not to annoy the owners of the blogs I read and have their feed hit too often, despite all the feeds being supplied by Feedburner! Still, it slows the page loading down if it has to check everytime.nnMy script is fairly simple, using the RSS field under my Blogroll, which strangely I can't seem to find anything about whether WordPress makes use of this field or not! It also uses Magpie RSS to retrieve the feed content, and a database table to control what is output as I only want the 5 most recent posts. It only displays one post per blog so that there's still a little diversity there.nnIf I knew how I guess I could release it as a plugin, so if anyone fancies wrapping it up as one let me know. I guess I could release the code too as it only needs an extra db table adding and then simply include the file where you want it going. Perhaps if I have time I'll do this, depends if anyone else wants it nnI'm still working out which blogs to add to the group as there are only a few at present. I'm obviously wanting Entrepreneur type blogs, those that focus more on making money, marketing and business info. But then again I've only added those that I read as those are the ones I like nnAnyway, let me know what you think and if you want the code nn

Update

nThis is now available as a WordPress plugin from my plugins page.

I'm tired… I am so tired. I don't know why but all I want to do is sleep! It's been a busy week this week. Monday we went to see another house, too small again, and then got back home for me to cook dinner as Dave's sister and her husband were over for the evening. So a dinner of Roast Lamb (we never had it on Sunday!), plus all the trimmings was served up, with apple crumble for dessert. I think a good evening was had by all and we were up until gone 1am!

Tuesday was spent working solidly until the evening, then we packed ready for going away. Wednesday we had an early start and met up with our friends at Alton Towers theme park. We had return tickets from Easter and had to use them before the end of the season (end of October). The weather was great for the morning but the rain set in by lunchtime. Still, we all had a good time, had a good chat over things and it was nice not to have to think about work for the day. We then drove on down to my parent's house. On Thursday was the Thame (and Oxfordshire) county show, which is held about 5 minutes from my parent's house. We had another early start to the day and headed on down to there until about mid afternoon. The Thame show is great as there are plenty of stalls to wander around. I managed to pick up an anorak that can fold/roll up into a tiny little bag – handy for when we're out cycling or out for the day and I don't have my waterproof coat on. I also picked up a mini tripod for my camera at £5/$10. It's only about 30cm high but it's all I need. I can always use Dave's bigger tripod if I really needed it. The little one is cute!

On Saturday we headed back home. A pretty clear run up the motorways which was good as I've been suffering from a headache for most the week and driving for 3 hours didn't help much either.

I've been looking for a possible cheap week away for a holiday for us this week too. Unless we're prepared to go to somewhere full of tourists (ie. cheap and tacky!) then we're looking at around £400 for a week away including a flight from Liverpool or Manchester. That's before expenses such as food. I'm in two minds as to whether we go on holiday with the savings we have or keep them in case, or more like when, we move house. Finding somewhere to live hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be, but if something ideal pops up on the radar then we'd probably move, at least if it was before the end of our rental period, so up until 14th October, as I don't fancy moving too close to Christmas, plus at the end of November I've got car insurance and MOT to pay for, which is further expense!

Still, at least it's pay day on Friday plus I have a few other jobs to do this week too, a couple of new things which will give my mind a bit of a workout. Plus I may have relocated my 'office' out of the lounge and into our spare bedroom by the end of the week. It'll be nice for a change of scenery and to be back at my proper desk. I'll grab some photos once it's all sorted out